Now democracy means any political system in which the people are sovereign. More exactly There are two main forms of democracy : In a direct democracy, the people have the direct authority to deliberate and decide legislation. In a representative democracy, the people choose governing officials through elections to do so
Are there still direct democracies?
To put this into context, direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies. It was a famous form of democracy in Athens in the 5th century BC. For information, In the 5th century BC, to become a citizen, you must be a free man born of an Athenian father, and have followed the Ephebia from 18 to 20 years old, that is to say be capable of defending the city. Slaves and women considered respectively as property and eternal minors, as well as metics (foreigners) were not included in the political community, as in most Greek cities. It is the assembly which brings together all the citizens gathered on the hill of the Pnyx. It votes on general laws. Any citizen can take the floor, exercise his power of amendment and propose a motion. This is the essence of direct democracy. Once passed, the law is exposed to the public in the Agora. There are many places like La Boulè where citizens used to vote to represent direct democracy.
But today are there countries with this democracy?
Switzerland is the only country with a direct democracy. So how does it work?
In addition to the right to vote, the Swiss population over the age of 18 also has the right to express their opinion on major questions. About four times a year, she is called to the polls to give her opinion on around fifteen objects on average. Over the past decades, voter turnout has been, on average, slightly above 40%.
And how does this work for countries without direct democracies?
Some countries operate with representative democracy, many countries in the European Union operate this way. Representative democracy is a type of democracy where elected people represent a group of people. Representative democracy places power in the hands of representatives who are elected by the people. Political parties often become central to this form of democracy if electoral systems require or encourage voters to vote for political parties or for candidates associated with political parties. France, Germany, Denmark and Austria for example are countries with representative democracies. In many countries this system is contested because the people want more power to express themselves more like a direct democracy.
What is a country without democracy ?
A country without democracy isn’t a democracy of course, some countries are with an authoritarian regime. That means that the Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting, the people can’t express themselves and they have less rights than the democratic regime. We could think that it is rarier today in our world to have authoritarian countries but no. Certainly, some countries have developed their regime like Franco's Spain who is today a representative democratic country but many others countries are authoritarian like Morocco, Vietnam, China or Venezuela.
This international democracy day is really important to show the different regime of countries, if it’s a democratic country or not. We can see that a lot of countries aren’t a democracy contrary to European countries or some of them say to themselves that they are a democratic system but in reality not really.
The number of democracies has increased significantly since 1946. Indeed, at that date, there were only twenty democracies out of the 72 States recognized at the time. This progress is due in particular to the end of the Cold War and to the democratization of the South American continent since the end of the 1980s.