AMERICAN POLITICS

American Politics

American Politics

Introduction

This research examines the various ways in which democracy has been conceptualized: in other words, models of democracy. Although the term democracy has often been used in the literature, there has not always been consensus as to its meaning. The literal meaning of democracy comes from a combination of two Greek words, demos (people) and kratos, and at its core, “Democracy is a form of government in which the people rule”. The term originated in Athens and was a part of the standard classification of “regime forms that distinguished rule by one (monarchy), several (aristocracy), and the many (democracy)”.

However, beyond the literal meaning of democracy, there has been considerable debate over the criteria that distinguish democracies from nondemocracies. A relatively narrow definition of democracy has been offered by Joseph Schumpeter (1950), who viewed democracy as simply a method for choosing political leadership: “The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote”.

Participatory Democracy and Direct Democracy

Although the ancients were suspicious of mob rule, the idea of participatory democracy, or direct democracy, has its roots with them. Participatory democracy, or direct democracy, can be traced back to Athens, Greece (460 BCE), where the direct rule of government was done by the people (i.e., demokratia) and not via an elected group of representatives. The Athenian city-state adopted this form of the political system to provide its citizens an opportunity to directly participate in the state's decision-making process. Through an assembly, citizens could directly decide and vote on “public policies that [would] govern their behavior”. Although the Athenian democratic form of government lacked the right of women and of slaves to vote, it still provided all adult male citizens with an increase in control over their “own lives by allowing them to directly determine how public power [was] exercised”. As such, since there were no “representatives in the Greek system of government,” sovereignty over the laws lay primarily with male citizens, who “ruled themselves directly” (Bailey, 2003).

Currently, Switzerland and some New England town meetings closely resemble participatory democracy or direct democracy. Switzerland has 23 states, known as cantons, three of which are divided and known as half cantons. These half cantons function as full cantons by having their own constitution and legislative, executive, and judiciary branches. However, two of the half cantons perform functions that resemble the Athenian city-state political system: All adult citizens participate in the decision making process, as in participatory democracy. The rest of the Swiss cantons usees a system of representatives elected directly by citizens and who act on behalf of those citizens, constituting a republic, or a representative democracy. Most of the countries in the world today resembles a republic, or a representative democracy (Behrouzi, 2005).

Some argue that although participatory or direct democracy allows citizens to rule themselves directly, the model may complicate and slow down the overall decision-making ...