DEMOCRACY
This chapter
considers the meaning of democracy and examines critically some of
the formal and informal institutions of liberal democracy. These
include elections, constitutions and the three branches of govern-
ment: executive, legislative and judicial. Informal institutions focus
on the system of communication between government and people
through interest groups, political parties and the instruments of mass
communication.
How can government be ‘democratic’?
It is not inevitable that the government of a state should be
‘democratic’; the existence of authoritarian, fascist, military, theo-
cratic or traditionalist regimes cannot be dismissed as impossible
anachronisms even in the twenty-first century. However, for the
purposes of this discussion, it is convenient to assume the desirability
of popular government – what President Lincoln described in the
Gettysburg address as ‘Government of the People, by the People, and
for the People’. We ask what values such governments may be
thought to serve and the extent to which existing democratic insti-
tutions realise them.