UK's Government System

UK's Government System

There are two main types of democracy. Direct democracy and

representative democracy. Liberal and Participatory democracy are add

ons of representative democracy. Britain is distinguished as being a

representative democracy although this is not strictly the case.

Direct democracy origioninated in ancient Greece 4000bc. The word

democracy actually came from the Greek phrase ‘demos kratos’ which

means ‘rule of the people’. Direct democracy is based on the right of

every citizen over a certain age to attend political meetings, vote on

the issue being discussed at that meeting and accepting the majority

decision should such a vote lead to a law being passed which you as an

individual did not support. In ancient Greece there were 50,000

citizens who could participate. They used to meet everyday and all

vote on decisions on how to run the city. Direct democracy believes

that it is the right of everyone to hold political office if they

choose to do so. It gives all people the right to participate

regardless of religious beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, physical

well being etc. Only those who have specifically gone against society

(committed crimes) are excluded from direct democracy for their length

of their sentence. As a concept direct democracy sound a brilliant

idea but the practicalities of it are not too simple. For direct

democracy to work it requires full participation from those who are

allowed to. But in this day and age people to not have the time to

commit themselves to attend meetings. People have jobs and families

and people these days feel they do not have enough hours in the day

anyway. Also with the franchise in Britain it would be impossible to

seat all of the electorate in one place in order to attend meetings.

With today’s complex society we need trained experts to help run the

country. People don’t understand or do not have the time to commit to

understanding. Direct democracy is best suited to smaller countries

with small populations. This is where we come to representative

democracy which is the system we have in place in Britain.