Through education and the news across America, there are so many times where a person can learn about our U. S. governmental systems. Democracy describes a small number of related forms of government. Invented in 510 B. C. its name comes from the ancient Greek for “rule of the people. ” A common feature of democracy and currently understood and practiced is competitive elections. There are several forms of democracy, representation democracy involves the selection of governmental officials by the people being represented. The most common mechanism involves election of the candidate with a majority or a plurality of the votes.
Parliamentary democracy is government appointed by parliament representatives as opposed to “presidential rule” by dictatorship. Lastly direct democracy is the political system where citizens participate in the decision making personally, contrary to relying on intermediaries or representatives. The Webster’s dictionary defines democracy as government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
I understand that meaning of the term democracy is rule by the people. Although when so many people want to rule together, we face chaos. I feel that democracy is best represented in a person or party with power invested in that person or party by the people, that we vote for. But according to the definition of democracy poses a paradox. The government of the people? Does that mean a government is elected by everyone without any conflict? What about for the people? Is government truly for everybody?
For those who voted and those who don’t, equally Since the idea of democracy, if these questions were address and put into practice in a form of government, then I feel America would not have any political dilemma with a democratic form of government. As I am learning and starting to understand democracy I feel that democracy has weaknesses. One weakness of democracy is that a democratic form of government could be abolished in a democratic way. For example, if our legislative body wants to institute another form of government, they are allowed.
What we see here is that by democracy is actually a rule by majority. The actual meaning and application of democracy I feel is confusing to all humans. Democracy in its true meaning is an integration of everyone’s rights, privileges, and power blended into one system of government. A truly democratic government is one that is directly elected by people which rights, privileges, aspiration, power and freedom of all the voters, individually who is the basic element, share a common ground.
This is another weakness, because everybody has the same rights, aspirations, power and freedom as everyone else yet democracy does not seem to work well. When I heard that word democracy is tend to think freedom. Until now I understand that there is a huge misunderstanding about democracy. If someone thinks that one is free to do what they want, that is not democracy. Also, people tend to confuse freedom with liberty. One is free to think and say whatever they want, but are not a liberty to inflict someone with their freethinking and speech, as the other person’s rights and freedom need to be protected.
Therefore, democracy within the realm of freedom is a chain of responsibility not to violate others’ rights and freedom. Sustaining democracy, is not an easy job. You are free but you are not at liberty to do whatever you like and you need to be responsible. A good example would be if a 14-year-old boy walked into a convenience store and asked to buy a pack of cigarettes, under law the employee would not be allowed to do so. Although, if the 14-year-old boy asked to buy a pack of condoms, the employee can sell him as many as he liked.
Clearly, the 14 year olds democratic rights were ignored, as a the cigarettes were not sold to him. Because democracy does not discrimination the basic of age, color, religion, sex, opinions, etc. But the law was made not to sell cigarettes to minors. But no law has been make, to decline selling the pack of condoms. Then, it would have been another democratic right. So what we see in this scenario,, is that we learn and talk about democracy, we talk about equal opportunity, we talk about no discrimination of race, sex, orientation, etc but in reality, democratic principles are not applied.
What is applied is a set of laws, and who makes the laws? Our elected congressmen. Bureaucracy is a concept in political science referring to the way that the administrative execution and enforcement of legal rules are socially organized. It is define as the structure and set of regulations in place to control activity, usually in large organization and government. Bureaucracy is characterizes by standardized procedure (rule-following), formal division of responsibility, hierarchy, and impersonal relationships.
The four structural concepts that are central to any definition of bureaucracy: a well-defined division of administrative labor among persons and offices, a personnel system with consistent patterns of recruitment and stable linear careers, a hierarchy among offices, such that the authority and status are differentially distributed among actors, and formal and informal networks that connect organization actors to one another through flows of information and patterns of cooperation. Examples of everyday bureaucracy included governments, armed forces, corporations, hospitals, schools, courts, and ministries.
My interpretation on bureaucracy is they are the “middle men. ” The government makes decisions that effect the people and they are the ones who enforce them. Domestic policy is the counterpart of foreign policy. It consists of all government policy decisions, programs, and actions that primarily deal with internal matters, as opposed to relations with other nation-states. Major areas of domestic policy include tax policy, social security and welfare programs, environmental laws, and regulations on businesses and their practices.
