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Throughout history, one can find evidence of direct democracy, in which communities make decisions through popular assembly. Today, the dominant form of democracy is representative democracy, where citizens elect government officials to govern on their behalf such as in a parliamentary or presidential democracy.
A democracy is a political system, or a system of decision-making within an institution, organization, or state, in which members have a share of power. [2] Modern democracies are characterized by two capabilities of their citizens that differentiate them fundamentally from earlier forms of government: to intervene in society and have their sovereign (e.g., their representatives) held ...
According to Tocqueville, democracy had some unfavorable consequences: the tyranny of the majority over thought, a preoccupation with material goods, and isolated individuals. [citation needed] Democracy in America was interpreted differently across national contexts. In France and the United States, Tocqueville's work was seen as liberal ...
While direct democracy was the original concept, its representative version is the most widespread today. [4] Public participation, in this context, is the inclusion of the public in the activities of a polity. It can be any process that directly engages the public in decision-making and gives consideration to its input. [5]
Reichstag delegate Goebbels had observed a few years earlier, “The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction.”
Term Description Examples Autocracy: Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power (social and political) is concentrated in the hands of one person or polity, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection).
The three waves of democracy identified by Samuel P. Huntington. A wave of democratization refers to a major surge of democracy in history. And Samuel P. Huntington identified three waves of democratization that have taken place in history. [6] The first one brought democracy to Western Europe and Northern America in the 19th century.
In political science, the waves of democracy or waves of democratization are major surges of democracy that have occurred in history. Although the term appears at least as early as 1887, [1] it was popularized by Samuel P. Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard University, in his article published in the Journal of Democracy and further expounded in his 1991 book, The Third Wave ...