Understanding of two Political Systems: Deliberative Democracy and Representative Government

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This essay aims to provide a better understanding of two political systems namely deliberative democracy and representative government; it presents the advantages and disadvantages of both, the types of governance. Deliberative democracy as address by Guttman and Dennis (2004) is based on the notion that citizens and their representatives come to a common place to discuss matters such as finance budgets and come to a mutual agreement of what needs to have more attention. Representative government, on the other hand, is defined as a form of government freely elected by the people to make significant decision of the behalf of their electorate (McLean & McMillan 2009). Both these models of governance are active around the world though representative government is a more widely practiced system.

Deliberative democracy ensures that there is direct participation of the public in the creation of public policy decisions (Holmes 2004). The advantage of this style of democracy is the power for individuals to educate themselves in the process of public deliberation (Cooke 2000). The power of citizens educating themselves on policies is good because each strata of the public understands the policy, thus making it easier to implement (Mill 1972). The idea of self-education is further asserted by Mill as it improves the decision making power of the public (Mill 1861). As discussed by Clarke and Foweraker (2001), deliberative democracy finds itself justified as it sensitive to public opinion of the matters. Though Clarke and Foweraker (2001) had mentioned that the model of deliberative democracy would slow down decision-making, it can help reduce the huge cost associated with blunders made by a certain few in the representative government m...

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