Democracy

From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change

A democracy (a word from the Greek language, meaning rule by the people) is a form of government. In a democracy, certain people of a community choose their leaders. There are different ways to do this, but the process is usually called holding an election.

In very basic terms, there are two kinds of democracies. Those democracies where the people directly chose their leaders are called direct democracies. Because this process can be hard to do if there are many people to choose from, there is also another broad category, called indirect democracy, or representative democracy. With indirect democracy, the people elect a committee (other people), who will then chose the leaders.

Political parties are involved with politics. It may therefore look easy to pick a political party. The party that gets elected will then choose people to lead.

Very often those leaders will also decide the laws.

In a democracy, there are elections every few years where the people can vote and choose who they want to lead them, or choose the laws. The decision is made based on the number of votes. The side with the most votes wins.

Examples of democracies are India, Mexico, and the United States of America.

Since World War II, democracy has gained widespread acceptance. This map shows which coultries see themselves as democratic, as of March 2008. It shows the de jure status of democracy in the world.

██ Governments who see themselves as a democracy

██ Governments who do not see themselves as a democracy

This map shows the findings of Freedom House's survey Freedom in the World 2007. The survey reports the state of world freedom in 2006. It is one of the most widely used measures of democracy by researchers.^{[needs proving]} Note that although these measures (another is the Polity data described below) are highly correlated, this does not imply interchangeability.^[1]

██ Free.

Freedom House considers these to be liberal democracies.^[2]

██ Partly Free

██ Not Free

This is one attempted measurement of democracy called the Polity IV data series. This map shows the data presented in the polity IV data series report as of 2003. The lightest countries get a perfect score of 10, while the darkest countries (Saudi Arabia and Qatar), considered the least democratic, score -10.

Democracy Index as published in January, 2007. The lightest blue countries get a score above 9.5 out of 10 (with Sweden being the most democratic country at 9.88). The black countries score below 2 (with North Korea being the least democratic at 1.03).

[change] Kinds of Democracy

There are two kinds of democracy: Direct and Indirect (also known as Representative democracy).

In Direct Democracies, everyone has the right to make laws together. One modern example of direct democracy is a referendum, which is the name for the kind of way to pass a law where everyone in the community votes on it. Direct democracies are not used to run countries, because it is hard to get millions of people to get together all the time to make laws and other decisions.

In an Indirect, or Representative Democracy, people choose representatives to make laws for them. These people can be mayors, councilmen, Members of Parliament, or other government officials. This is a much more common kind of democracy. Large communities like cities and countries use this method, but it may not be needed for a small group.

[change] History

This kind of government was developed long ago by the ancient Greeks in the city of Athens. They had everyone who was a Citizen (Slaves, Women, Foreigners, and Children could not vote) get together in one area. The Assembly would talk about what kinds of laws they wanted and voted on them. The Council would suggest the laws. In the Assembly, the participants are only the citizens. In the Council, they would pick them by draws(lot). The participants in the Council would change every year and the amount of people in the Council is maximum 500. The Greek citizens would pick a leader by writing the name of their favorite candidate on a piece of stone or wood. The candidate with the most votes became the leader.