2nd Term
CHARACTERISTICS
OF DEMOCRACY: The word ‘Democracy’ was derived from two Latin words ‘demo’ and
‘kratia’. Demo means people while Kratia means government. Thus, democracy
means people-government. That is, as Abraham Lincoln said, the government of
the people, by the people and for the people. It is the people that run their
own government either directly or through elected representatives.
Types of
democracy: (1) Direct democracy: this is the type of democracy in which all
qualified adult citizens meet to make political decisions. It was possible in
small city-states like Athens, but in modern states, due to the large
population, all qualified adults cannot meet in one place to make political
decisions directly. Hence, they adopt indirect democracy. (2)Indirect or representative democracy: In this type of
democracy, the power is in the hands of the elected representatives who are
elected by the people in elections. Thus, instead of all the qualified adults
to meet and decide, it is the elected representatives that meet and make
political decisions on behalf of the people.
Features
of representative democracy: (1) Franchise: the people are given the
right to vote or be voted for (2) Periodic
and regular election (3) Government-people
disparity: in representative democracy, the government is differentiable from
the people. Such a contrast is absent in direct democracy
Merits of
representative democracy : (1) It is suitable for modern states with
large population (2) Deliberation is
more organized among relatively fewer people than among innumerable crowd (3) Miscellaneous ideas of the vast
population can be streamlined (4) It
is not everybody that can articulate his point, so the representatives help the
people to speak their mind.
Demerits of representative democracy: (1) decisions
of the representatives hardly reflects the will of the people (2)Dubious representatives only
represent their selfish interest (3)there
is usually tension between the people and their elected representatives due to
dissatisfaction
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