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Democracy (literally "rule by the people", from the Greek δῆμος demos, "people," and κράτος kratos, "rule") is a form of government for a nation state, or for an organization in which all the citizens have a voice in shaping policy. Today democracy is often assumed to be liberal democracy,[7][8] but there are many other varieties and the methods used to govern differ. While the term democracy is often used in the context of a political state, the principles are also applicable to other bodies, such as universities, labor unions, public companies, or civic organizations.

[edit] Varieties

Main article: Democracy (varieties)

The definition of democracy is made complex by the varied concepts used at different periods of history in different contexts. Political systems, or proposed political systems, claiming or claimed to be democratic have ranged very broadly. For example:

• Aristotle contrasted rule by the many (democracy/polity), with rule by the few (oligarchy/aristocracy), and with rule by a single person (monarchy/tyranny or today autocracy). He also thought that there was a good and a bad variant of each system.[9][10].
• Sortition/Allotment have formed the basis of systems randomly selecting officers from the population:[11] For example, Aristotle described the law courts in Athens which were selected by lot as democratic^[1] and described elections as oligarchic.^[2]
• Certain tribes organised themselves using forms of participatory democracy. [12]
• Democracy is used to describe systems seeking consensus (see Deliberative democracy).[13]
• Many socialists have argued that socialism necessarily implies democracy (see Democratic socialism). For this reason Socialist governments of the Communist East block often called themselves democratic. This use of democratic is however strongly disputed because most of these governments were De facto dictatorships kept in power by "sham" elections ^{[citation needed]} (for example, the former German Democratic Republic).[14]

Main varieties include:

[edit] Direct

Direct democracy is a political system where the citizens vote on all major policy decisions. It is called direct because, in the classical forms, there are no intermediaries or representatives. Current examples include many small civic organizations (like college faculties) and town meetings in New England (usually in towns under 10,000 population). Critics note that it sometimes emphasises the act of voting more than other democratic procedures such as free speech and press and civic organisations. That is, these critics argue, democracy is more than merely a procedural issue.^[3]

All direct democracies to date have been relatively small communities; usually city-states. Today, a limited direct democracy exists in some Swiss cantons that practice it in its literal form. Direct democracy obviously becomes difficult when the electorate is large--for example some 30,000 or more citizens were eligible in Athenian democracy. However, the extensive use of referenda, as in California, is akin to direct democracy in a very large polity with over 20 million potential voters.^[4] Modern direct democracy tries accommodate this problem and sees a role for strictly controlled representatives. It is characterised by three pillars; referendums (initiated by governments or legislatures or by citizens responding to legislation), initiatives (initiated by citizens) and recall elections (on holders of public office).[15]

[edit] Representative

Representative democracy is so named because the people select representatives to a governing body. Representatives may be chosen by the electorate as a whole (as in many proportional systems) or represent a particular district or constituency), with some systems using a combination of the two. Some representative democracies also incorporate some elements of direct democracy, such as referenda.

[edit] Liberal

Liberal democracy is a representative democracy (with free and fair elections) along with the protection of minorities, the rule of law, a separation of powers, and protection of liberties (thus the name liberal) of speech, assembly, religion, and property. [16] [17] Conversely, an illiberal democracy is one where the protections that form a liberal democracy are either nonexistent, or not enforced. The experience in some post-Soviet states drew attention to the phenomenon, although it is not of recent origin. Napoleon III for example used plebiscites to ratify his imperial decisions. æ

[edit] History

Main article: History of democracy

Since World War II, democracy has gained widespread acceptance. This map shows the official claims made by world governments with regard to democracy, as of June 2006.      Governments that claim to be democratic and allow the existence of opposition groups, at least in theory.      Governments that claim to be democratic but do not allow the existence of opposition groups.      Governments that do not claim to be democratic.

[edit] Ancient origins

The word democracy was coined in ancient Greece and used interchangeably with isonomia^[5] (equality of political rights). Although Athenian democracy is today considered by many to have been a form of direct democracy originally it had two distinguishing features: firstly the allotment (selection by lot) of ordinary citizens to government offices and courts,^[6][5] and secondarily the assembly of all the citizens. In theory, all the Athenian citizens were eligible to speak and vote in the Assembly, which set the laws of the city-state, but neither political rights, nor citizenship, were granted to women, slaves, or metics. Of the 250,000 inhabitants only some 30,000 on average were citizens. Of those 30,000 perhaps 5,000 might regularly attend one or more meetings of the popular Assembly. Key to the development of Athenian democracy was its huge juries allotted from the citizenry ^[7]. Most of the officers & magistrates of Athenian government were allotted; only the generals (strategoi) and a few other officers were elected. ^[8][18]

