Democracy

File:Elekcja Wola.jpg

The free election of Augustus II at Wola, outside Warsaw, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in 1697, painted by Bernardo Bellotto.

Democracy is a form of government. The origin of the term is Greek, from the words demos (people) and kratos (strength). Although many forms of government fall under this broad classification, the defining characteristic of a democracy is that the citizenry of a nation decides upon their form of government (usually by voting upon the ratification of a constitution at long intervals), and at more regular intervals, upon the persons who will make up that government.

The United States of America is an example of a democratic republic, in which the populace elects representatives, who are charged with the protection of liberties, such as the right to free assembly, free speech and equality before the law.

Although a number of societies have practiced some form of democracy, the concept as it is understood today was invented in ancient Athens, where citizens (not women or slaves) were allowed to vote in the Assembly which made the laws of the city-state. But however certain tribes and most band societies such as the bushmen organised themselves using different forms of participatory democracy or consensus democracy.

Debate over the merits of democracy

While a direct democracy in the manner of the Athenians is probably infeasible in a modern nation-state comprised of millions of citizens, there continues to be debate among conservatives as to whether representative democracy is a desirable system. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who could be considered the father of both modern democracy and totalitarianism, believed that in a democracy the government should be guided only by what he called the General Will. Other thinkers of the French Enlightenment described a republic as a system in which the law applies equally to the government and the people, a concept abbreviated in the 21st century by the phrase rule of law. Most contemporary thinkers would identify universal suffrage and the right of any citizen to argue for a change in existing law as desirable features of democracy; but there is some question as to whether the rule of law can be indefinitely sustained in a system with these features. Thomas Jefferson believed that it could so long as the people were educated, and thus devoted his post-presidency to founding the University of Virginia. Nonetheless, property continued to be a proxy for education throughout the antebellum period and Jefferson's home state of Virginia only abolished property qualifications for voting in 1851, years after any other state. Another famous American said that a republic could last until "the people find out they have the right to vote themselves funds from the public treasury," an explicit criticism of the welfare state, which most conservatives feel is an abuse of the U. S. Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause.

Democracy may have its problems; an uneducated populace, for example, is the bane of any democracy, since unless people know what they need, they can not properly elect people to serve these needs. Other problems emerge from a capricious electorate, which caused Winston Churchill to remark that, "Democracy is the worst form of government... except for all the other forms that have been tried," a quote which eloquently notes that, despite its problems, democracy almost universally provides for peace and prosperity.

Evolution of Anglo-American democracy

In the United States, the current system of representative democracy evolved as a result of six major reforms:

1. The American Revolution which severed ties with the King of Great Britain.
2. The U. S. Constitution's creation of the House of Representatives, a Federal government entity elected directly by the citizens, and retention of federalism, the right of individual states to govern themselves and make their own laws.
3. The abolition of property qualifications for white male voters. This process, which was accomplished at the state level, took between 1820 and 1851 and is also known as Jacksonian Democracy.
4. The Fifteenth Amendment, which extended the franchise to former slaves.
5. The Seventeenth Amendment, which caused Senators to be elected directly by the citizens (they retained their six-year terms).
6. The Nineteenth Amendment, which extended the franchise to women.

Of the six, the one which inspires the most opposition today is probably the Seventeenth Amendment, as the Founders explicitly intended state legislatures to choose U. S. Senators. Historically, however, the Fifteenth Amendment inspired the most opposition. Indeed, every state of the former Confederacy circumvented the Fifteenth Amendment between the end of Reconstruction and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, considered the ultimate guarantee of that Amendment. One of the principal means whereby it was circumvented was the creation of educational qualifications for voting, which the 1965 act outlawed, according to interpretations of the Supreme Court. The other principal means was the poll tax, which was outlawed in 1964 by the Twenty-Fourth Amendment.

In the United Kingdom during the same period of time, there were also six major reforms in the direction of democracy:

1. The 1832 Reform Act, which gave representation to the new industrial cities for the first time.
2. The 1867 Reform Act.
3. The 1884 Reform Act.
4. The 1911 Parliament Act, which ended the ability of the House of Lords to rein in spending by the Commons.
5. The 1918 Reform Act, which made suffrage universal among males and extended it to women 30 years of age or older.
6. The 1928 Reform Act, which equalized voting ages for male and female at 21.

It is noteworthy that it took the British 84 years to complete the process of abolishing property qualifications for voting (the first three Acts lowered the threshold incrementally) and that they only began to do so after Jacksonian Democracy emerged in the United States.

While none of these Acts has sustained a serious movement for repeal, historically the one which inspired the strongest opposition was the 1911 Parliament Act. Not surprisingly, this opposition came from the House of Lords, the last body of unelected people to retain any legislative power in the British system. Ultimately, the bill passed only after King George V promised to create an unlimited number of new peers in order to pass it.

The United States, United Kingdom, and other common law countries mostly utilize a first past the post system for elections. This limits the number of political parties and helps to stabilize the system, in contrast to democracies which use proportional representation such as Italy, Germany, France, and Israel, which have at times had over 10 parties represented in their legislatures. The latter system tends to increase the power of the political left, although the Labour Party in Britain was able to edge out the centrist Liberal Party as the chief opposition to the Conservative Party as a result of the first five of the reforms listed above, without discarding the traditional system of elections.