CDZ What are the Signs of Democracy?

[Bleipriester]

I am wondering what the signs of democracy are. Democracy means "reign of the people".

 

[Kat]

I had to choose ''other''. Too many choices

 

[320 Years of History]

Chose "other." All the "non-other" options seem like punch lines in a stand up comedy routine.

 

[Bleipriester]

I think it is democracy when the people are allowed to participate in decision making. Referendums on major issues for example.

 

[there4eyeM]

Soon there will be a comment concerning the imagined separation between democracies and republics.

 

[320 Years of History]

Just to point to a variety of approaches to answering the title question.

• Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach
  
• Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research
  
• Democracy in Brief
• The Basic Concept for the Democracy Ranking of the Quality of Democracy
  
• Understanding Democracy: Data from Unlikely Places
  
• What Democracy Means to Citizens – and Why It Matters

I've pointed to the documents above because the question asked is such an academic one that's been very well discussed by plenty of folks, as reading the references cited in the docs above will show.

 

[Bleipriester]

I am going to read that later. However, I actually asked for individual points of view.

 

[Moonglow]

I am wondering what the signs of democracy are. Democracy means "reign of the people".

People put up stupid polls to be elected on..

 

[numan]

'
I can decide which areas of government gets to use my tax money. No other areas of government get to spend the money.

For example, the military would not be able to use any of my tax money.

The department of government investigating voting machine fraud (if anyone in government is investigating it) would get 10% of my tax money.

 

[Moonglow]

'
I can decide which areas of government gets to use my tax money. No other areas of government get to spend the money.

For example, the military would not be able to use any of my tax money.

The department of government investigating voting machine fraud (if anyone in government is investigating it) would get 10% of my tax money.

it's not your democracy, it's a democracy...

 

[Bleipriester]

'
I can decide which areas of government gets to use my tax money. No other areas of government get to spend the money.

For example, the military would not be able to use any of my tax money.

The department of government investigating voting machine fraud (if anyone in government is investigating it) would get 10% of my tax money.

Nice idea. If I had money to spend it would go to the military. I mean, while your military is over-funded, ours is a bunch of sad guys sitting on broken stuff much like the poor guys in Stalingrad.

 

[320 Years of History]

I am going to read that later. However, I actually asked for individual points of view.

You will find individuals' points of view in every one of those papers/essays. It's just that they'll be points of view offered by individuals who comprehensively considered the question, and comprehensively answered it. What you won't find, however, is random blathering about whatever crosses the writers' minds and that is based on little but isolated anecdotal observations.

 

[numan]

'
Idiotic Americans puff their chests out about their "wonderful" democracy -- or republic -- they can't seem to decide which it is. They think they are Rome and Greece rolled into one, whereas, in fact, they are just a militarized Brazil, run by a bunch of narcissistic oligarchs. Trump reminds me very much of Crassus in the collapse of the Roman Republic.

Such a bunch of goofballs thinking that their motto "No Taxation without Representation" is anything but a sorry joke is pathetic.

Only if I and all other citizens could decide where our tax money is spent could we be said to have any real representation in this neo-totalitarian environmental-sink known as the USA.