{"id":240,"date":"2011-01-21T10:19:16","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T09:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/?p=240"},"modified":"2011-02-01T11:56:49","modified_gmt":"2011-02-01T10:56:49","slug":"what-form-of-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/?p=240&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"What form of democracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to Wikipedia, <a href=\"http:\/\/localhost\/PoliGlocal\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=50&amp;Itemid=64&amp;lang=en#cite_note-0\" target=\"_blank\">democracy<\/a> is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy).<\/p>\n<p>Principles common to all democracies are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Rule of      law: individuals, private corporations, elected representatives (member of      parlament, government officials), and public institutions are subject to      it.<\/li>\n<li>People&rsquo;s      sovereignty, equal voting rights, majority rule.<\/li>\n<li>Separation      of power to enable checks and balances between the governing bodies:      legislative, executive, and judiciary power.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Beyond these basic principles, democracy can take many forms, about as many as there are countries that are defining their form of government as being a democracy.<br \/>\nA broad categorization is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Representative      democracy: power is delegated to elected officials for a limited period of      time. No other participation is asked to the citizens than to cast their      vote on election day.<\/li>\n<li>Direct      democracy: while current affairs are managed by elected officials, all      constitutional and major legislative changes are under the citizens&rsquo;      control by way of referendum. The referendum may have a compulsory      character (i.e. in case of constitutional change) or may be facultative,      if a given number of citizen request it. Also a legislative initiative may      be proposed by a number of citizens on which all electors will have to      vote.<\/li>\n<li>Deviant      democracy: all forms of democracy that is reduced to rare elections and where      the law allows for a small group of people or one party to hold all power      and who are capable to manage the poll results in their favour. This is      called oligarchy (power held by a very small number of people), plutocracy      (power held by the rich) or bolshevism (power held by a single party).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>World deployment<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The actual form of democratic government of sovereign states is a mix of these three categories. Unsurprisingly, no deviant democracy describes itself as such.<\/p>\n<p>The most achieved direct democracy is found in Switzerland. However, many politicians around the World don&rsquo;t perceive it as being a goal to be sought after. Their preference goes rather to a representative democracy where the winner takes most or all the power for the duration of the electoral mandate.<\/p>\n<p>Still a handful of states have no claim for democracy, they are absolute monarchies, dictatorships, or theocracies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democracy is a form of government where rule of law must prevail, equal voting right are guaranteed, and separation of power is established.<br \/>\nDemocracy can take many forms&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":9,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}