Democracy: Exploring Governance Models and Citizen Engagement

Chapter 1: Democracy

Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, dēmos 'people' and kratos 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (direct democracy), or elect officials who will do so (representative democracy).

The composition of the people and the methods through which power is distributed or delegated among them have evolved over time and at varying speeds in various nations.

Freedom of assembly is a common feature of democracies, association, property rights, Liberty of Conscience and Expression, citizenship, acceptance by the governed, voting rights, liberation from arbitrary state interference with fundamental freedoms, rights of minorities.

There has been a lot of development in the concept of democracy throughout time. Direct democracy, in which communities make choices by public assembly, has a long and storied history. Representative democracies, in which individuals elect government officials to rule on their behalf, such as in parliamentary or presidential democracies, are now the most common kind of democracy. It is generally agreed that city-states like Classical Athens and the Roman Republic were the cradle of Western democracy, as opposed to earlier forms of democracy, where different schemes and degrees of enfranchisement of the free male population were observed before the form disappeared in the West at the start of late antiquity. Almost always, democracies have limited voting rights to a select group of individuals before opening them up to the whole population. This was accomplished in most contemporary democracies via suffrage campaigns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The opposition between democracy and other forms of government in which power is held by a single person, such as autocratic systems like absolute monarchy, and between democracy and other forms of government in which power is held by a small number of people, such as an oligarchy, is rooted in ancient Greek philosophy.

Democracy is often associated with elections, but the term may also refer to systems in which citizens have a say in policymaking via a system called direct democracy.

Upward control (sovereignty residing at the lowest levels of authority), political equality, and social norms by which individuals and institutions only consider acceptable acts that reflect the first two principles are, according to one theory, the three fundamental principles necessary for a democracy to function. Democracy is usually associated with a governmental system, but its guiding principles may be applied just as easily to non-governmental organizations.

Although there are a variety of democratic decision-making processes, majority rule is the most common. Political minority may be subjected to the tyranny of the majority without adequate compensation, such as legal safeguards of individual or collective rights. Since majority rule is a more adversarial form of government than consensus democracy, it is essential that elections and, more broadly, policy debates, be fair in both substance and process. Freedom of political expression, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and online democracy are all valued in various nations to help citizens make educated decisions at the polls. In classical times, republic might refer to either a democracy or an aristocracy. The current definition of a republican government is one without a king or queen. As a result, democracies, like the United Kingdom, can take the form of either a republic or a constitutional monarchy.

The existence of democratic assemblies may be traced back to the dawn of our species, Democracies aren't the only governments that have been labeled proto-democratic in hindsight.

Democracy was originally used in classical antiquity, in the political and philosophical writings of ancient Greeks centered on the city-state of Athens.

While much of medieval Europe was governed by clergy or feudal lords, there was one province that was controlled by a monarch, Several voting or assembly-based systems existed, Despite only affecting a tiny percentage of the overall population,.

In Scandinavia, Freemen under the leadership of a lawspeaker made up the bodies known as things.

It was the job of these councils to resolve political disputes, and variants included the Althing in Iceland and the Løgting in the Faeroe Islands.

Ragusa, or its Republic, founded in 1358 with Dubrovnik as the capital, limited its political participation and representation to its male nobility.

Many Italian states and municipalities were organized as republics.

For instance, Florence's Republic, first recorded use: 1115, members of the Signoria, who ran the show, were selected using a lottery system.

Around the years 1000-1500 in Frisia, a civilization that is clearly not feudal, the ability to vote in municipal elections and for county authorities was proportional to land area.

The Kouroukan Fouga established a system of hereditary aristocracy in the Mali Empire with the institution of a supreme council (Gbara).

However, Because of the charter, Mali resembles a constitutional monarchy rather than a democratic republic.

Magna Carta (1215), which limited the authority of monarchs, provided explicit protection for some rights of the King's people and implied support for what became the English writ of habeas corpus, which ensured the right to be free from illegal incarceration and to appeal a conviction.

