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Democracy
The term democracy means rule by the people. It is derived from two Greek words, demos (people) and krato (rule or power). Democratic government basically has two forms: direct or pure democracy and representative or indirect democracy. The United States is a representative democracy.
In a pure democracy, such as those of ancient Greece and today's New England town meetings, citizens participate directly in making government decisions. In many states, citizens also can make or review laws through initiatives and referendums. But for the most part, government decisions in the United States and most Western nations are made by men and women elected by the people to represent them.
“Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
—Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressing the House of Commons in November 1947
The American type of representative democracy features a presidential system in which a chief executive is elected independently of the national legislature. In the parliamentary systems of most European nations, the majority party or coalition of parties in the national legislature selects the chief executive, who is called a prime minister, premier, or chancellor.
Democracies also differ in how they divide power between the national government and regional governments. Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United States are organized on a federal basis—that is, they divide power between the national government and states or provinces. But in Britain and France all government authority resides with the national government.
Whatever its form, democracy is not perfect. “Indeed,” Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in 1947, “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Control of Leadership
Despite their significant differences, the Western democracies all meet a basic test of a democracy: their citizens have a relatively high degree of control over what their leaders do. Citizens' efforts to influence political leaders are expected, accepted, and frequently successful. This sets Western democracies in stark contrast to regimes such as the People's Republic of China, where open opposition to government policies is virtually prohibited.
Achieving an orderly succession—the transfer of government authority without serious disruptions—has been a long-standing problem of governance. The conventional democratic solution to this problem is routine elections, ensuring that leadership positions will become vacant at periodic intervals without beheadings or revolutions.
In the United States, succession is accomplished without elections in case of death in the most powerful offices. In such cases, a president of the United States is succeeded by the vice president, while a state governor would be succeeded by the officeholder first in line of succession, who in most states is the lieutenant governor.
Democratic procedures operate best when there is an expectation that policy changes in the short run will be modest and relatively narrow, and there will be no wholesale changes in the economic order or the system of government. Losers of an election need not fear being liquidated or deprived of their liberty without due process of law. They know that all concerned will be able to continue the struggle in the next election. There is, in other words, a societal consensus on the limits of the political struggle.
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