Democracy is one of the most important subjects in the social sciences. From the work of de Tocqueville in the early nineteenth century through the work of the best contemporary scholars, democracy has been studied closely and debated widely...

Democracy Democracy is difficult to define, not only because it is vague, like so many political terms, but more importantly, because what one person would regard as a paradigm case another would deny was a democracy at all. The word has acquired a...

Democracy poses problems for science and technology because it leads to potential conflicts between two strong sets of ethical values. Democracy prizes the ethics of inclusiveness and political equality. Within a democratic system all citizens have an...

Democracy Democracy originated in ancient Greece. The Greek words demo kratia mean rule or power ( kratia ) of the common people ( demos ). For the Greeks, to live in a democracy was to live in a political community ( polis , or city-state )...

Transitional Political Systems A transition is an interval between two regimes. Many political systems enter into a transition because their old regime, that is, their rules, procedures, and institutions, has become untenable, and they remain in the...

Democracy [addendum] It is widely agreed that democracy is a system of gov-ernment in which the people rule. Since the term "democracy" is often also used to describe nonpolitical communities—such as religious congregations, clubs,...

literally, rule by the people. The term is derived from the Greek dēmokratiā, which was coined from dēmos (“people”) and kratos (“rule”) in the middle of the 5th century &BC; to denote the political systems...

In the classical Greek polis, democracy was the name of a constitution in which the poorer people (demos) exercised power in their own interest as against the interest of the rich and aristocratic. Aristotle thought it a debased form of constitution,...

Democracy is the most valued and also perhaps the vaguest of political concepts in the modern world. Political systems as diverse as the USA, various one-party states in Africa and communist states all describe themselves as democracies. Indeed, it is...

There are diverse Protestant approaches to Darwinism, only a few of which have been touched on here. Through the 1990s numerous attempts were made to create forums for constructive dialogue, which are supported in several countries by the Templeton...

Form of government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodic free elections. In a direct democracy, the public participates in government...

Literally, it means the power of the people, so that supreme power is ultimately vested in the people and exercised by their representatives. In fact, it is a political arrangement in government whereby the people’s wishes may be...

In political theory, Democracy describes a small number of related forms of government and also a political philosophy. A common feature of democracy as currently understood and practiced is competitive elections. Competitive elections are usually seen...