There was a revival of curiosity around Magna Carta in 17th-century England. His model of liberal democracy dominates the political landscape even now.

In the Cossack republics of Ukraine during the 16th and 17th centuries, the holder of the highest rank of Hetman was chosen by delegates from the country's regions under the auspices of the Cossack Hetmanate and Zaporizhian Sich.

Jamestown, Virginia is credited as the birthplace of representative government in North America, with the election of the House of Burgesses (the precursor of the Virginia General Assembly) in 1619. When English Puritans settled in New England in the 1620s, they set up democratic colonies; After the Acts of Union formally united England and Scotland into a single nation in 1707, the first Parliament of Great Britain was convened. The English Declaration of Right, 1689 (restated in the Bill of Rights 1689) and the Scottish Claim of Right, 1689, both established Parliament as the UK's highest lawmaking body and stated that election of members of Parliament ought to be free. However, the UK's constitution was never formally codified. Commoners without taxable property were not eligible to vote, whereas taxed peasants were represented in parliament.

A brief experiment with a democratic constitution was the 1755 establishment of the Republic of Corsica (all men and women above age of 25 could vote). While other democracies didn't provide women the right to vote until the 20th century, the Corsican Constitution was the first to be built on Enlightenment ideals.

Property requirements to vote in Colonial America were identical to those in Britain, and in the years leading up to 1776, when land was plentiful, a sizable portion of the population satisfied them. Nonetheless, the Constitution of 1791 helped kept hopes for regaining independence alive for another century.

In the United States, non-property-holding white men were granted voting rights for the first time in the 1828 presidential election. The 1830s saw a dramatic increase in voter participation, with over 80% of the adult white male population casting a ballot in the 1840 presidential election.

There were many waves of democracy in the twentieth century, each one caused by a unique set of factors such as war, revolution, decolonization, religion, or economics. To some extent, the notion of government transition may be traced back to the examples of Austria, Italy, and occupied Japan. The Soviet-controlled part of Germany and the rest of Eastern Europe, however, joined the anti-democratic Soviet bloc.

Most of the newly independent governments, after the war and decolonization, again had ostensibly democratic constitutions. India has been, and is, the biggest democracy in the world. By 1960, the great majority of nation-states had declared themselves to be democracies, but the vast majority of the world's people still resided in countries that only on paper had free and fair elections (particularly in Communist states and the former colonies.)

Many countries made great strides toward what has been called the third wave of democracy after a subsequent round of democratization. In the 1970s and 1980s, military dictatorships in South America, Portugal, and Spain all transitioned back to civilian control. East and South Asian nations soon followed in the 1980s. A combination of economic stagnation and anti-Soviet sentiment in the 1980s led to the Soviet Union's demise, the end of the Cold War, and the democratization and liberalization of nations formerly part of the Eastern bloc. The emerging democracies that were the most successful were those that were located and culturally closest to western Europe; these countries are currently either members of the European Union or candidates for membership. After the fall of Asia's most infamous dictatorship in 1986, the Philippines became the region's only democratic state thanks to the ascent of Corazon Aquino, who became known as the Mother of Asian Democracy.

In the 1990s, the liberal movement extended to various African governments, most notably South Africa. 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, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia are all examples of attempts at liberalization from the last few years.

There were 123 electoral democracies in 2007, according Freedom House (up from 40 in 1972).

The voting age in many nations was lowered to 18 years old, beginning with the main democracies in Western Europe and North America in the 1970s. Brazil, Austria, Cuba, and Nicaragua are just few of the nations where the voting age has been dropped to 16. A proposal in California in 2004 to lower the voting age to 14 (for a quarter vote) and 16 (for a full vote) was eventually rejected. A measure giving every German citizen the right to vote from birth—to be exercised by their parents until the kid becomes 18—was introduced and tabled in 2008.

