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The United States electoral system
The United States electoral system
American electoral college
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What is democracy? Democracy is a type of method used to manage the government (Dewey, 1978, p. 288). In a democratic government, the people hold the power. Power can either be exercised by the people or through elected representatives. According to Muck (2016) “democracy is a synthesis of political freedom and political equality”. Furthermore, the goal of democracy is so serve the people. Serving the people includes making sure that all people have equal rights and freedom. In a democracy there should be “no man left behind”. If people whom are least wealthy and nor powerful are not served then it is not a democracy. Democracy puts a lot of faith in people in order to make the correct ethical decisions.
There are two categories of democracy.
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More specifically, representative democracy is used. Each state has two representatives that are either in the upper house or the Senate. Each state also elected officials in the House of Representatives. The number of elected officials in the House of Representatives varies based on the population of each state. The power of the people is minimized when it comes to representative democracy in the United States. However, the elected officials are representing a group of people, which enable them to be called a democracy. The members of the House of Representative and Senate have elections. These elections help evaluate the performance of the members as representatives. If the citizens believe that the representatives are being efficient then they can re-elect them. Allowing citizens to vote for their representative allows them to have a sense of power. When citizens vote for their representative, they have no way of knowing if the representatives will act on their behalf. The elected representative may have a different point of view on policies that citizens do. Furthermore, choosing a representative can be very risky. There has to be trust between citizens and representatives when it comes to making important decisions. Representatives cannot always vote in the interest of every sing voter. Representative should vote with interest of the majority of people in order to be
In contrast, the representative government indicates where the people can freely vote for representatives exercising governmental powers on behalf of the people’s interests. Dawson J also stated that representative government needs people to elect freely their representative as a minimum requirement. In recent judgments in Australia, the two concepts are interchangeable. However, the notion of representative democracy seems a bit broader than the notion of representative government.
Faculty Senate at Truman State University is one small peg in the tradition and history that is representative government and democracy. The term ‘democracy’ is a Greek term that means rule of the people . The earliest democracy and representative government began in Greece, Athens specifically. When representatives were chosen they were selected from wealthy, white males. Usually the men who were chosen were the richest of the possible selection .
Before that can be established, I think a definition of democracy should be stated so that it may be called upon later in this essay. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, democracy is stated as "the principle of social equality and respect for the individual within a community" .
The politico model of representation is the most appropriate representation for congressional members to follow. Because the public
Representation: the effort of elected officials to look out for the interests of those who elect them
...o keep their jobs, Congress members must please the majority of a state and in the nation. Citizens are the people who help campaign and vote to re-elect you or have someone take your job. Members when voting must remember that and consider voting in favor of what the majority in their state wants even if he or she disagrees. If they do not listen to state residents who are the voters, this can lead to someone sitting down in their former seat.
The Ancient Greeks were the first to put the power of a nation in the hands of the average citizen, they created the idea of the democratic government, practiced as a direct democracy. Voting, political assembly, and official citizenship are all concepts that can be traced back to Classical Grecian ideas .The Romans developed the concept of the representative democracy .This was best exemplified by the Roman Senate. The upper house of the US Congress is the Senate in ode to this ancient ideal. Although American Democracy is defined as a Representative Democracy, that is to say citizens elect those who make decisions, they owe a great deal to Greek ideas and concepts.
Giving each voter a specific representative is extremely important. Doing so helps to encourage constituency service by providing voters with an easily identifiable “ombudsman.” Voters feel like they are well represented and can go to their congressman (or whoever their representative may be) with questions and requests, and their representative will understand them because he or she is “one of them.” Having a specific representative also helps people to avoid the worry that they don’t have any say in who governs them. Likewise, more individuals will tend to vote because people are voting for an actual person rather than a group or a party.
Democracy is a Greek word meaning “rule by the people.” The idea of a democratic government began in Greece in 700 B.C, about twenty-five hundred years ago. Rome was so large that not everyone could play a role in government so the Roman citizens elected representatives to speak and act for them. This form of government was called a republic. The United States has a representative form of government. The representatives make laws and rules for the country. The government should be rated at an 8 because it has some flaws but it is still decent.
The United States of America is a republic, or representative democracy. Democracy, a word that comes to us from Greek, literally means the people rule (Romance, July 8). This broad definition leaves unanswered a few important details such as who are the people, how shall they rule, and what should they rule on (July 8). Defining the answers to those questions means defining a model for a democratic system. William E. Hudson defines four such models in his book American Democracy in Peril: the Protective, Developmental, Pluralist, and Participatory models of democracy (Hudson, 8-19). Of these models, perhaps Participatory comes closest to an ideal, pure democracy of rule by the people (16-19). In practice, however, establishing a stable ideal democracy is not entirely feasible. In a country the size of the United States, it quickly becomes unwieldy if not impossible to have direct rule by the people. To overcome this, the compromise of the representative system allows the people to choose who will rule on a regular basis. The political culture that defines American politics shows that despite this compromise, America is still very much a democratic society.
House members serve to be representatives voted into office from around the country to represent the populations from which they come from. As described in the textbook, “representation refers to an elected leader’s looking out for his or her constituents while carrying out the duties of the office” (Krutz et al., 421). These constituents must vote continuously reach out to their representative for their ideas to be heard and better represented. It may come to no surprise though that often the representative may not consider the ideas of others or there may be conflicting demands. There are many ways the representative may feel of their duty whether it be a trustee, delegate, or mix of the two.
However, the system that has been in place for centuries is no longer doing its job. Elections operate on a winner take all system: if one candidate gets more than fifty percent of the vote, even if it is just fifty-one percent, they are the representative for the district. This brings down accountability: the congressman or woman is only accountable to his party members in the new hyper partisan climate of our country. The constituents who did not vote for him or her are not represented in the House of Representatives. Doesn’t that sound odd?
Representative democracy is when citizens of one country select a person to represent them in different decision-making processes connected to the government and nation. After elections, only representatives are involved in some decision-making processes, but not whole citizens of a country. It means that only a few chosen people make a decision for an entire nation and representatives are more likely to have a less experience about the life of ordinary people that is why sometimes they cannot make a best choice for their nation. Except that, by using power which is given them by nation they are able to create a law within partnership with other representatives that ordinary people would be against.
When defining what a democracy is it is important to keep in mind that the oft-used procedural definition of holding elections lacks the specificity that is required to determine if those elections are wholly democratic. Seymour Martin Lipset provides a definition that encompasses
Democracy has come to mean a principle under whose flag has most of the developed countries aced in their race for Imperialism. It has gone beyond all previous governing systems and has made room for progress and development. By offering free and fair elections, democracy has redefined human dignity and patriotism. It has also helped to improve decision-making among the citizens, and brought down the crime level. Democracy is for sure the most fitting among the other types of government, and needs to be implemented fully for effective functioning of a state.