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DEMOCRACY, Encyclopedia Britannica
Literally,
rule by the people (from the Greek demos, "people," and
kratos, "rule"). The term has three basic senses in contemporary
usage: (1) a form of government in which the right to make political decisions
is exercised directly by the whole body of citizens acting under procedures
of majority rule, usually known as direct democracy; (2) a form of government
in which the citizens exercise the same right not in person but through
representatives chosen by and responsible to them, known as representative
democracy; and (3) a form of government, usually a representative democracy,
in which the powers of the majority are exercised within a framework of
constitutional restraints designed to guarantee all citizens the enjoyment
of certain individual or collective rights, such as freedom of speech
and religion, known as liberal, or constitutional, democracy.
Democracy
had its beginnings in certain of the city-states of ancient Greece in
which the whole citizen body formed the legislature; such a system was
possible because a city-state's population rarely exceeded 10,000 people,
and women and slaves had no political rights. Citizens were eligible for
a variety of executive and judicial offices, some of which were filled
by elections, while others were assigned by lot. There was no separation
of powers, and all officials were fully responsible to the popular assembly,
which was qualified to act in executive and judicial as well as legislative
matters. Greek democracy was a brief historical episode that had little
direct influence on the development of modern democratic practices. Two
millennia separated the fall of the Greek city-state and the rise of modern
constitutional democracy.
Modern concepts
of democratic government were shaped to a large extent by ideas and institutions
of medieval Europe, notably the concept of divine, natural, and customary
law as a restraint on the exercise of power. Highly significant was the
growing practice by European rulers of seeking approval of their policies-including
the right to levy taxes-by consulting the different "estates," or group
interests, in the realm. Gatherings of representatives of these interests
were the origin of modern parliaments and legislative assemblies. The
first document to notice such concepts and practices is Magna Carta of
England, granted by King John in 1215.
Also of fundamental
importance were the profound intellectual and social developments of the
Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions, notably the emergence
of concepts of natural rights and political equality. Two seminal documents
of this period are the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and
the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789).
Representative
legislative bodies, freely elected under (eventually) universal suffrage,
became in the 19th and 20th centuries the central
institutions of democratic governments. In many countries, democracy also
came to imply competition for office, freedom of speech and the press,
and the rule of law.
Numerous
authoritarian and totalitarian states, notably the communist nations of
the 20th century, have adopted outwardly democratic governments
that nonetheless were dominated by a single authorized party without opposition.
States with Marxist ideologies asserted that political consensus and collective
ownership of the means of production (i.e., economic democracy) were sufficient
to ensure that the will of the people would be carried out.
To access
links from this article, go to: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/2/0,5716,30382+1+29895,00.html
For a strange
but interesting argument (that is not particularly well written), see:
"Why Democracy is Wrong," http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/dem.wrong.html
Also see "Keeping American Safe from Democracy," http://www.prwatch.org/prw_issues/1998-Q3/index.html