How is democracy today

In the s, s, and s communism seemed capable of lifting millions of people out of poverty while building vast new industries, winning wars, and delivering cutting edge science.

But towards the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had stagnated and communism seemed doomed to stifle innovation and growth. Only fifty years ago the country was in a state of near civil war during the cultural revolution. The more important question is whether other nations will strengthen or weaken their democracies in response. Historically, many thinkers argued democracy can only be detrimental to a free and just society, characterizing rule by the majority as inherently unstable, irrational, and a threat to private property.

The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were acutely aware of this perceived threat and designed the constitution and electoral college to constrain popularly elected leaders with the liberal rights guaranteed by the constitution.

Recent events have led some commentators to conclude that the system is broken. But when we question its merits and seek out its flaws, we should be acutely aware that we live in societies that permit us to criticise, and that this is in itself a crucial right. We should also question what our alternatives would be. We might imagine the landscape in an authoritarian or dictatorship state: would we expect to receive a fairer trial?

To find more balanced information on the internet? To see minority rights more protected? Would a settlement of World War Two imposed by fascist victors, rather than democracies, have created a more just and free peace? Our flagship newsletter provides a weekly round-up of content, from expert analysis and research to video and audio. It is most likely that democracy needs to be further deepened, by reinvigorating the rights and guarantees enshrined in liberal democracy, and making it more responsive and accountable however we can.

Looking at the alternatives it is fair to conclude that people living in democracies have no alternative. The importance of democracy Why is democracy important to the world and how does it help maintain a just and free society?

The sources listed below are used for our daily news digest, Democracy Today. These online newspapers, magazines, and websites provide news and commentary related to democracy and political environments around the world. AfroBarometer — A pan-African series of national public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, and society.

All Africa — Aggregated news from over news organization focused primarily on continental Africa. Americas Quarterly — award-winning publication dedicated to politics, business and culture in the Americas. The Atlantic — Covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — Analysis from global think tank providing strategic insight and innovative ideas that advance international peace.

Center for European Policy Analysis CEPA — Non-profit, non-partisan, public policy research institute with mission to promote an economically vibrant, strategically secure, and politically free Europe with close and enduring ties to the United States.

Christian Science Monitor — Independent international news organization that delivers thoughtful, global coverage. People vote to elect officials to make decisions to reflect the wishes of the people, such as the US Congress and UK Parliament.

What other systems are used? However, some countries have different systems of government: Oligarchy. While democracies give power to the many, oligarchies give power to the few. Power is often passed from one group to the next without the majority of the population voting. Some present day examples include Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. In autocracies, a single person possesses absolute power to rule over the country. Constitutional monarchy. A constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a singular person a monarch - usually a king or queen has agreed to share power with a constitutionally organised form of government.

Monarchs usually achieve their position through hereditary succession, meaning they are born into it through their family. Common examples include Britain, Belgium and Spain.

What are the benefits of democracy? These include: Protecting the interests of citizens. People get the chance to vote on the key issues affecting their country or can elect representatives to make these decisions. In the USA, the federal government allows members of each state to elect an official representative for their state to protect their interests at a higher government level. Promoting equality.

One principle of democracy is that all people are equal in the eyes of the law, and every person gets a vote. For example, Canada has a universal franchise decree in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which explicitly allows every citizen of Canada the right to vote in any Canadian election. It might be expected that Europe would anticipate America; that in the deep mine of Indo-European experience there should be worked out some of the principles of civil society as defined more clearly by modern tests.

But in that process the toiler in the mine might miss the principles, though contributing by his labor to its definition in a later state of society, organized upon such an industrial and civil basis as has been built upon in America.

The thought of More, of Milton and of Locke, of Montesquieu and of Penn, generalized upon the labor done in that mine, and grew into political systems, which, though differing from one another as their authors, agreed in placing a free man at the centre.

It was too soon to find in any political system that modern correlative, free labor. The contradiction was sophistically avoided by denying manhood to the slave. The slave was a beast of burden. It is the function of the political philosopher, in the social economy, to anticipate results. Thought outruns performance.

So Montesquieu anticipates the democracy of to-day, Hume anticipates the French Revolution, and Franklin the modern age of administration in government.

Franklin finds the theory of the state made up, and he devotes himself to the next problem, — its administration. At times, from the close of the seventeenth to the close of the eighteenth, century, the theory of the state was set forth.

It was arrived at by successive processes in the evolution of democracy. Its elements are the individual, and that aggregate of individuals which we call the community: the one, and the many, and the many includes that one.

The history of that definition is a portion of the history of the evolution of democracy. Rome evolved the idea of a legal body called a corporation; itself a fiction, but a useful legal convention. It was a legal device capable of civil application; it was a discovery in politics.

Communal and individual interests were at war in all that region north of the Roman world. Communal interests were there subordinate to individual interests. Between the Roman and the Teuton was the Celt, who adjusted himself to the military form of the Roman state and laid the foundations of feudalism.

He divided the land into counties, and rudely began that communal organization which has survived in our local and county government. It was the Celt who first applied the Roman military idea in local government. He was the first to apply the administrative principles in the modern state, and his experience, chiefly military, bred in him slight respect for the form of government in the state. A king is as dear to him by any other name; but he prefers the other name.

His idea of the administration of government is military: the citizen is first a soldier. The rude and individualistic Teuton saw in the Roman corporation not merely a legal fiction; it was a civil opportunity.

Why not view that burdensome but necessary relation between individual and individual, between one and many in the state, as a compact? Why not conceive of the state as a civil resultant of these two factors, — make the many a corporation, a state-man, and yet not diminish the rights of individuals, the states-men?

Between these legal parties a contract could be made, or could be conceived as made. By the terms of this contract civil rights should be guaranteed; the soldier should first be a citizen. Rome gave the world order without liberty. The Celt administers government with occasional sacrifice of order to license. The Teuton conserves liberty and order. Democracy in America is the resultant of Roman, Celtic, and Teutonic ideas. It is a civil composite. Its evolution is recorded in a series of political adjustments.

Political adjustment is the administration of government. It is that of which Franklin frequently speaks. It is a practical affair. It is the other half of the apple of civil discord, as the theory of the state was for ages the first half.

Democracy in America is but slightly original. It was latent in European life long before the colonization of America.

But the adjustment of local and general interests in the state has developed before our eyes in this country, and therefore it seems new and peculiarly our own. Each wrought in sincerity; but the seed was before flower or fruit. In the search after the genesis of government in America, there is no doubt that justice has not been done to English and to Dutch influence. It is time present that is hard to see.

No new theory of the state distinguishes the political philosophy of our century. Philosophically, it has been a century with a backward look. It has explored the past to as great a distance as it has anticipated the future. It has set in order the genesis of our civil institutions, and has resolved us all into heirs-at-law. We have applied the past while working in the present.

The style of the tool changes; but frost and rain and earth are, and weeds grow in spite of botany. But the apple on the tree is larger, fairer, and pleasanter to the taste than the wild apple; the flower on the stalk is the history of generations of gardeners.