The seeds of representative democracy were arguably started in the Roman Republic.[19] Democratic principles and elements were found in societies ranging from ancient Indian Mahajanapadas, Sanghas, Ganas and Panchayats [20], to certain bands and tribes such as the Iroquois Confederacy. However, since usually only a minority had political rights they are often better described as oligarchies.^[9]

[edit] Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, there were various systems involving elections or assemblies, such as the election of Gopala in Bengal, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Althing in Iceland, certain medieval Italian city-states such as Venice, the tuatha system in early medieval Ireland, the Veche in Slavic countries, and Scandinavian Things.

The Parliament of England had its roots in the restrictions on the power of kings written into Magna Carta. The first elected parliament was De Montfort's Parliament in England in 1265. However only a small minority actually had a voice; Parliament was elected by only a few percent of the population (less than 3% in 1780.[21]), and the system had problematic features such as rotten boroughs. The power to call parliament was at the pleasure of the monarch (usually when he or she needed funds). After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the English Bill of Rights was enacted in 1689, which codified certain rights and increased the influence of the Parliament.[22] The franchise was slowly increased and the Parliament gradually gained more power until the monarch became entirely a figurehead.[23]

[edit] 18th and 19th centuries

The United States can be seen as the first liberal democracy with relatively wide franchise. [24] The United States Constitution protected rights and liberties and was adopted in 1788. Already in the colonial period before 1776 most adult white men could vote; there were still property requirements but most men owned their own farms and could pass the tests. On the American frontier, democracy became a way of life, with widespread social, economic and political equality.^[10]By 1840s almost all property restrictions were ended and nearly all white adult male citizens could vote; and turnout averaged 60-80% in frequent elections for local, state and national officials. The Americans invented the grass roots party that could mobilise the voters, and had frequent elections and conventions to keep them active. The system gradually evolved, from Jeffersonian Democracy or the First Party System to Jacksonian Democracy or the Second Party System and later to the Third Party System. In Reconstruction after the Civil War (late 1860s) the newly freed slaves became citizens, and they were given the vote as well.

Later in 1789, Revolutionary France adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and, although short-lived, the National Convention was elected by all males.[25] Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791 is widely recognized as the second oldest constitution in the world.^[11]

Liberal democracies were few and often short-lived before the late nineteenth century. Various nations and territories have claimed to be the first with universal suffrage.

[edit] 20th century

This map reflects the findings of Freedom House's survey Freedom in the World 2006, which reports the state of world freedom in 2005. It is one of the most widely used measures of democracy by researchers.[5]      Free. Freedom House considers these to be liberal democracies.[6]      Partly Free      Not Free

20th century transitions to liberal democracy have come in successive "waves of democracy", variously resulting from wars, revolutions, decolonization and economic circumstances. World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires resulted in the creation of new nation-states in Europe, most of them nominally democratic. In the 1920 democracy flourished, but the Great Depression brought a disenchantment and most of the countries of Europe, Latin America and Asia turned to strong-man rule or dictatorships. Thus the rise of fascism and dictatorships in Nazi Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, as well as nondemocratic regimes in Poland, the Baltics, the Balkans, Brazil, Cuba, China, and Japan, among others. Together with Stalin's Communism in the Soviet Union, these made the 1930s the "Age of Dictators".

World War II brought a definitive reversal of this trend in western Europe. The successful democratisation of the occupied Germany and the occupied Japan served as a model for the later theory of regime change. However, most of Eastern Europe was forced into the non-democratic Soviet bloc. The war was followed by decolonisation, and again most of the new independent states had nominally democratic constitutions.In the decades following World War II, most western democratic nations had a predominantly free-market economy and developed a welfare state, reflecting a general consensus among their electorates and political parties. In the 1950s and 1960s, economic growth was high in both the western and Communist countries; it later declined in the state-controlled economies. By 1960, the vast majority of nation-states were nominally democracies, although the majority of the world's populations lived in nations that experienced sham elections, and other forms of subterfuge (particularly in Communist nations and the former colonies.)

This graph shows the number of nations in the different categories given above for the period for which there are surveys, 1972-2005

Number of nations 1800-2003 scoring 8 or higher on Polity IV scale, another widely used measure of democracy.