For the last eleven years, worldwide reductions in political rights and civil freedoms have exceeded increases, as reported by Freedom House. This trend began in 2005, Economic disparity and public dissatisfaction were blamed for the decade's democratic backsliding., Aristotle distinguished between popular rule (democracy/timocracy) and elite rule (oligarchy/aristocracy) as well as absolute monarchy/tyranny. He also believed that for every system, there was an ideal and an undesirable variation (he considered democracy to be the degenerate counterpart to timocracy).

Aggregative democracy, deliberative democracy, and radical democracy are the three competing views of democracy held by contemporary political thinkers.

According to proponents of the notion of aggregative democracy, the purpose of democratic processes is to collect people' preferences and then use those choices collectively to establish the social policies that should be implemented. Therefore, those who share this perspective argue that voting should be the central focus of democratic participation, with the policy receiving the most votes being enacted.

There is more than one kind of aggregative democracy. Minimalists define democracy as a form of governance in which voters regularly give one or more political parties control of the government. Citizens cannot and should not rule under this minimalist approach since, for the most part, they do not have strong opinions on most topics. This important viewpoint was written by Joseph Schumpeter in his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. William H. Riker, Adam Przeworski, and Richard Posner are just a few modern minimalists.

However, proponents of direct democracy argue that voters should have a say in legislation without going via intermediaries like elected officials. Many different arguments are made by those who want direct democracy. Participation in politics may be beneficial because it brings people together, educates them, and helps keep strong elites in check. Moreover, until people have a say in shaping laws and policies, they will not govern themselves.

Governments are most likely to enact policies and legislation that are centrist, with around half the population supporting more liberal policies and almost the same number supporting more conservative ones. This is a bad result since it shows that unaccountable political leaders are acting in their own self-interest to win over voters. To operate as a go-between for the people and the state, ideological political parties are essential, according to Anthony Downs. In his 1957 book, An Economic Theory of Democracy, Downs outlined this perspective.

The premise of deliberative democracy is that citizens should be able to weigh in on public policy decisions. Deliberative democracy, in contrast to aggregative democracy, insists that genuine debate, and not just the tally of votes, comes before any democratic decision. Deliberation that is genuine occurs when those involved in making decisions are not influenced by the imbalance of political power that exists in our society.

The foundation of radical democracy is the recognition of structural inequalities in power. By fostering debate and opposition in democratic decision-making, democracy exposes and challenges these power dynamics.

When a country's political system undergoes a period of transition from an authoritarian to a democratic one, this is known as a democratic transition (or vice versa).

The decline of democracy, also known as autocratization, Transitioning to a more democratic political system, with concrete political reforms in the direction of democracy, is what is meant by democratization or democratisation..

Quantitative and comparative analyses of the degree to which democracy exists are what democracy indices are all about. Because of their qualitative character, democracy indicators lend themselves to statistical methods for investigating the factors that underlie regime shifts.

The breadth of core democratic institutions, the competitiveness and inclusiveness of polyarchy, freedom of expression, various aspects of governance, democratic norm transgressions, co-option of opposition, electoral system manipulation, electoral fraud, and popular support for anti-democratic alternatives are all measured in different ways by various democracy indices.

Limitations exist in quantifying and econometrically measuring the potential effects of democracy or its relationship with other phenomena—whether inequality, poverty, education, etc., or accountability—because democracy is an overarching concept that includes the functioning of diverse institutions that are not easy to measure. Some indices of democracy include additional factors, such as judicial independence or the quality of the election system, while others do not.

There are many different conceptualizations and implementations of democracy. It's true that certain forms of democracy provide their inhabitants greater freedom and representation than others.

There is no necessary relationship between the following varieties of democracy: specifics of many different things that are completely autonomous and may coexist in the same system have been specified.

There are many other kinds of democracies, but the two most fundamental kinds have to do with how the collective body of all eligible individuals carries out its will. The term direct democracy refers to a system of government in which all eligible individuals have a say in political decision making by, for instance, casting a vote on proposed policy changes. Representative democracies describe the system through which political power is exerted indirectly via elected representatives rather than directly by the whole body of eligible