TYPES OF DEMOCRACY
1.1 Measurements of Democracy
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. Recall, 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 time-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
timeperiod, 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.
1.2 Institutions within Democracy
Aside from considering the variety of ways democracy can manifest across
different countries, we can also look at some of the institutions which tend to be
common within democracies. In many ways, the institutions described in the first
portion of this section are akin to building blocks; each block has distinct functions,
wielding distinct forms of power and operating within what political scientists would call
a separation of powers with checks and balances. Separation of powers is a term that
divides government functions into three areas: the legislature, tasked primarily with
the making of laws; the executive, who carries out or enforces these laws; and the
judiciary, tasked with interpreting the constitutionality of laws. These three institutions
generally operate under a process of checks and balances, which is a system that
attempts to ensure that no one branch can become too powerful. Traces of the
historical underpinnings of separation of powers found in the writings of Harrington,
Montesquieu among others. Other hallmark institutions of democracies are their
electoral systems and the presence of political parties, which are both discussed in
the second portion of this section. Electoral systems, simply put, are voting systems;
an electoral system provides a set of rules that dictate how elections (and other voting
initiatives) are conducted and how results are determined and communicated. Political
parties are groups of people who are organized under shared values to get their
candidates elected to office to exercise political authority. All of these institutions, taken
together, contribute to the many unique democracies that exist today, and require, at
the very least, a brief overview to consider their importance and implications to
democracy today.
1.3 Executives and Legislatures
While some elements and characteristics of democracy vary, one constant
commonality is the separation of powers among institutions within governments. As
described above, this separation of powers promotes checks and balances because
it provides for power to be spread throughout multiple branches of government with
the intention of splitting up power between institutions so that no single branch has too
much power but instead empowering all branches with their own institutionalized
powers.
The three branches of concern include: (1) the legislature; (2) the executive; and
(3) the judiciary. The legislative branch is tasked with performing three main
functions:(1) making and revising laws; (2) providing administrative oversight to ensure
laws are being properly executed; (3) and providing representation of the constituents
to the government. The primary, and most important function of the legislature is to
make laws. While legislatures can manifest in different ways, the U.S. Congress has
two bodies, the House of Representatives, which contains 435 members
(representation from states vary based on population size, determined every 10 years
by the U.S. census), and the Senate, which contains 100 senators (two for each state).
This is called a bicameral legislature because it has two “houses.” In a bicameral
legislature, one house is usually referred to as the “upper” house and the other the
“lower” house. The upper house is usually smaller with more restricted power, while
the lower house is usually larger. Some states have unicameral legislatures with only
one house.
Types of Legislature
Members of the legislature, elected by the people, represent their interests, and
make laws on their behalf. There are three main types of legislatures worth noting.
First, the consultative legislature is one where the legislature advises the leader, or
group of leaders, on issues relating to laws and their application. In the consultative
legislature, members could either be elected or appointed. For example, the Shura
Council is a consultative legislature with 151 members appointed by the King of Saudi
Arabia. (Dekmejian, 1998).
The two most popular types of legislatures are parliamentary and
congressional/presidential (there is also a hybrid version, called semi-presidential
systems; see Figure 66 above). Interestingly, while most of the legislatures in North
and South America are congressional legislatures (with the exception of Canada,
which has a parliamentary legislature), European legislatures have tended to be
parliamentary. The main difference between parliamentary and congressional systems
is how the executive branch is chosen (see Figure 66 above). In the
congressional/presidential system, citizens elect representatives in the legislature
separately from the executive branch. In the parliamentary system, citizens elect
representatives in the legislative body and do not directly elect the executive branch.
Instead, the executive (also called the head of government) is usually chosen by the
party that gets the most seats in the legislature. In order to form a government, a party
needs to win a certain threshold of seats in the legislature, usually around 50%. If one
party doesn’t reach that threshold (which is very common, since most parliamentary
systems are also multiparty systems, discussed below), then a group of parties must
agree to govern together in a coalition. When a coalition is formed, the parties involved
agree on which party gets to choose the executive. Most of the time, that is the party
within the coalition with the largest number of seats in parliament. A quick look at recent
elections in Thailand can help us better understand how parliamentary democracy
works, as well as the challenges faced by a many newly emerging democracies.
