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Democracy The term democracy means rule by the people. It is derived from two Greek words demos (people) and kate (rule or power). Democratic government basically has two forms: direct or pure democracy and representative or indirect democracy. The United States is a representative democracy.
In a pure democracy like those of ancient Greece and today's New England town meetings, citizens participate directly in making government decisions. In many states citizens also can make or review laws through initiatives and referendums. But for the most part, government decisions in the United States and most Western nations are made by men and women elected by the people to represent them. The American type of representative democracy features a presidential system in which a chief executive is elected independently of the national legislature. In the parliamentary systems of most European nations, the majority party or coalition of parties in the national legislature selects the chief executive, who is called a prime minister, premier, or chancellor.
Despite their significant differences, the Western democracies all meet a basic test of a democracy: their citizens have a relatively high degree of control over what their leaders do. Citizens' efforts to influence political leaders are expected, accepted, and frequently successful. This sets Western democracies in stark contrast to regimes such as the People's Republic of China, where open opposition to government policies is not permitted. Achieving an orderly succession the transfer of government authority without serious disruptions has been a long-standing problem of governance. The conventional democratic solution to this problem is routine elections, ensuring that leadership positions will become vacant at periodic intervals without beheading's or revolutions. In the United States, succession is accomplished without elections in case of death in the most powerful offices president, succeeded by the vice president, and governor, succeeded by the lieutenant governor.
Democratic procedures operate best when there is an expectation that policy changes in the short run will be modest and relatively narrow, and there will be no wholesale changes in the economic order or the system of government. Losers of an election need not fear being liquidated or deprived of their liberty without due process of law. They know that all concerned will be able to continue the struggle in the next election. There is, in other words, a societal consensus on the limits of the political struggle for democracy.
Americans, for example, operate on the assumption that politics will continue to function within the existing constitutional order. They further assume that the economic system will be primarily a free-enterprise one. But within these areas of fundamental agreement, Americans dispute narrower issues such as the level of the minimum wage, the need to take military action in various parts of the world, appropriate sentences for convicted drug dealers, and the amounts to be spent on defense, health care, and education. In a democracy, there is not only the freedom to dissent, but also the expectation that peaceful protests will be heard and considered, though not necessarily heeded, and that no reprisals will be taken against the protesters.
The freedom to dissent is accompanied by the right to join with others to seek redress of grievances by ousting officeholders through the electoral process. No single set of institutions is required for a democratic order. All Western-style democracies, however, supplement the executives, courts, and councils found in any government non-democratic as well as democratic with institutions and processes that link the ruled with the rulers, permit consultation with the governed, manage succession of authority, and reconcile competing interests within society. Although the exact nature of the institutions and processes that carry out these functions varies from one representative democracy to another, most democratic orders have the following elements in common: Political parties to contest elections, mobilize public support for or opposition to the government's policies, and handle the succession of power. An elected legislature to serve as the agent and advocate of the representatives' constituents, to symbolize consultation with the governed, and to act as a conduit for the communication of approval of and dissent from official policy.
Electoral procedures to express mass approval or disapproval of government policy, to set limits on the course of government policy, and to renew leaders' terms of office or dismiss them. Non party associations and groups (interest groups) to supplement the formal system of representation in the legislature, to communicate their members' views to government officials, and to act as a means of consultation between the governed and the governors. Additional linkages between the government and its citizens to provide supplementary means of communications through guarantees of freedom of the press, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, and protection against official reprisals for dissent against government actions. Democracy does not consist of a single, unique set of institutions that are universally applicable. The specific form that democracy takes in a country is largely determined by prevailing political, social, and economic circumstances and it is greatly influenced by historical, traditional, and cultural factors. Despite democratic systems may differ according to the extent of popular control over decision-making, however, they all share core values.
In other words, American democracy may properly be seen as a synthesis of republicanism and majoritarian democracy. The problems of sustaining a political culture that would foster democratic government, discussed in the eighteenth century under the rubric of 'virtue, ' were very much a part of the Founders' project. The results of this synthesis may be observed in the very structure of the Constitution itself. Article I comes closest to establishing rule by the demos, The People. It provides for a Congress that is based largely (though not exclusively) on the principle of one-man-one-vote. Article II creates an executive that is meant to act on the people's will though it is dearly endowed with its own prerogatives, especially in the realm of foreign policy.
Article III presents the federal judiciary, which nearly from its inception has served as a deliberate check on the will of the majority and on the executive. The Bill of Rights then adds an overlay of concerns that stand in judgment over any and all legal commitments and taken together foster a free society. The Constitution thus indicates that what Americans mean by democracy is: 1) representative, accountable government (Art. I); 2) rule of law (Art.
III); 3) some separation of power from the legislative and executive (Art. ID; 4) the fostering of a certain kind of civil society and protecting the rights of minorities (Bill of Rights). American democracy did not, of course, cease to develop and change with the ratification of the Constitution. To the contrary, in a series of what constitutional scholar Bruce Ackerman has suggestively called "constitutional moments, " it has changed and even fundamentally transformed itself over time and has indeed manifested itself as a process involving both society and the state.
At the heart of American politics is a belief in self-government the democratic faith that through argument, deliberation, and persuasion people are capable, in the long run, of discovering and promoting their common good. If such a faith sounds naive, consider the alternatives: rule by the most powerful, or rule by "experts, " insiders, or whoever is exalted enough to tell other people what to do. Americans have chosen a very different approach government by discussion and it is at the very foundation of America's political institutions and procedures. In political terms, democracy means, first and foremost, government institutions that are representative and accountable, whose occupants may be periodically removed through regularized accepted procedures; and who, when occupying office, are held accountable to the rule of law. Secondly, it means fostering a social and cultural climate that makes that kind of politics possible. Ultimately, what Americans mean by democracy and ought to be in the business of strenuously promoting, to the (admittedly limited) extent that they cancan best be captured by the term "civil democracy, " a concept that incorporates the political and sociocultural dimensions of the democratic experience.
In practical terms, it would combine the procedures of democratic governance that are sine qua non, with the fostering of those social realities freedom of expression, association, and worship, the rule of law and an open society -- that make those procedures both possible and meaningful, that make the "consent of the governed" a reality. Modern political democracy is a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives. Democracy offers a variety of competitive processes and channels for the expression of interests and values associational as well as partisan, functional as well as territorial, collective as well as individual. All are integral to its practice. This idea of democracy as a process has several implications. The most significant for policy purposes is that elections are, analytically and as a practical matter, the last step in the democratic process.
The people of the United States would do well to make clear that what they mean by democracy is civil democracy. Otherwise, people around the world will be justifiably angry with the United States when Washington doesn't recognize their countries' electoral results. The obvious consequence to this is that democracy does not mean simply holding an election. Ultimately, in the nuclear and interdependent age, the world must be free if it is to survive. In the rapidly changing conditions of the post-industrial world, only democracy can channel the sentiments of increasingly articulate and assertive masses, make for peaceful relations among disparate groups, and foster some measure of social justice.
Through civil democracy, there can take shape the theory of government, economics, and society that has in so many ways animated Western history, and for whose sake so many have given their lives, a notion of fine complexity and deep simplicity: freedom
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