DEFINITION OF DEMOCRACY
More than half of the governments currently in existence operate under some
variation of democracy, as depicted in Figure 61 above. Again, you might compare this
map of democracies to the map of Global North and Global South states in Figure 7
on page 57. While many states have democratized in recent years, authoritarianism
persists in large portions of the Global South. In this chapter, we will focus on simply
defining democracy and exploring varieties of democracies in the world. In the next
chapter, we will consider theories of democracy with a focus on the Global South and
why democracies do not take hold as often in the Global South.
The global trends towards democratization worldwide during the twentieth
century prompted some to conclude that democracy is simply the best, or most ideal,
form of government. Indeed, near the end of the twentieth century, political scientist
Francis Fukuyama (1992) wrote a book entitled, The End of History and the Last Man,
where he argued humanity had reached the end of history because many countries
had adopted forms of liberal democracy. His book was a bestseller which energized
many about the prospects of a world which embraces democracy and will not again
suffer the likes of major World Wars and conflicts. Twenty years after this publication,
however, and in light of events like the September 11th attacks on the United States,
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of China, the backsliding of Russia, the
COVID-19 pandemic and the eventual fall of Afghanistan back to authoritarian rule,
Fukuyama mostly retracted his conclusion that the world had accepted democracy as
the standard. Instead, he now asserts that issues related to political identity now
threaten the security of geopolitical stability. The many challenges facing democracy,
democratization, and democratic backsliding (discussed in Chapter 8), prompts us to
take a hard look at democracy, its types, its institutions and models, and various
manifestations throughout the world. Is democracy the best form of government? What
are its advantages and disadvantages?
Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, economist, and author of
books and journal articles. From left to right, his 1992 book, The End of History and
the Last Man, prompted discussion over whether the world had reached the end of
history because so many countries had been adopting liberal democracy as their form
of government. One of his more recent books, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and
the Politics of Resentment, came out in 2018, and his conclusions began veering away
from the belief that the world had accepted liberal democracy. Instead, political identity
and the weight of historical disputes potentially impede global geopolitical potential for
long-term peace.
Although there is evidence of what anthropologists have designated “primitive
democracy,” wherein small communities have face-to-face discussions in order to
make decisions, as far back as 2,500 years ago, the first formal application of
democratic institutions and processes is generally attributed to ancient Greece.
Athens, Greece is generally credited with being the birthplace of democracy. In its
simplest terms, democracy is a government system in which the supreme power of
government is vested in the people. Democracy comes from the Greek word,
dēmokratiā, where “demos” means “people”, and “kratos” meaning “power” or “rule.”
Prior to the formation of legal reforms, Athens had operated as an aristocracy.
An aristocracy is a form of government where power is held by nobility or those
concerned to be of the highest classes within a society. Aristocracy proved
troublesome for Athens, and the people eventually rallied under an Athenian leader
named Solon (circa 640 - 560 B.C.E.). In trying to meet the demands of the people,
Solon attempted to satisfy all classes of the Athenian population, rich and poor alike,
to devise a form of government which satisfied all. To this end, in 594 B.C.E., Solon
created legal reforms and a constitution, which provided the foundations for citizen
participation in government affairs, and abolished slavery of Athenian citizens. Under
this construct, adult males who had completed their military training were given the
right to vote, and as much as 20% of the population was active in making laws.
Eventually, democracy in Athens failed, due to both internal and external factors.
Internally, there was heavy criticism that the aristocracy was still in force, and able to
pervert and manipulate legal outcomes to their own benefit. Further, the works of
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all of whom were critical of the merits and feasibility of
democracy, led to the erosion of trust in democracy in Athens. Generally, Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle, though they had their own unique critiques of democracy. The
Peloponnesian War, the changes in leadership from King Phillip II of Macedon and
Alexander the Great, and finally, the rise of the Roman Empire, all are also attributed
to the eventual decline of democracy in ancient Greece. After the fall of democracy in
Greece, the prospect of democracy did not re-emerge as a feasible, or even desired,
option until the early modern era in the 1600s. Full democracy, however, probably
didn’t emerge until the 20th Century.
