Recognize the origins and characteristics of democracies.
Distinguish between direct and indirect democracy.
Introduction
“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
— Winston Churchill, November 11, 1947
More than half of the governments currently in existence operate under some variation of democracy. The global trend toward democratization worldwide during the 20th century prompted some to conclude that democracy is simply the best, or most ideal, form of government. Indeed, near the end of the 20th century, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a book, The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argued humanity had reached the end of history because many states had adopted forms of liberal democracy. His book was a best-seller that energized many about the prospects of a world that, by embracing democracy, would not again suffer the likes of major world wars. More than two decades after this publication, however, and in light of events like the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of China, the backsliding toward authoritarianism in Russia, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the eventual fall of Afghanistan back to authoritarian rule, Fukuyama mostly retracted his conclusion that the world had accepted democracy as the standard. Instead, he now asserts that issues related to political identity threaten the security of geopolitical stability. The many challenges facing democracy, democratization, and democratic backsliding (discussed in Chapter 5), prompts us to take a hard look at democracy, its types, its institutions and models, and various manifestations throughout the world. Is democracy the best form of government? What are its advantages and disadvantages?
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\):Cover of Fukuyama's (1992) book, The End of History and the Last Man, which prompted discussion over whether the world had reached the end of history because so many states had adopted liberal democracy as their form of government.Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\):Cover of Fukuyama's (2018) book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, which veered away from the belief that the world had accepted liberal democracy. Instead, Fukuyama argued that political identity and the weight of historical disputes may impede the potential for long-term peace.
Origins, Definitions, and Characteristics of Democracy
There is evidence of what anthropologists designate "primitive democracy," wherein small communities have face-to-face discussions to make decisions, as far back as 2,500 years ago. However, the first formal application of democratic institutions and processes is generally attributed to Ancient Greece, with the city of Athens often credited as "the birthplace of democracy." In its simplest terms, democracy is a political regime in which the supreme power of government is vested in the people. Democracy comes from the Greek word, dēmokratiā, where “demos” means “people” and “kratos” means “power” or “rule.” Prior to the formation of legal reforms, Athens operated as an aristocracy.
An aristocracy is a form of government where power is held by nobility or those considered to be of the highest class within a society. Aristocracy proved troublesome for Athens, and the people eventually rallied under an Athenian leader named Solon (circa 640 - 560 B.C.E.). In trying to meet the demands of the people, Solon attempted to satisfy all classes of the Athenian population, rich and poor alike, to devise a form of government that satisfied all. To this end, in 594 B.C.E., Solon created legal reforms and a constitution, which provided the foundations for citizen participation in government affairs and abolished slavery of Athenian citizens. Under this construct, adult males who had completed their military training were given the right to vote, and as much as 20 percent of the population was active in making laws. Eventually, democracy in Athens failed due to both internal and external factors. Internally, there was heavy criticism that the aristocracy was still in force and able to pervert and manipulate legal outcomes to its benefit. Further, the works of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle--all of whom criticized the merits and feasibility of democracy due to a desire for political stability and a worry of the consequences from "rule of the mob"--led to the erosion of trust in democracy in Athens. Externally, and tied to the prospect of political stability, Athens faced frequent challenges to its democracy from the outside. The Peloponnesian War, the changes in leadership from King Phillip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great, and the rise of the Roman Empire all contributed to the eventual decline of democracy in Greece. After the fall of democracy in Greece, the prospect of democracy did not reemerge as a feasible, or even desired, option until the Early Modern Era in the 1600s.
