2. Democracy: Direct and Representative

source of legitimacy for the law-making processes. Deliberative democracy combines elements of both representative democracy and direct democracy, which relies upon the deliberation of the citizenry to reach a sound policy.

2. Democracy: Direct and Representative

Direct democracy, classically termed ‘pure democracy’, is any form of government based on a theory of civics in which all citizens can directly participate in the decisionmaking process, rather than relying on intermediaries or representatives. Some adherents want legislative, judicial, and executive powers to be handled by the people, but most extant systems only allow legislative decisions. These acts are often specified, for example certain regulations or contractual activities of the administration. However, even on the decisions concerning factual activities there can be a direct participation. Two elements are often seen in modern democracies: citizen’s initiatives and referenda. If there is a large number of citizens in a state, it places greater difficulties on the implementation of a direct democracy since all citizens must be actively involved in all issues all of the time. So, the need for representative democracy increases as the number of citizens grows. There are concerns about how such systems would scale to larger populations. With the advent of the internet, there have been suggestions for ‘e-democracy’ in which the internet plays an important role comprising various mechanisms for implementing direct democracy concepts.

Representative democracy involves the selection of government officials by the people and by those represented. If the head of state is also democratically elected, then the state is called a democratic republic. The most common mechanisms involve election of the candidate with a majority or a plurality of the votes. Representatives may be elected as ones of a particular district or a constituency, or represent the entire electorate proportionally. Some countries use a combination of both. Some representative democracies also incorporate elements of direct democracy, such as referenda. A characteristic of representative democracy is that while the representatives are elected by the people to act in their interest, they retain the freedom to exercise their own judgement as how best to do so.

Parliamentary democracy is a representative democracy where government is appointed by parliamentary representatives as opposed to a ‘presidential rule’ where the president is both head of state and the head of government and is elected by the voters. Under a parliamentary democracy, the country’s government is exercised by delegation to an executive ministry, subject to ongoing review, checks, and balances by the legislative parliament elected by the people.

A liberal democracy is a representative democracy in which the ability of the elected representatives to exercise decision-making power is subject to the rule of law. It is usually moderated by a constitution that emphasizes the protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals and which places constraints on the leaders and on the extent to which the will of the majority can be exercised against the rights of minorities. Liberal democracy—bourgeois or constitutional democracy—is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive. Political pluralism is usually defined as the presence of multiple and distinct political parties. A liberal democracy may take various constitutional forms. It may be a federal republic, such as the United States, India, or Germany, or a constitutional monarchy, such as the United Kingdom, Japan, or Spain. It may have a presidential system (United States), a