Direct Democracy vs Representative Democracy Essay Example.
What are the differences between Direct and Representative democracy? The word democracy literally means rule by the people. A democracy is a form of government in which the people either directly or indirectly take part in governing the state. The original democracy, developed in Athens in 5th century BC, was considered to be a direct democracy.
Representative democracy is the only form of democracy that can operate on a large scale so is effective in large, modern societies. Whereas, direct democracy is only really achievable in small communities as it would be way too time consuming to carry out on e.g. an entire nation like the UK with the population of 64.1 million people.
There are two forms that democracy can take, representative democracy and direct democracy. Although it is possible for them to exist side by side, they are very different in how they operate. Democracy vests power in the people but an election then transfers power from the voters to a particular group of politicians so that the British public do not then directly take political decisions such.
Direct Democracy in the Uk .Assess the arguments in favor of the greater use of direct democracy in the UK Direct democracy, or also know as pure democracy allows people to decide and vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to representative democracy where people vote for representatives who then decide the policy’s, where they peoples interest’s are meant to be at heart.
Thus, Electoral Democracy which proves to be a failing of Representative Democracy doesn’t become a major deterrent to actual representation in a model like Direct Democracy that deals with involvement of all individuals in Policy Planning and limits the power of the representatives.
However, representative democracy is a “limited and indirect form of democracy” (Heywood 2007:74) which relies on, in most cases, an electoral mandate for legitimacy. This electoral mandate has been called into question on a number of occasions in modern political history, most notably in the US presidential election of 2005 between George W Bush and Al Gore, and again in the UK General.
One form of democracy is direct democracy, in which eligible citizens have direct and active participation in the decision making of the government. In most modern democracies, the whole body of eligible citizens remain the sovereign power but political power is exercised indirectly through elected representatives; this is called representative democracy.