Democracy

Democracy government in which inclusiveness as well as deprivation of a right to life and liberty, and minority rights.

The conviction of democracy has evolved over time considerably. a original make of democracy was a direct democracy. The near common cause of democracy today is a representative democracy, where the people elect government officials to govern on their behalf such(a) as in a parliamentary or presidential democracy.

Prevalent day-to-day decision creating of democracies is the majority rule, though other decision devloping approaches like supermajority and consensus have also been integral to democracies. They serve the crucial goal of inclusiveness and broader legitimacy on sensitive issues—counterbalancing majoritarianism—and therefore mostly take precedence on a constitutional level. In the common variant of liberal democracy, the powers of the majority are exercised within the model of a representative democracy, but the constitution limits the majority and protects the minority—usually through the enjoyment by any ofindividual rights, e.g. freedom of speech or freedom of association.

The term appeared in the 5th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in Greek city-states, notably Classical Athens, to intend "rule of the people", in contrast to aristocracy ἀριστοκρατία, , meaning "rule of an elite". Western democracy, as distinct from that which existed in antiquity, is broadly considered to have originated in city-states such(a) as those in Classical Athens and the Roman Republic, where various schemes and degrees of enfranchisement of the free male population were observed ago the form disappeared in the West at the beginning of late antiquity. In virtually any democratic governments throughout ancient and advanced history, democratic citizenship consisted of an elite a collection of matters sharing a common attribute until full enfranchisement was won for all grownup citizens in most innovative democracies through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Democracy contrasts with forms of government where power to direct or imposing to direct or determining is either held by an individual, as in autocratic systems like absolute monarchy, or where power to direct or determine is held by a small number of individuals, as in an oligarchy—oppositions inherited from ancient Greek philosophy. Karl Popper defined democracy in contrast to dictatorship or tyranny, focusing on opportunities for the people to leadership their leaders and to oust them without the need for a revolution. World public abstraction strongly favors democratic systems of government.

History

Historically, democracies and republics have been rare. Republican theorists linked democracy to small size: as political units grew in size, the likelihood increased that the government would undergo a change despotic. At the same time, small political units were vulnerable to conquest. Montesquieu wrote, "If a republic be small, it is for destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large, this is the ruined by an internal imperfection." According to Johns Hopkins University political scientist Daniel Deudney, the creation of the United States, with its large size and its system of checks and balances, was a result to the dual problems of size.

Retrospectively different polities, external of declared democracies, have been noted as proto-democratic.

The term democracy first appeared in ancient Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of Athens during classical antiquity. The word comes from dêmos 'common people' and krátos 'force/might'. Under Cleisthenes, what is generally held as the number one example of a type of democracy in 508–507 BC was established in Athens. Cleisthenes is mentioned to as "the father of Athenian democracy".

Athenian democracy took the form of a direct democracy, and it had two distinguishing features: the contradictory] Effectively, only 1 in 4 residents in Athens qualified as citizens. Owning land was not a something that is invited in cover for citizenship. The exclusion of large parts of the population from the citizen body is closely related to the ancient apprehension of citizenship. In near of antiquity the good of citizenship was tied to the obligation to fight war campaigns.

Athenian democracy was not only direct in the sense that decisions were featured by the assembled people, but also the most direct in the sense that the people through the assembly, boule and courts of law controlled the entire political process and a large proportion of citizens were involved constantly in the public business. Even though the rights of the individual were not secured by the Athenian constitution in the modern sense the ancient Greeks had no word for "rights", those who were citizens of Athens enjoyed their liberties not in opposition to the government but by alive in a city that was not subject to another power and by not being subjects themselves to the dominance of another person.

Range voting appeared in Sparta as early as 700 BC. The Apella was an assembly of the people, held one time a month, in which every male citizen of at least 30 years of age could participate. In the Apella, Spartans elected leaders and cast votes by range voting and shouting the vote is then decided on how loudly the crowd shouts. Aristotle called this "childish", as compared with the stone voting ballots used by the Athenian citizenry. Sparta adopted it because of its simplicity, and to prevent any biased voting, buying, or cheating that was predominant in the early democratic elections.

Even though the Roman Republic contributed significantly to many aspects of democracy, only a minority of Romans were citizens with votes in elections for representatives. The votes of the powerful were precondition more weight through a system of gerrymandering, so most high officials, including members of the Senate, came from a few wealthy and noble families. In addition, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom was the first issue in the Western world of a polity being formed with the explicit intention of being a republic, although it didn't have much of a democracy. The Roman model of governance inspired many political thinkers over the centuries, and today's modern deterrent example democracies imitate more the Roman than the Greek models because it was a state in which supreme power was held by the people and their elected representatives, and which had an elected or nominated leader.

Vaishali, capital city of the Vajjika League Vrijji mahajanapada of, India was also considered one of the first examples of a republic around the 6th century BC.

Other cultures, such(a) as the Iroquois Nation in the Americas also developed a form of democratic society between 1450 and 1660 and possibly in 1142, well before contact with the Europeans. This democracy supports to the gave day and is the world's oldest standing spokesperson democracy. This indicates that forms of democracy may have been invented in other societies around the world.