Ancient manifestations of democracy differ greatly from modern conceptualizations and applications. One of the key differences is in the way power from the people is channeled, which becomes apparent when comparing a direct democracy with an indirect democracy. A direct democracy enables citizens to vote directly, or participate directly, in the formation of laws, public policy, and government decisions. In this system, citizens personally become involved in all aspects of politics; they are able to change constitutions, recommend referendums and make suggestions for laws, and mandate the activities and actions of government officials. To some extent, Athens exercised a direct democracy in that adult male citizens, who had completed their military training, could participate directly in the making of laws. It was not a perfect democracy in that not all citizens--male and female, rich and poor--could participate, but it did have a mechanism for participation from a subset of citizens. In contrast, indirect democracy, also called "representative democracy," channels the power of the people through representation, where citizens elect representatives to craft laws and make government decisions for them. In this scenario, citizens are granted suffrage, which is the right to vote in political elections. In a healthy democracy, elections occur on a regular basis, and elections are free and fair. Free elections are those in which all citizens are able to vote for the candidates of their choice. The election is free if all citizens who meet the requirements to vote (e.g., a minimum age requirement) are allowed to participate. Fair elections are those in which all votes carry equal weight, the vote totals are counted accurately, and the election results are accepted by all parties. Ideally, a free and fair election meets the following standards:
Before the Election
Eligible citizens can to register to vote
Voters are given access to reliable information about the ballot and the elections
Citizens can run for office
During the Election
All voters have access to a polling station or some method of casting their vote
Voters can vote free from intimidation
The voting process is free of fraud and tampering
After the Election
Ballots are accurately counted
Election results are publicly announced
The results of the election are accepted, respected, and honored
The integrity of elections is of paramount importance in democracies. If the election process is not free and fair, it violates the core definition of a democracy: the supreme power of government must be vested in the people.
Indirect democracy is the system that most democratic states use today. This is partly due to logistical considerations. In the United States, for example, how would every adult citizen directly participate in the making of laws? Requiring a vote for every decision would not be time efficient or logistically feasible. The choice of indirect democracy is also partly due to worries over whether voting is always the best option to determine just, equitable, or ideal outcomes. In a representative democracy, citizens outsource the power of lawmaking to those who, ideally, have more expertise in crafting legislation and who have access to a greater depth of information on policy issues.
Although most democratic states practice indirect democracy, there are sometimes mechanisms that align with direct democracy. For instance, the United States has a representative democracy, but voters in some states can put forth initiatives and referendums, also referred to as ballot propositions, for citizens to vote on directly.
Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\):A voter filling in their ballot at a polling place on Election Day in the United States. (Source: Voters in Des Moines by Phil Roeder, viaFlickr, is licensed underCC BY 2.0)
Conceptualizing and Operationalizing (Measuring) Democracy
Beyond the necessity of free and fair elections that occur on a regular basis, scholars point to additional requirements for what they term "liberal democracies." A liberal democracy not only facilities free, fair, and regular elections, but ensures protections of civil liberties (e.g., freedom of speech) and civil rights (i.e., freedom from discrimination). As political scientists Robert Dahl, Ian Shapiro, and Jose Antonio Cheibub (2003) assert, every vote in a representative democracy must carry equal weight, and the rights of citizens must be equally protected by a well-defined and clear “law of the land” (typically, a constitution).
In a similar vein, Larry Diamond (2004), a political sociologist and scholar of democracy, details that a democracy must include the following four characteristics:
A system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections
Active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life
The protection of human rights of all citizens
A rule of law in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens
Yet others disagree with such rigid definitions. Karl Popper (2002), for instance, provides a blunter definition of democracy: "I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny.'" Here, Popper emphasizes the importance of citizens having access, availability, and opportunity to control their leaders without violence, retribution, or revolution.
There are hundreds of critiques and frameworks for defining and categorizing democracies, and scholars are generally not in full agreement on what constitutes a perfect democracy. This disagreement also manifests when comparing organizations or indicators that measure levels of democracy across states. There are at least eight major attempts to quantify the existence and health of democracies worldwide: the Democracy Barometer, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, Freedom House's Freedom in the World Index, the Human Freedom Index, the Polity Project (Polity5), Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), the Polyarchy Index, and the World Governance Indicators. In Table 4.1.1, we highlight some of the indicators that three of these organizations use when assessing democracy, illustrating how organizations operationalize (measure) the concept of democracy in slightly different ways.
The different operationalizations yield different outcomes across these three organizations. For instance, as of 2018, Freedom House identifies 86 democracies and 109 non-democracies while Varieties of Democracy identifies 99 democracies and 80 non-democracies. As a reminder from Chapter 3, a non-democracy is a political regime that denies citizens meaningful institutional channels for making choices about their collective well-being.
Given that both scholars and these organizations acknowledge different conceptualizations and operationalizations of democracy, the next section will discuss how institutions vary within democracies.
