What Is Democracy?

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What is Democracy? “Democracy is a political system of mass participation, competitive elections, and human and civil rights”. Breaking down democracy comes from the Greek word demokratia; demo meaning “the people” and kratia meaning “rule”. Some countries try to trick their citizens into thinking that the way they are ruling is a democratic way however does not have any of the components of what a “true” democracy is. Democracy is very balanced and very complex. It ensures human and civil rights, limits power, rules of law and carries out the thoughts of the citizens. Democracy is made of many different components and has two different types that vary in every nation or country. The different components include popular accountability of …show more content…

Direct democracy is when citizens are directly participating in politics and decisions on the government. Citizens have club meetings every so often to get together all of their thoughts, opinions and ideas on how to run the country. Everyone has an equal opportunity to propose ideas, topics of discussion, rules, and even laws and they vote on the decisions. The majority wins the votes and gets passed however the other people do have to kindly deal with it until the next meeting. Direct democracy sounds like a well idea, however with the size of countries today it can be hard to get all the citizens to actually come together and discuss politics. Some people might not want to participate and just vote on an issue which could be that one vote to help or hurt a country. Another disadvantage would be that the bigger the country the more the different opinions that will arise which could cause conflict and get the process of passing new ideas and policies nowhere. Representative democracy instead of coming together individually they have people that “represent” the people. Citizens’ vote for the best fitting candidate of who they believe represents the country better. The country has different components which keeps the government a democracy. No one person has the inherited “right” to run a country in a democracy he/she must go through the process just like everyone else. When you

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