These conventional views were first challenged by a relatively small group of Enlightenment intellectuals who believed that human affairs should be guided by reason and principles of liberty and equality.
They argued that all people are created equal, and therefore political authority cannot be justified on the basis of so-called noble blood, a supposed privileged connection to God, or any other characteristic alleged to make one person superior to others.
They further argued that governments exist to serve the people, not vice versa, and that laws should apply to those who govern as well as to the governed, a concept known as the rule of law.
Near the end of the 18 th century, these ideas inspired the American Revolution and the French Revolution, the pair of which gave birth to the ideology of liberalism and instituted forms of government that attempted to apply the principles of Enlightenment philosophy in practice. The dominions of the British Empire became laboratories for liberal democracy from the mid th century onward. In Canada, responsible government began in the s and in Australia and New Zealand parliamentary government elected by male suffrage and secret ballot was established from the s and female suffrage achieved from the s.
Liberalism ceased to be a fringe opinion and joined the political mainstream. The political spectrum changed; traditional monarchy became more and more a fringe view and liberal democracy became more and more mainstream.
By the end of the 19 th century, liberal democracy was no longer only a liberal idea, but an idea supported by many different ideologies. After World War I and especially after World War II, liberal democracy achieved a dominant position among theories of government and is now endorsed by the vast majority of the political spectrum. The United States is a federal constitutional republic in which the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.
Diagram the basic form of the United States government, focusing on its branches and electoral system. The United States is a federal constitutional republic in which the President of the United States the head of state and government , Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.
The executive branch is headed by the President and is independent of the legislature. Legislative power is vested in the two chambers of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The judicial branch, composed of the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, exercises judicial power. This includes resolving disputes between the executive and legislative branches.
In the United States, suffrage is nearly universal for citizens 18 years of age and older. All states and the District of Columbia contribute to the electoral vote for president. Unlike the United Kingdom and other similar parliamentary systems that directly choose a particular political party, Americans vote for a specific candidate. Within the federal government, officials are elected at the federal national , state and local levels. On a national level, the President is elected indirectly by the people through an Electoral College.
People vote for electors who pledge, in turn, to cast their electoral votes for a particular candidate. In modern times, the electors virtually always vote with the popular vote of their state.
All members of Congress and offices at the state and local levels are directly elected. The modern political party system in the United States is a two-party system dominated by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. These two parties have won every United States presidential election since , and have controlled the United States Congress since at least Periodically, several other third parties achieve relatively minor representation at the national and state levels.
Among the two major parties, the Democratic Party generally positions itself as left-of-center in American politics and supports a liberal platform, while the Republican Party generally positions itself as right-of-center and supports a conservative platform. Special interest groups advocate the social, economic, and political causes of their specific constituencies. Business organizations will favor low corporate taxes and restrictions of the right to strike, whereas labor unions will support minimum wage legislation and protection for collective bargaining.
Other private interest groups, such as churches and ethnic groups, are more concerned about broader policy issues that can impact their organizations or their beliefs. The amount of money spent by these special interests continues to grow, as campaigns become increasingly expensive. Many Americans have the feeling that these wealthy interests, whether corporations, unions, or specially organized campaign finance organizations called Political Action Committees PACs , are so powerful that ordinary citizens can do little to counteract their influence.
In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behavior, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed. Women responded to these issues, but in terms of general voting, they shared the same outlook and the same voting behavior as men. Supporters believed it would guarantee women equal treatment. But critics feared it might deny women the right be financially supported by their husbands. The amendment died in because not enough states had ratified it.
ERAs have been introduced in subsequent sessions of Congress, but they have never been ratified. While women are generally as likely to vote in developed countries, they are underrepresented in political positions.
Women make up a very small percentage of elected officials, both at local and national levels. In the U. Voting Women : Women standing in line to vote in Bangladesh. Theories of democracy advocate different degrees of participation by the people with the government.
Democracy, or rule by the people, is an egalitarian form of government in which all the citizens of a nation determine public policy, the laws, and the actions of their state together. Democracy requires that all citizens have an equal opportunity to express their opinion. In practice, democracy is the extent to which a given system approximates this ideal, and a given political system is referred to as a democracy if it allows a certain approximation to ideal democracy. Although no country has ever granted all its citizens the right to vote, most countries today hold regular elections based on egalitarian principles, at least in theory.
