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Historical Examples

Friends and fellow citizens, we must make the world free for democracy.

We "believe in" democracy, as we have been brought up in it, or we do not.

In all lands it was hailed as the end of despotism and the triumph of democracy and freedom.

The abuses of democracy in the cities took away all the joy of success.

That at least is the only kind of unity that offers hope finally of making a world safe with democracy in it.

British Dictionary definitions for democracy Expand

government by the people or their elected representatives

a political or social unit governed ultimately by all its members

the practice or spirit of social equality

a social condition of classlessness and equality

the common people, esp as a political force

Word Origin

C16: from French dmocratie, from Late Latin dmocratia, from Greek dmokratia government by the people; see demo-, -cracy

Word Origin and History for democracy Expand

1570s, from Middle French dmocratie (14c.), from Medieval Latin democratia (13c.), from Greek demokratia "popular government," from demos "common people," originally "district" (see demotic), + kratos "rule, strength" (see -cracy).

democracy in Culture Expand

A system of government in which power is vested in the people, who rule either directly or through freely elected representatives.

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Democracy | Define Democracy at Dictionary.com

OPINION

April 20, 2014 | By Andrew J. Bacevich

The government of Iraq last week announced that it had padlocked the infamous prison at Abu Ghraib. The gates are closed. The inmates moved. Whether the closure is permanent or temporary -- Iraqi officials suggest the latter -- this ought to qualify as a notable milestone. What does it signify? Sometimes a prison is just a building, its closure of no more significance than the demolition of a market or the shuttering of a strip mall. Yet from time to time, the closing of a facility constructed for the purpose of confining humans invites reflection.

OPINION

April 20, 2014 | By Peter H. Schuck

Campaign finance reformers are worried about the future. They contend that two Supreme Court rulings - the McCutcheon decision in March and the 2010 Citizens United decision - will magnify inequality in U.S. politics. In both cases, the court majority relaxed constraints on how money can be spent on or donated to political campaigns. By allowing more private money to flow to campaigns, the critics maintain, the court has allowed the rich an unfair advantage in shaping political outcomes and made "one dollar, one vote" (in one formulation)

OPINION

April 6, 2014

Re "Even more money in politics?," Editorial, April 3 As an attorney, any remaining illusion I had that our highest judicial body decides cases on a nonpartisan basis is gone after reading the Supreme Court's decision in McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission. First, the tortured Citizens United finding in 2010 - that corporations have 1st Amendment rights similar to those of individuals - opened the floodgates for those who want to buy the government. After that, the Shelby County case gutted the Voting Rights Act, resulting in gleeful red states passing laws that prevent poor people and minorities from voting.

OPINION

March 27, 2014 | By Jonathan Zimmerman

A few years ago, I found myself sitting on an airplane next to a gentleman from Egypt. Talk quickly turned to the upheaval in his country, where the so-called Arab Spring was in full bloom. "We want a real democracy," he told me, "not like yours. " When I pressed him to elaborate, he shot back with a question of his own. "How many times have you voted," he asked, "when someone named 'Bush' or 'Clinton' wasn't running?" The answer, I sheepishly admitted, was once: in 2008. Before that - going back to 1980, the first year I cast a ballot - every single presidential ticket featured someone from one of those two families.

WORLD

March 23, 2014 | By Cindy Chang, This post has been corrected. See note at the bottom for details.

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- As students occupied Taiwan's legislative chamber Sunday for a sixth day to protest a free-trade agreement with China, President Ma Ying-jeou denounced the takeover as a threat to democracy. Government officials have pledged not to use force to remove the protesters, who fear the agreement will hurt Taiwan's small businesses and give China too much influence. [Updated at 3:45 p.m., March 23: While the standoff continued at the legislature, a group broke into the government's main executive building Sunday night, reaching Premier Jiang Yi-huah's office.

