17.12.2006
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Analysing Various Democracies (Part 2)
_ By DR SAN OO AUNG
History of Democracy
After the end of the World War II, democracy slowly gained momentum.
This map shows the official claims made by world governments with regard to democracy, as of
██Blue - Governments that claim to be democratic and allow opposition parties to exist (though in some cases those opposition parties may be persecuted).
██Green - Governments that claim to be democratic but do not allow opposition parties to exist.
██Red - Governments that do not claim to be democratic.
Ancient origins
The word democracy was coined in ancient Greece. (equality of political rights). Athenian democracy is a form of direct democracy, originally it had two distinguishing features:
1. firstly the allotment (selection by lot) of ordinary citizens to government offices and courts,
2. and secondarily the assembly of all the citizens.
3. In theory only all the Athenian citizens were eligible to speak and vote in the Assembly, which set the laws of the city-state.
4. (But no political rights, nor citizenship, were granted to women, slaves, or resident alien, a person who did not have citizen rights in their Greek city-state of residence..)
5. In Athenian democracy there were a lot of juries allotted from the citizenry.
6. Most of the officers & magistrates of Athenian government were allotted;
7. only the generals and a few other officers were elected.
The seeds of representative democracy were arguably sown in the Roman Republic.
In anciet India
1. Democratic principles and elements were also found in the Mahajanapadas of ancient India, and also in the local Sanghas, Ganas and Panchayats that existed throughout the centuries in India.
2. In the ancient India, many sovereign republics existed along with princely states.
3. In the account of Alexander's campaigns in India, he had encountered "free and independent" Indian communities at every turn.
4. However, political rights were merely representative of social class and in particular the caste system.
5. In Indian republics, power was typically vested in the hands of an elite class, and so the system would perhaps be better classifed as an oligarchy.
6. In the case of the village panchayats, the picture is somewhat more democratic. A panchayat in essence is a meeting of townspeople mediated by a group of village elders, and so it is an example of a direct democracy.
Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, there were various systems involving elections or assemblies,
1. such as the election of Gopala in Bengal,
2. the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,
4. certain medieval Italian city-states such as Venice,
5. the tuatha system in early medieval Ireland,
6. the Veche in Slavic countries, and
7. Scandinavian Things.
The Parliament of England had its roots in the restrictions on the power of kings written into Magna Carta.
1. The first elected parliament was De Montfort's Parliament in England in 1265. However only a small minority actually had a voice.
2. The power to call parliament was at the pleasure of the monarch (usually when he or she needed funds).
3. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the English Bill of Rights was enacted in 1689,
4. which codified certain rights and increased the influence of the Parliament.
5. The franchise was slowly increased and the Parliament gradually gained more power until the monarch became entirely a figurehead.
18th and 19th centuries
The United States can be seen as the first liberal democracy.
1. The United States Constitution protected rights and liberties and was adopted in 1788.
2. Already in the colonial period before 1776 most adult white men could vote.
3. Democracy became a way of life in America, with widespread social, economic and political equality.
4. By 1840s there were frequent elections for local, state and national officials.
5. The Americans invented the grass roots party that could mobilise the voters, and had frequent elections and conventions to keep them active.
6. The system gradually evolved, from Jeffersonian Democracy or the First Party System to Jacksonian Democracy or the Second Party System and later to the Third Party System.
7. In Reconstruction after the Civil War (late 1860s) the newly freed slaves became citizens, and they were given the vote as well.
Revolutionary France adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789,
· Liberal democracies were few and often short-lived before the late nineteenth century.
· Various nations and territories have claimed to be the first with universal suffrage.
20th Century of successive waves of democracy
Description: The Map of Freedom reflects the findings of Freedom House's 2006 survey Freedom in the World (PDF). Freedom in the World is an annual institutional effort that monitors the gains and losses for political rights and civil liberties in 192 nations and 18 related and disputed territories. For each country, the survey provides a concise report on political and human rights developments, along with ratings of political rights and civil liberties.
Based on these ratings, countries are divided into three categories:
██Free (green). In Free countries, citizens enjoy a high degree of political and civil freedom.
██Partly Free (orange) In Partly Free countries are characterized by some restrictions on political rights and civil liberties, often in a context of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic strife, or civil war.
██Not Free (red). In Not Free countries, the political process is tightly controlled and basic freedoms are denied.
20th century transitions to liberal democracy have come in successive "waves of democracy", variously resulting from:
1. wars,
2. revolutions,
3. decolonization and
4. economic circumstances.
World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires resulted in the creation of new nation-states in Europe, most of them nominally democratic.
In the 1920 democracy flourished,
Age of Dictators of1930s
But the Great Depression brought a disenchantment
1. and most of the countries of Europe, Latin America and Asia turned to strong-man rule or dictatorships.
2. Thus the rise of fascism and dictatorships in Nazi Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal,
3. as well as nondemocratic regimes in Poland, the Baltics, the Balkans, Brazil, Cuba, China, and Japan, among others.
4. Together with Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union, these made the 1930s the "Age of Dictators"
World War II brought a definitive reversal of this trend in western Europe.
1. The successful democratisation of the occupied Germany and the occupied Japan served as a model for the later theory of regime change.
2. However, most of Eastern Europe was forced into the non-democratic Soviet bloc.
3. The war was followed by decolonisation,
4. and again most of the new independent states had nominally democratic constitutions.
Most of the western democratic nations had
1. a predominantly free-market economy and
2. developed a welfare state,
3. reflecting a general consensus among their electorates and political parties.
In the 1950s and 1960s,
1. economic growth was high in both the western and Communist countries;
2. it later declined in the state-controlled economies.
By 1960, the vast majority of nation-states were
1. nominally democracies,
2. most of the world's populations lived in nations that experienced sham elections, and
3. other forms of subterfuge (particularly in Communist nations and the former colonies.)
This graph shows the number of nations in the different categories given above for the period for which there are surveys, 1972-2005
Number of nations 1800-2003 scoring 8 or higher on Polity IV scale, another widely used measure of democracy.
Wave of democratisation
A subsequent wave of democratisation brought substantial gains toward true liberal democracy for many nations.
A. Several of the military dictatorships in South America became democratic in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
B. This was followed by nations in East and South Asia by the mid- to late 1980s.
C. Economic malaise in the 1980s, along with resentment of communist oppression, contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union,
D. the associated end of the Cold War, and the democratisation and liberalisation of the former Eastern bloc countries.
E. The most successful of the new democracies were western Europe, and they are now members or candidate members of the European Union.
F. The liberal trend spread to some nations in Africa in the 1990s, most prominently in South Africa.
G. The Indonesian Revolution of 1998,
H. The Bulldozer Revolution in Yugoslavia,
I. The Rose Revolution in Georgia,
J. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine,
K. The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, and
L. The Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan.
The number of liberal democracies .. .
1. currently stands at an all-time high and
2. has been growing without interruption for some time.
3. This trend may continue in the future to the point where liberal democratic nation-states become the universal standard form of human society.
4. This prediction forms the core of Francis Fukayama's "End of History" theory.
(This Analysing Various Democracies Part 2 is mainly adapted and presented as a simplified form from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
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