The most common system that is deemed democratic in the modern world is parliamentary democracy, in which the voting public takes part in elections and chooses politicians to represent them in a legislative assembly. Elements of direct democracy exist on a local level and, in exceptions, on the national level in many countries, though these systems coexist with representative assemblies. He also thought that there was a good and a bad variant of each system he considered democracy to be the degenerate counterpart to polity.
While their opinions vary, a consensus of political scientists agree that most democracies are based on six foundational elements:. Throughout history, more types of democracy have been identified than there are countries in the world.
According to social and political philosopher Jean-Paul Gagnon, more than 2, adjectives have been used to describe democracy. While many scholars refer to direct and representative as the most common of these, several other types of democracies can be found around the world today.
While direct democracy is unique, most other recognized types of democracy are variants of representative democracy. These various types of democracy are generally descriptive of the particular values emphasized by the representative democracies that employ them.
In a direct democracy, all laws and public policy decisions are made directly by a majority vote of the people, rather than by the votes of their elected representatives. Functionally possible only in small states, Switzerland is the only example of a direct democracy applied on a national level today.
While Switzerland is no longer a true direct democracy, any law passed by the popularly elected national parliament can be vetoed by a direct vote of the public. Citizens can also change the constitution through direct votes on amendments.
In the United States, examples of direct democracy can be found in state-level recall elections and lawmaking ballot initiatives. Also called indirect democracy, representative democracy is a system of government in which all eligible citizens elect officials to pass laws and formulate public policy on their behalf. These elected officials are expected to represent the needs and viewpoints of the people in deciding the best course of action for the nation, state, or other jurisdiction as a whole.
In a participatory democracy, the people vote directly on policy while their elected representatives are responsible for implementing those policies. Participatory democracies rely on the citizens in setting the direction of the state and the operation of its political systems. While the two forms of government share similar ideals, participatory democracies tend to encourage a higher, more direct form of citizen participation than traditional representative democracies.
While there are no countries specifically classified as participatory democracies, most representative democracies employ citizen participation as a tool for social and political reform. Liberal democracy is loosely defined as a form of representative democracy that emphasizes the principles of classical liberalism —an ideology advocating the protection of individual civil liberties and economic freedom by limiting the power of the government.
Liberal democracies employ a constitution, either statutorily codified, as in the United States or uncodified, as in the United Kingdom, to define the powers of the government, provide for a separation of those powers, and enshrine the social contract. Liberal democracies may take the form of a constitutional republic , like the United States, or a constitutional monarchy , such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.
In a parliamentary democracy, the people directly elect representatives to a legislative parliament. Similar to the U. Congress , the parliament directly represents the people in making necessary laws and policy decisions for the country. In parliamentary democracies such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan, the head of government is a prime minister, who is first elected to parliament by the people, then elected prime minister by a vote of the parliament.
However, the prime minister remains a member of the parliament and thus plays an active role in the legislative process of creating and passing laws. Parliamentary democracies are typically a feature of a constitutional monarch, a system of government in which the head of state is a queen or king whose power is limited by a constitution.
In a pluralist democracy, no single group dominates politics. Instead, organized groups within the people compete to influence public policy. In political science, the term pluralism expresses the ideology that influence should be spread among different interest groups, rather than held by a single elite group as in an aristocracy.
Not all democracies are the same. A myriad of democratic sub-types exist, including constitutional democracy, green democracy, demarchy, illiberal democracy, industrial democracy, and more.
In fact, one scholar identified more than different variations of democracy. What's more, the majority of these classifications overlap with one another. For example, the United States is a representative democracy because most decisions are made not by the people themselves, but by representatives who act on the people's behalf.
It is also an electoral democracy because those representatives are selected in elections, a presidential democracy because the head of government is also the head of state and leader of the executive branch, and a constitutional democracy because its fundamental principles and laws are guided by a constitution which some argue makes the U. There are multiple theories about what specific elements are required for a government to qualify as a democracy.
For example, in preparing its annual Democracy Index , the Economist Intelligence Unit scores each of the world's countries in five distinct categories—which we can examine to determine several of the Economist's democratic wish list:. Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond has a similar list , maintaining that any democracy must include four key elements:. Finally, the Museum of Australian Democracy also teaches that all liberal democracies are based upon four main principles:.
The index measures the state of democracy in of the world's countries by tracking 60 indicators in five different categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties. The indicators are combined to give each category a rating on a 0 to 10 scale, and the five category scores are averaged to determine the overall index score. Countries with a total Democracy Index score between 8.
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