Democracy Flashcards
What is democracy?
- As a concept represents an ‘ideal type’
- A set of institutions, relations and practices
- Often means different things to different people
What was Schumpter’s (1947) definition of democracy?
“institutional arrangement for arriving a political decision in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of competitive struggle for the peoples vote”
what was Dahl’s (1971) definition of democracy as a polyarchy?
“the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals”
What was Mainwaring et al (2007) description of democracies?
1) free and fair elections
2) universal participation
3) civil liberties
4) responsible government
What are the two types of measures of democracy?
Dichotomy or continuous
What are some problems with measuring democracies?
- Dealing with ‘hybrid regimes’
- Varieties of democracy
- not all measures of democracy agree
Describe parliamentary democracy
- command is drawn from the elected legislature
- often comes from absolute monarchies to democracy
- prime ministers can be removed from parliament
- fusion of powers
Describe presidential democracy
- executive and legislative branch, elected separately
- president directly elected
- Legislative and executive each have own mandate
- Separation of powers
- president can’t be removed unless impeachment
What are the three characteristics of a semi-presidential regime according to Duverger (1980)?
1) president is elected by universal suffrage
2) president possessed quite considerable powers
3) has a PM and ministers who possess executive power and can stay in office only if the parliament does not show its opposition to them
What is president-parliamentarism?
Where the prime minster and cabinet are collectively responsible to both the legislature and the president
What is Premier-presidentialism
Where the prime minister and cabinet are collectively responsible solely to the legislature
What are the pros of presidentialism?
- Accountability
- Identifiable
- Executive stability based of president’s fixed term of office
- voters more likely to have a wider choice
What are the cons of presidentialism?
- Encourages winner-take-all outcome
- encourages populist candidates
- executive-legislative deadlock
- more rigid than parliamentary
what are the pros of parliamentarianism?
- Flexibility
- Broader representation
- Conciliation and cooperation, coalition builfing
- Generally regarded as superior (Przeworski et al 2000)
What are the cons of parliamentarianism?
- Nobody votes for a coalition
- Executive can change without the public’s approval or electoral mandate
- Accountability is weaker, especially in a coaltion