Case Study: Thailand
Full Country Name : Kingdom of Thailand
Head of State : King Wachiralongkon
Head of Government : Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha; could be Pita
Limjaroenrat if approved by the Senate (see below)
Government : Constitutional Monarchy
Official Language : Thai
Economic System : Market oriented economy
Location : Southeast Asia
Capital : Bangkok
Total land size : 513,120 sq km; 198,116 sq miles
Population : 69,794,997
GDP : $1.223 trillion
GDP per capita : $17,100
Currency : Thai baht
Thailand, like Ethiopia, (discussed in Student Feature: Ethiopia as a deviant
case of post-colonial state-building on page 157), was never completely colonized by
a Western power, but this doesn’t mean that Thailand escaped colonial influence. This
is surprising, because it was completely surrounded by British Burma (known today as
Myanmar) and Malaysia, and French Indochina (known today as Vietnam and Laos),
Dutch East Indies (known today as Indonesia) Thailand at the time was known as
Siam. Siam provided a convenient buffer zone between all three colonial powers. In
order to keep these powers at bay, the Siamese kingdom began to adopt colonial
styles of governing. For example, the King began to consolidate power among what
was then autonomous regions. He also started making maps so the Kingdom’s
borders were clearly defined. In essence, the Kingdom took steps to create and
maintain both internal and external sovereignty. It transitioned from an absolute
monarchy to a constitutional monarchy following World War I in 1932. Since then,
Thailand has been ruled mostly by military coups, followed by short periods of
democracy (Baker & Phongpaichit, 2022).
The most recent election is a good window into how parliamentary democracy
works, as well as how constitutional monarchies work. After the 2023 general election
in Thailand, the Move Forward party (represented above in orange) won 151 seats,
while the former leading party Pheu Thai (represented in red), won 141. However, no
party got enough seats to govern without forming a coalition. This was a major victory
for Move Forward, as they increased their seats by 70 from the previous election. They
are seen as a reform party promising to end the military’s grip on the country. You can
see from Figure 68 that several other parties were also elected, some of which will
only hold one seat. The Move Forward party, because they won the most seats, should
be allowed to choose the prime minister. It is also likely they will form a coalition that
includes Pheu Thai, as well as other smaller parties. This is why in a parliamentary
democracy the legislative and executive branches are said to be fused or balanced
rather than separate (Bilal, 2023).
However, it is important to note that Thailand is an emerging democracy that
has been plagued by military coups, the most recent of which was in 2014. Therefore,
it should not be treated as a typical case of parliamentary democracy. While the EIU
rated Thailand as the most improved state in terms of democracy in 2022, raising its
democracy score by 0.68 from 2021 (on a 0-1 scale), democracy remains a serious
question in Thailand (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2023). As part of negotiations to
balance the military with democratically elected parties, the military controls most of
the Senate, which is the upper house of Thailand’s legislature. In addition to forming
a coalition in the House of Representatives (the lower house), the Senate must also
approve of the prime minister. As of publication, it remains to be seen whether the
Senate will ultimately allow the leader of Move Forward to become the prime minister
(Bilal, 2023).
Head of States and Heads of Governments
Thailand is also a good example of another difference between congressional
and parliamentary democracies. In a congressional system, the head of state and
head of government are usually made up of a single leader. The head of state is a
ceremonial position that represents the nation, while the head of government is the
person with the highest position of political power in the executive branch. The US
president embodies both roles. But in a parliamentary system, these positions are
usually divided. In the case of Thailand, the head of government is the Prime Minister,
and the head of state is the monarchy. The head of state often has limited political
power. Systems such as Thailand, as well as the United Kingdom, are called
constitutional monarchies. They retain the monarchy for ceremonial, historical, and
symbolic purposes, but real political power is vested in a democratically elected
government. In the case of Thailand, the bulk of political power lies with the
government, but the monarchy does retain significant power. Any government,
whether a military coup or a democratically elected government, must run with the
blessing of the King. Thailand also has one of the most stringent “lèse-majesté” laws
in the world, which prohibits citizens from criticizing the monarchy. The Move Forward
party is seeking to decrease the power of the monarchy and loosen lèse-majesté
regulations. For this reason, Move Forward faces another obstacle to becoming the
ruling party in Thailand, despite winning the most seats (Bilal, 2023).
