Democracy
The word democracy is often interrelated with the words freedom, equality,
justice, commonwealth, republic, emancipation, egalitarianism and etc.
Numerous well known individuals had define democracy base on the kind and
or form of democracy they acquired during their days for instance Plato’s idea
about democracy, which was conceptualized around 300 BC he witnessed
democracy in ancient Athens, Ancient Athenian democracy differs from the
democracy that we are familiar with in the present day. Plato believes that the
democratic man is more concerned with his money over how he can help the
people. He does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. His life has
no order or priority. However, Plato does not believe that democracy is the
best form of government in fact he hated democracy for some reason. There
are other individuals, a political scientists as what I mentioned on the earlier
part of this paper who as well gave definition to democracy these are Alexis
De Tocqueville he calls democracy as equality he sees democracy as having
an influence on the whole course of society. Jean Jacques Rousseau asserts
that democracy is incompatible with representative institutions, a positions
that renders it all but irrelevant to nation-state. Hannah Arendt viewed
democracy as something that wants to extend the broad egalitarianism of
ordinary life into public life.
The definitions of it had been clarified considering the characteristics it
possessed. The main idea of democracy in the present day, democracy is
government in which power and civic responsibility are exercised by all adult
citizens, directly, or through their freely elected representatives. Democracy
rests upon the principles of majority rule and individual rights. It is a system of
government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a
state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the people. This form
of government was first practiced within tribes of hunter-gatherers in
prehistoric times. The transition to settled agricultural communities led to
inequalities of wealth and power between and within communities and
hierarchical nondemocratic forms of social organization. Thousands of years
later, in the 6th century BCE, a relatively democratic form of government was
introduced in the city-state of Athens by Cleisthenes (Britannica.com). I was
left amazed after learning that it was being practiced already during those
times and has continually evolve into different forms in the present time.
There are some political scientists who are against on this form of
government because it is not a perfect form of government it has flaws that
could lead to political instability. It has many issues that make it difficult for
proper representation of the people. These issues include the fact that
running for office is expensive and this often means only the wealthy reach
office. Often there is corruption within a democracy which can affect voting
outcomes and potentially lead to unfair election practices. Another point is
that democracies are so large and often inefficient, making decisions can take
a long time.
Political development gave birth to the different forms of democracy, some of
its forms are being adopted and or applied on the system of government of a
state in the different part of the world. The main types of democracy are direct
democracy, representative, presidential, parliamentary, authoritarian,
participatory, Islamic, and social democracy. Representative democracy is a
form of democracy that most of the states around the world adopted.
Examples of representative democracies include the United States, Canada,
and the United Kingdom. Interesting facts about representative democracy is
that citizens elect representatives to act on their behalf in the government to
vote on decisions in contrast to direct democracy which is difficult to apply in
a larger population.
Personally, I don’t agree that democracy is the best form of government but
I’m also not against it because it has good characteristics that fills the
necessity in government of one state. The reason why I’m in favor of it is that
is leads to political instability considering it’s frequent changes in the
government. Another thing that I consider as downfall to democracy is the
potential for voters to make decisions based on poor information or total
ignorance.
