Thursday, April 7, 2011
Udfl
Democracy as a form of government dates back to the time of the ancient Greeks. “Democracy” is actually a word of Greek origins using the Greek prefix “Demos” meaning people and the suffix “cracy” meaning to rule. Therefore, the meaning of “democracy” is literally “rule by the people”. The ability of the people to rule means that all who are considered citizens self-govern. Modern western democratic politics owes much of its heritage to the ancient Greeks. The main difference between the ancient and modern variants of the form of governments is who were considered citizens or people. The ancient Greeks only considered landowning males citizens whereas modern Western democracies allow political, enthnic, racial and religious minorities to vote. Ancient Greek democracy was the democratic politics in its purest sense when the “people” actually governed themselves directly when landowning males all gathered in the council of the Athenian city-state to discuss and vote on the political issues of their day. However, as with all human inventions, democracy has improved over the years and became more flexible to address potential for tyranny of the majority, or in the case of Athenian civilization – the minority.
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The ideas for modern Western democratic politics did not come out of thin air. Democracy evolved over thousands of years. Democracy was not perfect and still is not perfect. However, what makes democracy wonderful despite its clear problems is its flexibility to evolve over time. The first political philosopher to point out the main problem of democracy was Plato. In his most famous philosophical work on politics, he pointed out that democratic politics are that democratic leaders are elected to merely pander to the fickle will of the masses; thus, constituting a tyranny of the majority. Plato, brilliant as he was, could not solve this critical problem of democratic politics; in fact, he preferred rule by a enlightened despotism. Hundreds of years after Athenian Civilization collapsed, the Roman Republic set the earliest framework of modern representative democracy. The Roman Republic organized their government based on the democratic election of the Roman government officials. These officials formed the senate, the lawmaking body of Rome. Like all civilizations, Rome had issues of class. The two classes were the Plebeians and the Senatorial Class. Political conflict between the two classes later created the tribune of the Plebes that checked the authority of the Senate. This was a crucial turning point in the making of modern democratic politics, it was the first elected government body that addressed the issue of political minority rights.
ReplyDeleteApproximately 1700 years after the fall of Rome, the founding fathers of the American Republic studied ancient Athenian and Roman civilizations and further improved democratic politics with the invention of the constitutional democratic republic. The American framers of the Constitution improved the primitive Roman system of checks and balances. As James Madison pointed out in the influential “Federalist Papers,” “In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others”. Thus the three branches of government were assigned each powers that were designed to check and balance each other because the framers knew that ambitious men will try to outdo each other’s power, which would eventually lead to tyranny. The system of checks and balances were not enough to prevent the government’s tendency to descend into tyranny so the framers included the Bill of Rights. The Anti-federalists refused to ratify the Constitution without the Bill of Rights, which put limitations on the ability of Government to be tyrannical over the greatest minority, the individual.
Democratic politics are still not perfect and political violence within a democracy is sometimes inevitable. This is a big problem in newer democracies like Iraq and Post-Soviet Russia where the resilience of democracies is tested. The avoidance of a tyranny of the majority or a powerful minority is crucial to the perpetuation of liberty. Democracy is inherently not a guarantee of liberty; it takes a good constitution and belief that everyone is rational and therefore deserves a right to participate in government.