A subsequent wave of democratisation brought substantial gains toward true liberal democracy for many nations. Several of the military dictatorships in South America became democratic in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This was followed by nations in East and South Asia by the mid- to late 1980s. Economic malaise in the 1980s, along with resentment of communist oppression, contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the associated end of the Cold War, and the democratisation and liberalisation of the former Eastern bloc countries. The most successful of the new democracies were those geographically and culturally closest to western Europe, and they are now members or candidate members of the European Union. The democratic trend spread to some nations in Africa in the 1990s, most prominently in South Africa. Some recent examples include the Indonesian Revolution of 1998, the Bulldozer Revolution in Yugoslavia, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan.

The number of liberal democracies currently stands at an all-time high and has been growing without interruption for some time. As such, it has been speculated that this trend may continue in the future to the point where liberal democratic nation-states become the universal standard form of human society. This prediction forms the core of Francis Fukayama's "End of History" theory.

[edit] Theory

[edit] Conceptions

Among political theorists, there are many contending conceptions of democracy.

• Under minimalism, democracy is a system of government in which citizens give teams of political leaders the right to rule in periodic elections. According to this minimalist conception, citizens cannot and should not “rule” because on most issues, most of the time, they have no clear views or their views are not very intelligent. Joseph Schumpeter articulated this view most famously in his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy ^[12]. Contemporary proponents of minimalism include William H. Riker, Adam Przeworksi, and Richard Posner.

• The aggregative conception of democracy holds that government should produce laws and policies that are close to the views of the median voter — with half to his left and the other half to his right. Anthony Downs laid out this view in his 1957 book An Economic Theory of Democracy. ^[13]

• Deliberative democracy is based on the notion that democracy is government by discussion. Deliberative democrats contend that laws and policies should be based upon reasons that all citizens can accept. The political arena should be one in which leaders and citizens make arguments, listen, and change their minds. The modern proponents of this form of government are led by Jürgen Habermas.

• The conceptions above assume a representative democracy. Direct democracy holds that citizens should participate directly, not through their representatives, in making laws and policies. Proponents of direct democracy offer varied reasons to support this view. Political activity can be valuable in itself, it socializes and educates citizens, and popular participation can check powerful elites. Most importantly, citizens do not really rule themselves unless they directly decide laws and policies.

• Another conception of democracy is that it means political equality between all citizens. It is also used to refer to societies in which there exists a certain set of institutions, procedures and patterns which are perceived as leading to equality in political power. First and foremost among these institutions is the regular occurrence of free and open elections which are used to select representatives who then manage all or most of the public policy of the society. This meaning of the word "democracy" has also been called polyarchy. This view may see it as a problem that the majority of the voters decide policy, as opposed to majority rule of the entire population. This can be used as an argument for making political participation mandatory, like compulsory voting. It may also see a problem with the wealthy having more influence and therefore argue for reforms like campaign finance reform.^[14]

[edit] "Democracy" and "Republic"

In contemporary usage, the term "democracy" refers to a government chosen by the people, whether it is direct or representative.[26] The term "republic" has many different meanings but today often refers to a representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a President, serving for a limited term, in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are representative democracies with an elected head of government such as a Prime Minister.[27]

In historical usages and especially when considering the works of the Founding Fathers of the United States, the word "democracy" refers solely to direct democracy, while a representative democracy where representatives of the people govern in accordance with laws and usually also a constitution is referred to as a republic.[28][29] Using the term "democracy" to refer solely to direct democracy retains some popularity in United States conservative and libertarian circles.

The original framers of the United States Constitution were notably cognizant of what they perceived as a danger of majority rule in oppressing freedom and liberty of the individual. For example, James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, advocates a constitutional republic over a democracy to protect the individual from the majority. ^[15] The framers carefully created the institutions within the Constitution and the United States Bill of Rights. They kept what they believed were the best elements of majority rule. But they were mitigated by a constitution with protections for individual liberty, a separation of powers, and a layered federal structure.

Republicanism and Liberalism have complex relationships to democracy and republic. See these articles for more details.

[edit] Constitutional monarchs and upper chambers

Initially after the American and French revolutions the question was open whether a democracy, in order to restrain unchecked majority rule, should have an elitist upper chamber, the members perhaps appointed meritorious experts or having lifetime tenures, or should have a constitutional monarch with limited but real powers. Some countries (as Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Scandinavian countries and Japan) turned powerful monarchs into constitutional monarchs with limited or, often gradually, merely symbolic roles. Often the monarchy was abolished along with the aristocratic system (as in the U.S., France, China, Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Greece and Egypt). In Australia, the monarchy is seen as hollow shell. However, there is no consensus on how to replace it. Most voters want a powerful president (as in the U.S., France, and Russia), while most politicians want to keep the parliamentary system and have only a weak president (as in Italy and Germany). For details see Republicanism in Australia Many nations had elite upper houses of legislatures which often had lifetime tenure, but eventually these senates lost power (as in Britain) or else became elective and remained powerful (as in the United States).