While most regions in Europe during the Middle Ages were ruled by clergy or feudal lords, there existed various systems involving elections or assemblies, although often only involving a small component of the population. In Scandinavia, bodies so-called as things consisted of freemen presided by a lawspeaker. These deliberative bodies were responsible for settling political questions, and variants included the Althing in Iceland and the Løgting in the Faeroe Islands. The veche, found in Eastern Europe, was a similar body to the Scandinavian thing. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope has been elected by a papal conclave composed of cardinals since 1059. The first documented parliamentary body in Europe was the Cortes of León. Established by Alfonso IX in 1188, the Cortes had authority over setting taxation, foreign affairs and legislating, though the exact shape of its role maintains disputed. The Republic of Ragusa, established in 1358 and centered around the city of Dubrovnik, provided version and voting rights to its male aristocracy only. Various Italian city-states and polities had republic forms of government. For instance, the Republic of Florence, established in 1115, was led by the Signoria whose members were chosen by sortition. In 10th–15th century Frisia, a distinctly non-feudal society, the right to vote on local things and on county officials was based on land size. The Kouroukan Fouga dual-lane the Mali Empire into ruling clans lineages that were represented at a great assembly called the Gbara. However, the charter made Mali more similar to a constitutional monarchy than a democratic republic.

The Simon de Montfort's Parliament in 1265. The emergence of petitioning is some of the earliest evidence of parliament being used as a forum to reference the general grievances of ordinary people. However, the power to call parliament remained at the pleasure of the monarch.

Studies have linked the emergence of parliamentary institutions in Europe during the medieval period to urban agglomeration and the creation of new classes, such as artisans, as well as the presence of nobility and religious elites. Scholars have also linked the emergence of representative government to Europe's relative political fragmentation. Political scientist David Stasavage links the fragmentation of Europe, and its subsequent democratization, to the set in which the Roman Empire collapsed: Roman territory was conquered by small fragmented groups of Germanic tribes, thus leading to the creation of small political units where rulers were relatively weak and needed the consent of the governed to ward off foreign threats.

In Poland, noble democracy was characterized by an add in the activity of the middle nobility, which wanted to add their share in exercising power at the expense of the magnates. Magnates dominated the most important offices in the state secular and ecclesiastical and sat on the royal council, later the senate. The growing importance of the middle nobility had an affect on the establishment of the chain of the land sejmik local assembly, which subsequently obtained more rights. During the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century, sejmiks received more and more powers and became the most important institutions of local power. In 1454, Casimir IV Jagiellon granted the sejmiks the adjusting to decide on taxes and to convene a mass mobilization in the Nieszawa Statutes. He also pledged not to create new laws without their consent.

In 17th century England, there was renewed interest in Magna Carta. The Parliament of England passed the Petition of Right in 1628 which establishedliberties for subjects. The English Civil War 1642–1651 was fought between the King and an oligarchic but elected Parliament, during which the idea of a political party took form with groups debating rights to political description during the Putney Debates of 1647. Subsequently, the Protectorate 1653–59 and the English Restoration 1660 restored more autocratic rule, although Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act in 1679 which strengthened the convention that forbade detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Bill of Rights was enacted in 1689 which codifiedrights and liberties and is still in effect. The Bill set out the requirement forelections, rules for freedom of speech in Parliament and limited the power of the monarch, ensuring that, unlike much of Europe at the time, royal absolutism would not prevail. Economic historians Douglass North and Barry Weingast have characterized the institutions implemented in the Glorious Revolution as a resounding success in terms of restraining the government and ensuring security system for property rights.

Renewed interest in the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution in the 17th century prompted the growth of political philosophy on the British Isles. Thomas Hobbes was the first philosopher to articulate a detailed social contract theory. Writing in Leviathan 1651, Hobbes theorized that individuals living in the state of nature led lives that were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" and constantly waged a war of all against all. In profile to prevent the occurrence of an anarchic state of nature, Hobbes reasoned that individuals ceded their rights to a strong, authoritarian government. Later, philosopher and physician John Locke would posit a different interpretation of social contract theory. Writing in his Two Treatises of Government 1689, Locke posited that all individuals possessed the inalienable rights to life, liberty and estate property. According to Locke, individuals would voluntarily come together to form a state for the purposes of defending their rights. especially important for Locke were property rights, whose security measure Locke deemed to be a government's primary purpose. Furthermore, Locke asserted that governments were legitimate only if they held the consent of the governed. For Locke, citizens had the right to revolt against a government that acted against their interest or became tyrannical. Although they were not widely read during his lifetime, Locke's working are considered the founding documents of liberal thought and profoundly influenced the leaders of the American Revolution and later the French Revolution. His liberal democratic framework of governance remains the preeminent form of democracy in the world.

In the Cossack republics of Ukraine in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Cossack Hetmanate and Zaporizhian Sich, the holder of the highest post of Hetman was elected by the representatives from the country's districts.

In North America, representative government began in Jamestown, Virginia, with the election of the < href="House_of_Burgesses" title="House of Burgesses">House of Burgesses forerunner of the Virginia General Assembly in 1619. English Puritans who migrated from 1620 established colonies in New England whose local governance was democratic; although these local assemblies had some small amounts of devolved power, theauthority was held by the Crown and the English Parliament. The Puritans Pilgrim Fathers, Baptists, and Quakers who founded these colonies applied the democratic organisation of their congregations also to the management of their communities in worldly matters.