Democracy - A way of

Governance…..
Swara Kulkarni-9D
 Characteristics
 No consensus exists on how to define democracy – indeed, one study found that at least 2,234
descriptions of democracy exist in the English

 language - but legal equality, political freedom and rule of law have been identified as important

characteristics.
 These principles are reflected in all eligible citizens being equal before the law and having equal
access to legislative processes.
 One theory holds that democracy requires three fundamental principles: upward control
(sovereignty residing at the lowest levels of authority), political equality, and social norms by which
individuals and institutions only consider acceptable acts that reflect the first two principles of
upward control and political equality.
  For example, in a representative democracy, every vote has equal weight, no unreasonable
restrictions can apply to anyone seeking to become a representative,  and the freedom of its eligible
citizens is secured by legitimized rights and liberties which are typically protected by a constitution.
  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 turn despotic.
 At the same time, small political units were vulnerable to conquest.
  Montesquieu wrote, "If a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large,
it is ruined by an internal imperfection.“
 According to Johns Hopkins University political scientist Daniel Dewdney, the creation of
the United States, with its large size and its system of checks and balances, was a solution
to the dual problems of size.
 It is commonly claimed that democracy and democratization were important drivers of the
expansion of primary education around the world.
 However, new evidence from historical education trends challenges this assertion.
  Theory
 Aristotle contrasted rule by the many (democracy), with rule by the few
(oligarchy/aristocracy), and with rule by a single person (tyranny or
today (autocracy/absolute monarchy). He also thought that there was a good and a bad
variant of each system (he considered democracy to be the degenerate counterpart to
democracy).
 A common view among early and renaissance Republican theorists was that democracy
could only survive in small political communities.
  Heeding the lessons of the Roman Republic's shift to monarchism as it grew larger or
smaller, these Republican theorists held that the expansion of territory and population
inevitably led to tyranny.
 Democracy was therefore highly fragile and rare historically, as it could only survive in
small political units, which due to their size were vulnerable to conquest by larger political
units.
 Measurement of democracy

 A number of civil society and academic organizations have launched projects that measure
the health of democracies across the world.
  We analyzed eight of the most widely-used indices for measuring democratic health. 
 These projects not only offer ways to benchmark the strength of a democracy, but also
insights into different ways of breaking democracy into component parts.
  The indices vary greatly in their approaches, consisting of as few as two individual
indicators and as many as 450.
 Taken together they comprise a combination of quantitative assessments like the
distribution of seats in the national legislature among political parties, and qualitative
judgements like whether safeguards against corruption are effective.
 Types of governmental democracies…
 Democracy has taken a number of forms, both in theory and practice. 
  Some varieties of democracy provide better representation and more freedom for their
citizens than others.
  However, if any democracy is not structured to prohibit the government from excluding
the people from the legislative process, or any branch of government from altering
the separation of powers in its favor, then a branch of the system can accumulate too much
power and destroy the democracy.
  Non-governmental democracy

 Aside from the public sphere, similar democratic principles and mechanisms of
voting and representation have been used to govern other kinds of groups.
 Many non-governmental organizations decide policy and leadership by voting.
 Most trade unions and cooperatives are governed by democratic elections.
  Corporations are controlled by shareholders on the principle of one share, one
vote—sometimes supplemented by workplace democracy.
  Amitai Etzionihas postulated a system that fuses elements of democracy
with sharia law, termed islamocracy.