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Representative democracy can be organized in different ways including both parliamentary and presidential systems of government. Elected representatives typically form a legislature (such as a parliament or congress), which may be composed of a single chamber (unicameral), two chambers (bicameral), or more than two chambers (multicameral).
Demarchy, in theory, could overcome some of the functional problems of conventional representative democracy, which is widely subject to manipulation by special interests and a division between professional policymakers (politicians and lobbyists) vs. a largely passive, uninvolved and often uninformed electorate.
This meaning was widely adopted early in the history of the United States, including in Noah Webster's dictionary of 1828. [76] It was a novel meaning to the term; representative democracy was not an idea mentioned by Machiavelli and did not exist in the classical republics. [77]
A representative democracy is an indirect democracy where sovereignty is held by the people's representatives. A liberal democracy is a representative democracy with rule of law, protection for individual liberties and rights, and limitations on the power of the elected representatives.
In addition, there are a few countries which use the term "Democratic Republic" in the name and have a good record of holding free or relatively free general elections and were rated "flawed democracy" or "full democracy" in the Democracy Index, such as the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste , the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe ...
Today the term republic usually refers to representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a president, who serves for a limited term; in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are representative democracies, with an elected or appointed head of government such as a prime ...
In a parliamentary republic, the head of government is selected or nominated by the legislature and is also accountable to it. The head of state is usually called a president and (in full parliamentary republics) is separate from the head of government, serving a largely apolitical, ceremonial role. In these systems, the head of government is ...
Athenian democracy – democracy in the Greek city-state of Athens developed around the fifth century BCE, making Athens one of the first known democracies in the world, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica. It was a system of direct democracy, in which eligible citizens voted directly on legislation and ...