Start here: Democracy and Participation

What is democracy?

Democracy is ‘rule by the people’ or ‘people power’ (from the Greek demos meaning people and kratos meaning power). Democracy, like other terms such as ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘rights’, has become somewhat overused, therefore the word ‘democracy’ is usually accompanied by another phrase to clarify meaning, for example; direct democracy, liberal democracy, totalitarian democracy and indirect democracy. Each of these terms describes a specific form of democracy.

• Under direct democracy, every citizen has the right to an important role in decision making.
• Under indirect democracy (e.g. representative government), everyone has the right to have a say in choosing the people who take decisions.
• Liberal democracies are indirect democracies in which governments are chosen through free and fair elections, and people have the right to make a public protest if they object to the policies implemented between elections. The UK is usually seen as a liberal democracy.
• In “totalitarian democracies”, polls are held which do not satisfy the principles of liberal pluralism, and which the ruling party always wins. Without a guarantee of free speech, or even of the personal safety of the government’s critics, no democratic validity can be at attached to the results.

Democracy in the UK

One of the first tasks when studying politics in the UK is to examine the forms of democracy within the different levels of government. Some political scientists argue that UK is very democratic, whilst others argue there are still a large number of features of the UK system of government that are undemocratic. Opinions differ about the quality of UK democracy, and it would be a mistake to think that it was incapable of improvement. However, it does clearly satisfy the basic criteria of a representative system, and institutions such as free speech make it reasonable to describe the UK as a liberal democracy.

In recent years, the use of referenda has increased (most notably on issues of devolution, Scottish independence and the voting system). Referendums are a way of incorporating an element of direct democracy in a system of representative government. They can be important assets to any system of liberal democracy. However, there are serious unresolved problems about the use of this device, and proposals to bypass elected representatives entirely are potentially dangerous. Since the 2000 Representation of the People Act, the government has encouraged electoral turnout by permitting new voting methods. The early results have been encouraging, but this should not be allowed to obscure the fact that public discontent with politicians has deep roots.

Therefore, you must be able to analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of the various democratic (and undemocratic) devices in practice, and use this evaluation to tackle the broader question of ‘how democratic is the UK?’ .