Democratic Government and Non-Democratic Government

Democratic Government and Non‐Democratic Government
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Democracy may be used to refer to a system of governance involving multiparty elections, representative government, and freedom of speech. However there is no universally accepted definition of democracy among scholars, Flyvbjerg and Bent (2012). Over the years, the most identifiable characteristics with democracy are equity and freedom. This denotes that the all citizens in a country are equally treated before the law.
Further, in a representative democracy, every vote has equal weight and no other restriction can be used against those who are willing to represent their people in governance positions. The people’s freedom legislated in a constitution, which gives them their legitimate rights and liberty as citizens of that nation. There are different democracy forms, including liberal democracy characterized by political pluralism, equity before law, right of petition, parliament sovereignty, judicial independence, civil society etc. Others include majority rule, which allows the minority to be oppressed by the majority in the absence of legal protection for such group of minority. According to Flyvbjerg and Bent (2012), the main characteristics of democracies are competitive elections, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of political expression e.t.c. It is guided by social contrast and collective will of the people thus, decisions on matters that tough people’s lives are made by the eligible citizens.
Democracy gives the citizen of a nation an equal participation in matters nation building and governance. This may be either directly or through elected representatives. According to Kurt, Josiah and Robert (2007), the concept of democracy came from Ancient Greece. Ancient Rome, Europe and North and South America made a big contribution to development of democracy. According to Birch and Anthon. (1993), today’s democracy, power is either held by one-person monarchy) or held by a small group of ind...