Another important note: Parliamentary democracies are not always
constitutional monarchies. In Germany for example, the head of state is the President,
who is chosen by members of the Bundestag (the parliament). The head of
government, on the other hand, is called the Chancellor, who is also chosen by
members of the Bundestag.
Removal of The Executive
Leaving behind Thailand, it is important to consider another key difference
between parliamentary and presidential systems of democracy. Perhaps the most
important check a legislature has over the executive branch is the power to remove
the executive. However, the process by which this takes place is very different between
parliamentary and presidential systems. In presidential systems, the process to
remove an executive is called impeachment. While the exact process by which an
executive is impeached will vary by state, it is often a very complex process and
requires not only an act of the legislature but also a constitutional court of some variety.
The US is rare in that the courts are not involved in the impeachment process. For
example, in Brazil, presidents are provisionally removed by the Chamber of Deputies
(the lower house of Brazil’s national Congress), then tried and removed by the Federal
Senate (the upper house of Brazil’s national Congress). Both houses must vote to
impeach with at least two-thirds of the vote. Dilma Rousseff was impeached in Brazil
in 2016 on charges of corruption.
In parliamentary systems, it is much easier to remove an executive and is not
considered an extraordinary procedure. In fact, executives are removed from office as
a matter of routine in many parliamentary democracies. A vote of no confidence can
be called when members of the legislature no longer feel the executive is properly
leading the government. (See Comparative Within-Case Study: FATA and Karachi in
Pakistan on page 169 for an example of a vote of no confidence). If the vote passes,
the executive must step down. Because the executive is usually chosen from the
largest party in the legislature, the removal of the executive often results in new
elections to determine the makeup of both the legislature and the executive. Therefore,
elections can happen relatively often in a parliamentary system, instead of on a fixed
schedule in a presidential system.
Judiciary
The final “building block” of government to identify is the judiciary, which refers
to the part of government where laws are interpreted. In some countries, the judiciary
is a third branch of government, like in the U.S. In other countries, the judiciary is
shared with other branches of government. In authoritarian regimes, the judiciary
tends to be subservient to the executive and legislative branches. In democracies, the
judiciary is one of the divisions which functions to uphold the rule of law. In the U.S.,
the highest court is the Supreme Court, the only court mentioned in the U.S.
Constitution. It has the sole power of judicial review, which is the ability to interpret the
constitutionality of laws, and in doing so, the ability to overturn decisions made by
lesser courts. This is sometimes called the “American model” but it also exists in other
states like Argentina, Australia, Canada, India, Japan and the Philippines (International
Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2017).
The other model, sometimes called the “European model” uses what is called
a constitutional court. This is a special type of court separate from the rest of the court
system. It reviews laws as well as executive acts, to decide whether the laws are valid
according to the state’s constitution and provides remedies if a law is found to be
unconstitutional. It does so exclusively; no other court can decide matters of
constitutionality. Countries with this type of court include Colombia, France, Germany,
Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, and South Africa (International Institute for
Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2017). Whether a state follows the European or
American model of the judiciary, the independence of the judiciary is a central
ingredient for determining the strength of a state’s democracy and its overall freedom.
Freedom House, one of the organizations that score and rank countries by their level
of democracy, includes judicial independence as one of the variables that contribute
to these scores. To measure the independence of the judiciary, Freedom House asks
the following questions (Freedom House, 2023, sec. F1):
• Is the judiciary subject to interference from the executive branch or other
influences?
• Are judges appointed and dismissed in a fair and unbiased manner?
• Do judges rule fairly and impartially, or do they commonly render verdicts that
favor the government?
• Do executive, legislative, and other governmental authorities comply with
judicial decisions, and are these decisions enforced?
• Do powerful private entities comply with judicial decisions?