Ancient concepts and manifestations of democracy differ greatly from modern
conceptualization and applications of democracy. One of the key differences is in the
way power from the people is channeled; the difference becomes apparent in
comparing a direct democracy versus an indirect democracy. A direct democracy
enables citizens to vote directly, or participate directly, in the formation of laws, public
policy and government decisions. In this system, citizens personally get involved in all
aspects of politics, and are able to change constitutional laws, recommend
referendums and make suggestions for laws, and mandate the activities and actions
of government officials. To some extent, Athens exercised a direct democracy in that
adult male citizens, who had completed their military training, could participate directly
in the making of laws. It was not a 'perfect' democracy in that not all citizens, male and
female, rich and poor, could participate, but it did have a mechanism for a certain class
of citizen participating, i.e. males. In contrast, indirect democracy channels the power
of the people through representation, where citizens elect representatives to make
laws and government decisions on their behalf. In this scenario, citizens of the country
are granted suffrage, which is the right to vote in political elections and propose
referendums. In a healthy democracy, elections are both free and fair. Free elections
are those where all citizens are able to vote for the candidate of their choice. The
election is free if all citizens who meet the requirements to vote (e.g. are of lawful age
and meet the citizenship requirements, if they exist), are not prevented from
participating in the election process. Fair elections are those in which all votes carry
equal weight, are counted accurately, and the election results are able to be accepted
by parties. Ideally, the following standards are met to ensure elections are free and
fair:
Before the Election
• Eligible citizens are able to register to vote;
• Voters are given access to reliable information about the ballot and the
elections;
• Citizens are able to run for office.
During the Election
• All voters have access to a polling station or some method of casting their
vote;
• Voters are able to vote free from intimidation;
• The voting process is free of fraud and tampering. After the Election
• Ballots are accurately counted and the results are announced;
• The results of the election are accepted / respected / honored.
The integrity of the election is of paramount importance in democracies, for if
the process is not found to be free or fair, it violates the core principles of what
constitutes a democracy: by the people, for the people. Indirect democracy is what
most democratic countries today practice, partly because of logistics (In the U.S., how
would every single adult citizen directly participate in the making of laws? Would
requiring a vote for every decision be time efficient?), and to another extent, a question
over whether voting is always the best option for determining just, equitable or ideal
outcomes. In a representative democracy, citizens, to some extent, outsource the
power of lawmaking to those who, ideally, either have expertise in making laws or who
may be granted a greater depth of information in order to make decisions. In this
sense, not every citizen necessarily wants to be involved in every government decision
but would prefer selecting a representative to getting political work done. Further,
although most democratic countries do practice indirect democracy, there are often
some mechanisms that align with some characteristics of a direct democracy. For
instance, the U.S. has a representative democracy, but voters in some states have the
ability to put forth initiatives and referendums, also referred to as Ballot Propositions.
This is called participatory democracy, in which citizens can directly vote on certain
laws, but most of the law-making continues through representatives. Finally,
deliberative democracy is a model where consensus-building is the primary
mechanism for decision-making, rather than an adversarial model based largely on
voting between rival parties or factions. Recall our discussion of the Iroquois
confederacy on page 121. This system was based largely on a participatory
democracy model. The differences between these types of democracy can be
summarized by thinking about the types of democracy that are most appropriate
according to the size of the population and the complexity of the problem being
addressed.
Importantly, democracy has a number of characteristics which can be central to
understanding the variation in democracies that exist worldwide today. These
differences also highlight the difference between concepts of ancient democracy
versus contemporary democracy. Ancient democracy had no concept or foundations
for widespread suffrage or the protection of civil liberties. Some of these modern
accepted democratic themes include (but are not limited to): free, fair and regular
elections (ideally, with the inclusion of more than one viable political party), respect for
civil liberties (freedom of religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly; freedom to
criticize the government) as well as the protection of civil rights (freedom from
discrimination based on various characteristics deemed important in society).