OPINION

March 9, 2014 | By The Times editorial board

Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, has made substantial progress in the last few years, moving from military rule toward democracy, releasing political prisoners and freeing from house arrest Nobel Prize-winning democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. However, the government has relentlessly continued its appalling treatment of the Rohingya population that lives in Rakhine state in western Myanmar. A Muslim minority in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, the Rohingya are effectively denied citizenship unless they can meet onerous requirements, such as tracing their lineage back decades.

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Articles about Democracy - latimes

American Government 1. The Nature of Government a. The Purposes of Government b. Types of Government c. What Is a Democracy? d. Democratic Values Liberty, Equality, Justice 2. Foundations of American Government a. The Colonial Experience b. Independence and the Articles of Confederation c. Creating the Constitution d. The Bill of Rights 3. Federalism a. The Founders and Federalism b. Tipping the Scales Toward National Power c. Federal-State Relations Today: Back to States' Rights? 4. American Political Attitudes and Participation a. American Political Culture b. What Factors Shape Political Attitudes? c. Measuring Public Opinion d. Participating in Government e. Voting: A Forgotten Privilege? 5. How Do Citizens Connect With Their Government? a. Political Parties b. Campaigns and Elections c. Interest Groups d. The Media e. The Internet in Politics 6. Congress: The People's Branch? a. The Powers of Congress b. Leadership in Congress: It's a Party Matter c. The Importance of Committees d. Who Is in Congress? e. How a Bill Becomes a Law 7. The Presidency: The Leadership Branch? a. The Evolution of the Presidency b. All the President's Men and Women c. Selection and Succession of the President d. The President's Job e. Presidential Character 8. The Bureaucracy: The Real Government a. The Development of the Bureaucracy b. The Organization of the Bureaucracy c. Who Are the Bureaucrats? d. Reforming the Bureaucracy 9. The Judicial Branch a. The Creation of the Federal Courts b. The Structure of the Federal Courts c. The Supreme Court: What Does It Do? d. How Judges and Justices Are Chosen e. The Power of the Federal Courts 10. Civil Liberties and Civil Rights a. Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens b. First Amendment Rights c. Crime and Due Process d. Citizenship Rights 11. Policy Making: Political Interactions a. Foreign Policy: What Now? b. Defense Policy c. Economic Policy d. Social and Regulatory Policy 12. State and Local Governments a. State and Local Governments: Democracy at Work? b. Financing State and Local Government c. Who Pays for Education? 13. Comparative Political and Economic Systems a. Comparing Governments b. Comparing Economic Systems c. A Small, Small, World?

Nowhere is the word "democracy" mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. How could that be? Our government is a democracy!

Well, for one, as we'll discuss later, the Founders actually feared democratic rule. James Madison expressed this attitude in Federalist #10: "...instability, injustice, and confusion ...have in truth been the mortal disease under which popular governments everywhere perished..." In the late 18th-century, rule by the people was thought to lead to disorder and disruption. Yet a democratically-based government was seen as superior to the monarchies of Europe.

Democracies did not originate with the founding of the United States. The term "democracy" comes from two Greek words: "demos" (the people) and ""kratia" (power or authority). So of course democracy is a form of government that gives power to the people. But how, when, and to which people? The answer to those questions changes through history.

Democracies are based on "rule of law." The ancient Greeks (particularly Aristotle) valued natural law, the notion that human societies should be governed by ethical principles found in nature. The Greeks are famous for practicing direct democracy, a system in which citizens meet to discuss all policy, and then make decisions by majority rule. However, only free males were considered to be citizens. So their democracy was certainly limited. Today direct democracy is practiced in New England town meetings, where all citizens of voting age meet to decide important political decisions.

But how could direct democracy work in a large, diverse population spread over a geographical distance? Generally, the answer has been that it can't. In its place, the American Founders put "indirect" or "representative" democracy. In this system, representatives are chosen by the people to make decisions for them. The representative body, then, becomes a manageable size for doing the business of government. The Founders preferred the term "republic" to "democracy" because it described a system they generally preferred: the interests of the peopled were represented by more knowledgeable or wealthier citizens who were responsible to those that elected them. Today we tend to use the terms "republic" and "democracy" interchangeably. A widespread criticism of representative democracy is that the representatives become the "elites" that seldom consult ordinary citizens, so even though they are elected, a truly representative government doesn't really exist.

