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¶ … Democratic Development
"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government expcept all those other forms that have been tried over time," former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously asserted. Government has been a long-debated concept and the type of government best suited for people has also been a constant battle. Democracy is a relatively new concept since the inception of civilizations and one that requires much exploration in order to fully gain the complexities and intricacies of the concept.
In Greek, the word "democracy" means "rule by the (simple) people" which lays the foundation of what society defines the term as today, a "form of government, where a constitution guarantees basic personal and political rights, fair and free elections, and independent courts of law" (Jud). There are also key elements involved in the definition of democracy, which are components that are of value to society as well which include the separation of powers, freedom of opinion, religious liberty, general and equal ridge to vote, among others (Jud). These elements empower the simple people to govern themselves and have their own opinions and voice represented in government, one that will best represent them. Democracy to society is the ability to be heard, to be represented as oppose to other forms which may have leaders that govern by God, or govern on a single ideology (Jud). People believe...
"Most Africans (62%) continued to agree that 'democracy [as an ideal] is preferable to any other kind of government," and Africans are likely favorable to democracy because of the previous mentioned reasons (Handelman, 2011). This statistic serves as a macrocosm for many as it allows individuals to have power over their government, while still continuing on with their personal and professional lives.
In order for a society to transition into a democracy, there are a myriad of different factors that need to be addressed, more difficulties than meets the eye. In any transition, there will inevitably be some type of chaos- even if it's something as simple as taking one piece of candy from a child and replacing it with another, there is crying and fussing in the moments between. Taking those moments and amplifying it exponentially captures the difficulties in transitioning a society into democracy. For instance, when Russia "[transitioned] to capitalism and the enormous quantities of petroleum previously controlled by the state opened up a floodgate of corruption" and "in Cambodia, the communist regime has been replaced by a government of competing 'mafias'" (Handelman, 2011). The chaos that ensues when transitioning is a breeding ground for corruption and…
Bibliography
Filkins, Dexter. (2009, August 16). Fear of the taliban may sway vote in afghanistan. The New York Times, p. A1.
Handelman, Howard. (2011). The challenge of the third development. Prentice Hall.
Jud, Markus. (n.d.). Democracy building. Retrieved from http://www.democracy-building.info/index.html
Klapper, Bradley. (2011, July 1). Clinton lectures nations on transition to democracy. Retrieved from http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/clinton-lectures-nations-transition-demo
Democracy / Liberty Is direct democracy desirable and/or possible today? Is direct democracy desirable and/or possible today? The question is addressed first theoretically, with reference to Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, which actually categorizes direct democracy as one of the corruptions into which a democratic system can descend, by an insistence on too much egalitarianism. Direct democracy is considered as an ideal, which is desirable insofar as it offers a critique of
democratic system for governing a group of people, small or large, must maintain the best interests of all the individuals involved. This general criterion must be upheld regardless of whether specifically what these best interests are cannot be unanimously agreed upon. Ideally, a democracy allows everyone involved an equal voice and vote regarding every decision that concerns that organization. Robert Dahl identifies the five primary components of the ideal
21st Century American 'Democracy': The Best Government that Money Can Buy Within polarized, interest group-dominated 21st century United States life, most Americans still cling to the idea, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, that we live in a democracy. In today's America, however, that idea is more quaint than accurate. Instead, as the article suggests, America is more a pseudo-democracy than a real one, in which special interest groups (and, as
Here we see that the staff and the students had their own responsibilities and those responsibilities are quite different from the traditional ones we find in traditional schools. Horton thought that a significant aspect of the teacher's role was to empower students to "think and act for themselves" (Thayer-Bacon). We can see that Horton placed responsibility on both the students and the staff. They were to learn from one
These responsibilities notwithstanding, the American public was already being conditioned to view the war in Iraq as a battle against extremists, that is, against the Islamist radicals who had threatened the "American" way" of life on September 11, 2001. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had already inflamed America's own Christian fundamentalists with talk that the terrible events of that day were to blame in part on "the gays and
Control and the Media The media is an incredibly powerful force which has the ability to manipulate the minds and hearts of the American people. This type of "mind control" which is employed by news organizations in the United States is nothing less than propaganda. Noam Chomsky writes that, "propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship." Indeed, nowhere is this more clear than in recent debates over