Democracies which not only facilitate free and fair elections, but also ensure the
protection of civil liberties are called liberal democracies. Although these are the
general themes, there is still ample debate among scholars about the importance and
weight of these characteristics. Larry Diamond (2004), an American political
sociologist and a scholar of democratic studies, put forth the following four
characteristics which make a democracy, a democracy. A democracy must include:
1. A system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections;
2. Active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life;
3. The protection of human rights of all citizens;
4. A rule of law in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.
Karl Popper, an Austrian-British academic and philosopher (whom you may
recognize from Chapter 2 for his work on the nature of inquiry and the recognition of
falsification theory), had a more blunt definition for democracy, “I personally call the
type of government which can be removed without violence ‘democracy,’ and the other,
‘tyranny.’ (Popper, 2008). Instead of citing specific characteristics of democracy, which
Popper was hesitant to do given the wide variation in democracies that exist, he simply
contrasted it with outright tyranny. In general, Popper emphasized the importance not
in how the people could exercise authority, but that they have access, availability, and
opportunity, through some means, to control their leaders without violence, retribution,
or revolution.
Other scholars have noted more rigid qualifications for democracy. In looking at
the world of Robert Dahl, Ian Shapiro and Jose Antonio Cheibub, all political scientists,
they assert that every vote in a representative democracy must carry equal weight,
and that the rights of citizens must be equally protected by a well-defined and clear
“law of the land;” in most cases, the “law of the land,” rests with a written constitution.
The rights and liberties of citizens must be protected by the law of the land (Dahl et
al., 2003).
Overall, there are hundreds of critiques and frameworks for defining
democracies and noting its characteristics, and scholars are generally not in full
agreement on what constitutes a perfect democracy. Nevertheless, reaching some
consensus on the characteristics is important if scholars want to advance the
understanding of regime types like democracy. The difference in perception of
democracy can be seen in how some organizations choose to measure democracy
across countries. At present, there are at least eight organizations which attempt to
quantify the existence and health of democracies worldwide. These eight include:
Freedom House, Economist Intelligence Unit (see Figure 61 above), V-Dem, the
Human Freedom Index, Polity IV, World Governance Indicators, Democracy
Barometer, and Vanhanen’s Polyarchy Index. In Figure 65: Table of different indices
that measure democracy below, a few of these are highlighted based on what they
identify as main characteristics of democracy. This table shows the differences in
components considered when trying to measure democracy. From left to right,
Freedom House, Economist Intelligence Unit, and Varieties of Democracy; all are
organizations which attempt to determine whether countries are democratic and
assess the strength of their democratic institutions.
The different organizations, choosing different areas of emphasis and weight
for characteristics of democracy, yield different outcomes in terms of identifying
whether a country is a democracy, as well as judging the healthiness of a democracy.
For instance, as of 2018, the Varieties of Democracies Project finds there are currently
99 democracies, and 80 autocracies. Autocracies are forms of government where
countries are ruled either by a single person or group, who/which holds total power
and control. For this same period, the Polity IV Index disagrees, finding 57 full
democracies, 28 mixed-regime types, and 13 autocratic regimes. Importantly, the
Polity IV Index does not take suffrage into consideration as a meaningful indicator of
democracy. Freedom House also arrives at different outcomes for this same time-
period, asserting that 86 countries are democracies, with 109 non-democracies.
Finally, the Economist Intelligence Unit found 20 countries to be fully democratic, and
55 countries have “flawed democracies.” Given that scholars and these organizations
have acknowledged that different types of democracies exist, it is now useful to
discuss these types, as well as the implications for these types on the institution of
democracy.
The number of democracies has significantly grown worldwide since 1900.
Political scientists have sometimes called jumps in the number of democracies
‘waves.’ In this way, there have been three major waves of democratization: World
War I (First wave, 1828-1926), with subsequent “waves” of democratization coming
following World War II (Second wave) and the subsequent anticolonial independence
movements (see Comparative Within-Case Study: FATA and Karachi in Pakistan for
an example of this), and the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent decline of
communism (Third wave).