[edit] Democratic state

Though there remains some philosophical debate as to the applicability and legitimacy of criteria in defining democracy what follows may be a minimum of requirements for a state to be considered democratic (note that for example anarchists may support a form of democracy but not a state):

1. A demos—a group which makes political decisions by some form of collective procedure—must exist. Non-members of the demos do not participate. In modern democracies the demos is the adult portion of the nation, and adult citizenship is usually equivalent to membership.
2. A territory must be present, where the decisions apply, and where the demos is resident. In modern democracies, the territory is the nation-state, and since this corresponds (in theory) with the homeland of the nation, the demos and the reach of the democratic process neatly coincide. Colonies of democracies are not considered democratic by themselves, if they are governed from the colonial motherland: demos and territory do not coincide.
3. A decision-making procedure exists, which is either direct, in instances such as a referendum, or indirect, of which instances include the election of a parliament.
4. The procedure is regarded as legitimate by the demos, implying that its outcome will be accepted. Political legitimacy is the willingness of the population to accept decisions of the state, its government and courts, which go against personal choices or interests.
5. The procedure is effective in the minimal sense that it can be used to change the government, assuming there is sufficient support for that change. Showcase elections, pre-arranged to re-elect the existing regime, are not democratic.
6. In the case of nation-states, the state must be sovereign: democratic elections are pointless if an outside authority can overrule the result.

[edit] Criticism

Anarchists oppose "coercive" majority rule. Many support a non-hierarchical and non-coercive system of direct democracy within free associations. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon argued that the only acceptable form of direct democracy is one in which it is recognized that majority decisions are not binding on the minority. The minority can refuse to consent and are free to leave and form or join another association.^[16] There are also some anarchists who expect society to operate by consensus.^[17]

Some far right, theocratic, and monarchist groups oppose democracy.

For criticisms of specific forms of democracy, see the appropriate article.

[edit] Beyond the state level

While this article deals mainly with democracy as a system to rule countries, voting and representation have been used to govern many other kinds of communities and organisations.

• Many non-governmental organisations decide policy and leadership by voting.
• In business, corporations elect their boards by votes weighed by the number of shares held by each owner.
• Trade unions sometimes choose their leadership through democratic elections. In the U.S. democratic elections were rare before Congress required them in the 1950s.^[18].

[edit] See also

• List of democratic states
• List of types of democracy
• Poll
• Allotment

[edit] References

1. ^ Aristotle, Politics 2.1273b
2. ^ Aristotle, Politics 4.1294b
3. ^ Jane J. Mansbridge. Beyond Adversary Democracy (1983)
4. ^ John M. Allswang. The Initiative and Referendum in California, 1898-1998 (2000) (ISBN 0804738211)
5. ^ ^{a b} Herodotus. 3.80
6. ^ Aristotle Book 6
7. ^ Aristotle, Politics 2.1274a, c350BC
8. ^ Morgens Herman Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes, ISBN 1-85399-585-1, P.231-2)
9. ^ For example, in the Iroquois Confederacy only the males of certain clans could be leaders and some clans were excluded. Only the oldest females from the same clans could chose and remove the leaders. This excluded most of the population. An interesting detail is that there should be consensus among the leaders, not majority support decided by voting, when making decisions.[1][2]
10. ^ Ray Allen Billington, America's Frontier Heritage (1974) 117-158. However the frontier did not produce much democracy in Canada, Australia or Russia.
11. ^ John Markoff describes the advent of modern codified national constitutions as one of the milestones of democracy, and states that "The first European country to follow the U.S. example was Poland in 1791." John Markoff, Waves of Democracy, 1996, ISBN 0-8039-9019-7, p.121.
12. ^ Joseph Schumpeter, (1950). Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-133008-6.
13. ^ Anthony Downs, (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy. Harpercollins College. ISBN 0-06-041750-1.
14. ^ [3][4] Dahl, Robert, (1989). Democracy and its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
15. ^ James Madison, (November 22, 1787). "The Same Subject Continued: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection", Daily Advertiser. New York. Republished by Wikisource.
16. ^ Graham, Robert. The General Idea of Proudhon's Revolution
17. ^ As in News from Nowhere or The Dispossessed
18. ^ Seymour Martin Lipset, Union Democracy (1962)

