What IS Democracy?

[Tom Paine]

Political theory time, I know...

This is both a matter of present existence, and ideal existence... what is democracy and what should it in fact be?

[Gaidin]

Wow that's a can of worms. Population level of said democracy?

[Tom Paine]

Gaidin, its a political theory question, not a real-world or theoretical-nation one... whatever you want it to be to optimise your answer, but it'd be nice if you specified...

[Farnan]

Democracy is the ability to peacefully overthrow you're government at regular intervals.

[Gaidin]

Well, with a low population a pure democracy is quite doable and peaceful but when you get into higher populations pure democracy devolves into mud slinging mob rule....

Two definitions for pure democracy, both for two different population ranges, and for being improvised, quite correct.

[Erik]

Democracy is simply "The people gets to choose the policy" be it directly (referendum) or indirectly (representatives).

Indirect democracy isn't less democratic than direct democracy, it's just different.
In a way indirect democracy is actually more democratic because it allows people to voice their opinion on every matter, not just the few they have enough time for. (notice that forming a good opinion on a proposal takes time, and even members of parliament who do it as a full time job don't have enough time to fully study every proposal).

[Cluny the Scourge]

Democracy is the structure of ideas used to justify the amoral and the parasitic wealthy elite in gorging themselves on more wealth while buying and selling the underclasses like so many cattle.

[Crimson Scythe]

As Erik said, it's the "let the people choose" method of government, in theory. In practice, however, it's the government of the lowest common denominator, which makes up the bulk of the electorate in today's democracies.

[ErikinWest]

Democracy is mob rule.

Erik

[Sit down, fat dog]

Democracy is rule by the people.

[the Black Prince]

... a dream

[MaximiIian]

Democracy, from Greek, meaning "Rule by the People". In practice, it can cover a very broad definition of political structures, much like "commonwealth" and "republic".

[Bwaho]

Democracy works better in smaller communities. In larger countries the idea of democracy seems to fade away, only to be replaced by the idea of efficiency. Now I'm not saying which is better than the other, I'm just saying how it is.

Democracy is the ability to peacefully overthrow you're government at regular intervals.

by voting republican one year and democrats the other?

[LSJ]

I don't know what real democracy is defined as, but my ideal system of democracy is

"A system where every human has equal rights regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, etc, and when one becomes and adult* one can vote. Every voter has an equal vote and can speak his/her mind. Anyone can be elected, so long as they get a majority of the support. A few people are elected as the leaders. Leaders are more like organizers/planners for the community, and can only make laws with the approval of attendees of the meetings (which anyone can attend - if you want your say you have to go or live with the decisions)"

Of course, that would only work with small communities like a village.
For larger countries, functional democracy is a distant dream that will never be attained.

Democracy is "majority rules". So what if the majority rules? The minority still loses and never get what they want, so long as the majority is opposed to it. There is always a section of unhappy people, and that is quite dysfunctional, as THOSE people are not ruling.

[The Walrus]

Democracy is a veil of oligarchy. The people think they can choose their leaders to rule. They don't really. Only rich people get elected to office because they have the money to campaign. It is a "democracy" because people can vote for rich people. BUT, it is semi-useless when people vote straight one way because that was how "they are raised." They no nothing about amendments etc. They vote on looks and other stupid things. How is voting a rich dude into office better then automatically having him in office because either way he will be in office because of ignorant voters and money? All campaigners use their money to lie and make the other side look bad. I don't see any normal middle-class people having the money to run commercials that are lies making the other side look bad. Therefore, they loose. So overall, democracy is a nice way of an oligarchy

Note: This is on the democracy in America as I live there

[Carach]

Democracy is mob rule (no matter how stupid they are).

If your in a country where the majority are stupid but all vote..your in trouble.

Selective democracy is better, it was far more balance during the late 1800's (in Britain at least), where the more likely 'in the know' peeps had by this time gained the vote, while the ones outside of the loop were still without the vote.

Personally i think today people that dont vote should have their right to vote removed, and before any of that have a test on politics (not too hard) before being given the vote.

Although the latter is extremely exploitable, and open to manipulation by ruling government to use as propaganda/indoctrination.

Democracy these days means weakness/inefficiency and indecision in my eyes.

[Mythos]

I was thinking about a direct democracy system where the people can vote on the internet on every matter concerning the state. A body will prepare the subjects to be voted. You would have a period of say 2 months to vote on a specific subject.

Would it work? Obviously there are technical and security problems but they can be overcome. But can you imagine the kind of breakthrough such a system would be?

[Bwaho]

I was thinking about a direct democracy system where the people can vote on the internet on every matter concerning the state. A body will prepare the subjects to be voted. You would have a period of say 2 months to vote on a specific subject

Would it work?

The problems are not technical... it's the simple fact that it takes time to form an oppinion on a certain subject. Imagine a person with 3 jobs who is working around the clock, is this person supposed to go home from work and start reading about thousands of proposals and then make up his mind about them?

even the representatives we have know (whose sole job is political questions) need a lot of time to work through all the subjects.

[Erik]

I was thinking about a direct democracy system where the people can vote on the internet on every matter concerning the state. A body will prepare the subjects to be voted. You would have a period of say 2 months to vote on a specific subject.

Would it work? Obviously there are technical and security problems but they can be overcome. But can you imagine the kind of breakthrough such a system would be?

There will be hundreds of subject to vote for each week.
Can you imagine how much of your time this will take?

Even if you just do it on a local scale (say: a village of several thousand people).
You will have to vote about every traffic sign, festival decoration, garbage collectors fees, and thousands of other issues you don't find even the slightest interesting.

Sure you could simply not vote on the subjects you don't care about.
But then you will loose a lot of tax money to projects only a few people find important, or nothing will get done because people will vote no by default to prevent this tax leak.

The beauty of representative democracy is that you get to appoint somebody else (or actually a whole team) to do all the work for you.
And if there are enough parties to choose between the end result will be very close to what you would get if everybody voted directly.

[MaximiIian]

I was thinking about a direct democracy system

The closest thing to a current functional direct democracy would probably be Switzerland.
But that only works because of the virtual lack of poverty, the low crime rates, the congenial attitude of its citizenry, the high average intelligence, and the fact that its a relatively small nation. In a larger country, a direct democracy would probably not work.