DEMOCRACY

Direct and Indirect Democracy

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Direct and Indirect Democracy

Democracy is generally defined as a form of government or political structure where all the citizens of a country or a nation have a say in the decision making that affects their life. Preferably, this includes all adult sane population of the country that have an equal say in the proposal development and passage of legislation into law. The term is derived from the Greek term (demokratia) meaning rule of the people. Although, there are no universally accepted definitions of democracy, equality and freedom are defined as the two characteristics or central traits of democracy. This signifies that all the citizens of the country are equal to one another, having equal access to the legislature, and are equal before law. Majority rule is also characterized as one of the traits of democracy. However, in this case the minority may feel oppressed by the “tyranny of the majority”. Furthermore, other characteristics of democracy include freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of press, so that the people and the citizens of the country are completely informed in order to make adequate voting decision in their own best interest. There are several variations of democracy being exercised today throughout the world that differ in the relative freedom that it gives to its citizens. The most exercised form of democracy worldwide in today's modern states is representative democracy or indirect democracy. However, direct democracy is also exercised in some parts of the world (Tlili & Dawson, 2010).

Indirect democracy is the type of democracy in which the people choose the representatives that make decisions on behalf of the people of the nation. It is the most widely exercised form of democracy in the world, with countries such as USA, Canada, UK, and Germany using this form of democracy. All of these countries using this form of democracy further differ in their political structure i.e. USA is a presidential democracy, Canada being a parliamentary democracy, UK being a monarchy, and Germany being a Republic. The representatives elected by the people through popular vote work according to the wishes of the people in their constitution or jurisdiction. However, this is not always true, sometimes in the greater interest of the company they might be compelled to make an unpopular decision. Nonetheless, their decision and acts are accountable by the people. The representatives may at times be chosen to further elect or chooses a representative that represents the whole nation such as the President or other representatives. It is at times related with republicanism that has many different meaning. However, it can simply be termed as state that has an elected leader or head of state and is not a monarchy such as the Republic of Iran, and the Republic of Korea (Baum & Lake, 2003).

Direct democracy is a type of government or political structure in which the people vote directly on a policy matter or legislature, without anyone representing anyone, and where each person represents ...