[edit] Further reading

• Joyce Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (1992)
• Becker, Peter, Juergen Heideking and James A. Henretta, eds. Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750-1850. Cambridge University Press. 2002.
• Benhabib, Seyla, ed., Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton University Press, 1996)
• Charles Blattberg, From Pluralist to Patriotic Politics: Putting Practice First, Oxford University Press, 2000, ch. 5. ISBN 0-19-829688-6
• Castiglione, Dario. "Republicanism and its Legacy," European Journal of Political Theory (2005) v 4 #4 pp 453-65.online version
• Copp, David, Jean Hampton, and John E. Roemer, eds. The Idea of Democracy Cambridge University Press (1993)
• Dahl, Robert. Democracy and its Critics, Yale University Press (1989)
• Dahl, Robert. On Democracy Yale University Press, 2000
• Dahl, Robert. Ian Shapiro, and Jose Antonio Cheibub, eds, The Democracy Sourcebook MIT Press 2003
• Diamond, Larry and Marc Plattner, The Global Resurgence of Democracy, 2nd edition Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996
• Diamond, Larry and Richard Gunther, eds. Political Parties and Democracy (2001)
• Diamond, Larry and Leonardo Morlino, eds. Assessing the Quality of Democracy (2005)
• Diamond, Larry, Marc F. Plattner, and Philip J. Costopoulos, eds. World Religions and Democracy (2005)
• Diamond, Larry, Marc F. Plattner, and Daniel Brumberg, eds. Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (2003)
• Elster, Jon (ed.). Deliberative Democracy Cambridge University Press (1997)
• Gabardi, Wayne. "Contemporary Models of Democracy," Polity 33#4 (2001) pp 547+.
• Held, David. Models of Democracy Stanford University Press, (1996), reviews the major interpretations
• Inglehart, Ronald. Modernization and Postmodernization. Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies Princeton University Press. 1997.
• Khan, L. Ali, A Theory of Universal Democracy. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers(2003)
• Lijphart, Arend. Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries Yale University Press (1999)
• Lipset, Seymour Martin. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy”, American Political Science Review, (1959) 53 (1): 69-105. online at JSTOR
• Macpherson, C. B. The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy. Oxford University Press (1977)
• Edmund Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (1989)
• Plattner, Marc F. and Aleksander Smolar, eds. Globalization, Power, and Democracy (2000)
• Plattner, Marc F. and João Carlos Espada, eds. The Democratic Invention (2000)
• Putnam, Robert. Making Democracy Work Princeton University Press. (1993)
• Riker, William H., The Theory of Political Coalitions (1962)
• Sen, Amartya K. “Democracy as a Universal Value”, Journal of Democracy (1999) 10 (3): 3-17.
• Weingast, Barry. “The Political Foundations of the Rule of Law and Democracy”, American Political Science Review, (1997) 91 (2): 245-263. online at JSTOR
• Whitehead, Laurence ed. Emerging Market Democracies: East Asia and Latin America (2002)
• Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1993), examines democratic dimensions of republicanism

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Haseler/test

Look up democracy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Journal of Democracy
• Democracy in the Open Directory Project
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Democracy
• Democracy Watch (International) — Worldwide democracy monitoring organization.
• IFES — supporting the building of democratic societies around the world
• Democracy at large magazine — a quarterly magazine designed for professionals interested in democracy development worldwide
• dgGovernance — Collection of resources on key issues of democracy and nation-building
• the site of the Association for the School of Democracy a university-level research and training pluri- and transdisciplinary school of democracy
• Brief review of trends in political change: freedom and conflict.
• New York Times argument against the "Development first, democracy later" idea
• The Rise of Illiberal Democracy by Fareed Zakaria
• The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
• openDemocracy — Global democracy network using information, participation and debate to empower citizens.

Critique

• The Democratic State - A Critique of Bourgeois Sovereignty
• Riff-Raff — Democracy as the Community of Capital - A Provisional Critique of Democracy
• Why democracy is wrong
• An Islamic Critique of Democracy
• Democracy, The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• Liberty or Equality by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
• Churchill on Democracy Revisited by J.K. Baltzersen
• The INTERNATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY, progressive scholarship, critiques of democracy.

Alternatives and improvements - see also Wikocracy, E-democracy and Futarchy

• Democracy with a small "d"
• Democratic Manifesto
• Conducting new experiments with democracy, Ethics & Democracy
• Democratic Deficit
• On Democracy by James Russell Lowell
• simpol.org — Plan to limit global competition and facilitate the emergence of a sustainable, sane global civilization.
• Students for Global Democracy
• Wiki Democracy — "an experiment that asks: if there were no laws in the United States, what laws would you impose on America?"
• The four-way-path-model of a future democracy