Another modern version of democracy is called "democratic centralism," a term made famous by Vladimir Ulyinov Lenin. As the leader of the Russian Revolution in 1917, he established a communist government that allowed no private property to exist. All members of society were theoretically equal. However, Lenin considered a small "vanguard of the revolution" necessary to guide the people and establish order. So a small group of leaders make decisions in the name of the people, based on their perceptions of what the people want and need.

Democracies have come in many shapes and sizes as reflected by the different answers to questions of how, when, and to which people power is given. And although it is not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution, democracy clearly links to "rule of law" to form a basic principle that profoundly shapes American government.

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What Is a Democracy? [ushistory.org]

It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..." "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?" "No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy." "I did," said Ford. "It is." "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?" "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?" "What?" "I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?" "I'll look. Tell me about the lizards." Ford shrugged again. "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it." "But that's terrible," said Arthur. "Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin. Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

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Quotes About Democracy (811 quotes)

April 2016 - Democracy means the rule of the people (in Greek). That is where each individual person has a vote about what to do. Whatever the most people vote for wins. There is no king or tyrant, and anybody can propose a new law. One problem that immediately comes up in a democracy is who is going to be able to vote. Should people vote who are just visiting from some other city-state? How about little kids, should they vote? Or should there be some limits?

The earliest democracy in the world began in Athens, in 510 BC; in Athens they let all the free adult men who were citizens vote, rich or poor. That was great for poor men, but bad for women, who were pretty much shut out of the political power they had had in the Archaic period.

When democracy turned out to work in Athens, many other city-states chose it for their government too. But most of them allowed even fewer people to vote than Athens did: most of the other city-states only allowed free adult male citizens to vote IF they owned land or owned their own houses (that is, the richer people). They didn't let women vote either.

One big problem for democracies was that it was very inconvenient for men to always be going to the meeting-place to vote. Most men had work to do, planting their grain, making shoes, fighting wars or whatever. They couldn't be always debating and voting. So most democracies sooner or later ended up choosing a few men who would do most of the voting, and the rest only came when there was a really important vote. It was hard to decide how to choose these few men, and different cultures did it different ways. Athens did it by a lottery. If you got the winning ticket then you were on the Council of 500. Men served for a year (and women couldn't serve at all).

Democracy spread around the Mediterranean Sea, but it was pretty much wiped out by the Roman Empire about 100 BC. Still, places like Athens continued to use democratic methods to make their own decisions on local matters for a long time after that.

A thousand years later, in the Middle Ages, some cities in Italy - Siena, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Venice - went back to having a democratic government. These were all organized in slightly different ways, but none of them allowed the poor, women, or children to vote, and some had a lottery system like Athens.

These Italian democracies, too, were eventually conquered by the Holy Roman Empire and ruled by German emperors. But in the 1700s, people began to fight for democracy again. In America, the Revolutionary War brought the Constitution in 1789, which let free adult men vote if they owned their own farm or business. A few years later, the French Revolution brought democracy to France (for a short time). And in the early 1900s, democracy came to Spain - for a while. None of these let women vote. Today many countries are democracies, and in most of them poor people, people of color, and women have now won the right to vote, though children and foreigners still can't. The amount of power available to voters, however, still varies widely from country to country, and many countries are still not democratic at all.

Professor Carr

Karen Eva Carr, PhD. Assoc. Professor Emerita, History Portland State University

Professor Carr holds a B.A. with high honors from Cornell University in classics and archaeology, and her M.A. and PhD. from the University of Michigan in Classical Art and Archaeology. She has excavated in Scotland, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, and Tunisia, and she has been teaching history to university students for a very long time.

Professor Carr's PSU page

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Who invented democracy? - Quatr.us