Impact Of Populism On Democracy

Public opinion greatly shapes the democracy of our country. The Public opinion is the people’s interests and actions. It can be swayed by common linkages such as: media, interest groups, elections, and political parties. These linkages are channels by which government becomes aware of the public opinion. Public opinion is different from the Mass opinion by which the mass opinion is the majority vote/decision. Key’s theory states that it is in fact the public’s opinion that keeps leaders and policy connected. “He believed that the public’s opinion keeps leaders from straying too far outside the parameters acceptable to the people in the making of policy” (Key’s introduction, 419). V.O. Key’s theory of the Public Opinion and American Democracy relates to what we are currently enduring in our nation’s process of choosing an electoral candidate to become the next political leader. For it is not the elites decision to choose the next elite in power, it’s the people’s choice for whom they decide should be their next leader.

Polarization, populism, and erosion of democracy are all occurring. It Is important then to look at the relationship between these three things, and their potential to cause further issues. As I hope I made clear in my discussion of polarization there is a real threat to democracy that exists when people are not able to be held accountable. Polarization on its own caused the issues of gerrymandering and voter id laws that were discussed above, but more important than that is the relationship between polarization within government and populism. According to Liebermann “hyperpolarization magnifies tendencies for the partisan capture of institutions that are supposed to exercise checks and balances, but may instead be translated into unaccountable

Today, 118 of the world 's 193 countries are democratic, encompassing a majority of its people (54.8 percent, to be exact), a vast increase from even a decade ago (Zakaria 23). When we are faced with the term “Democracy”, we think of safety but what people do not understand is that there are two types of democracy and they are completely opposites of each other. The two types of democracies include liberal and illiberal. In the article, Zakaria warns us about the rise of illiberal democracy (the worst possible form of government). From the beginning of time, democracy has meant the rule of the people but when the power gets into the wrong hands and there are no limits on that power, we are faced with illiberal democracy, a form of government growing rapidly as we speak.

As the year of B.C399, Socrates set in the jail and had waiting for his death penalty. Crito went to his jail, and tried to persuade Socrates to leave. Crito thought the most of people believed he should save his friend—Socrates. He said, “Socrates, that we must pay attention to the opinion of the many, too. The present circumstances make it clear that the many can inflict not just the least of evils but practically the greatest, when one has been slandered amongst them.” However, Socrates refused accept this idea and leave the jail. He had different opinion about the majority. He said, “the many would be able to do the greatest evils, and so they would also be able to do the greatest goods, and that would be fine. But as it is they can do

The values of freedom, tolerance and human rights are at the core of democratic projects across the globe. However, with populist leaders and parties making significant gains on the back of terrorist attacks, increases in migration, the refugee crisis, and economic crisis, these core values are being ignored. Democracy is said to have two core paradoxical elements: rule of the people and rule of law. Functioning democratic states today have both elements in operation as they are necessary for the practical realities of diverse societies. However, populism seeks to create a society that functions solely on the rule of the people. This paper argues that populism is inconsistent with the human rights component of democracy because populism is

Commenting on UKIP’s popularity gain in the 2014 European election, Cushion (Cushion et al 2015: 320) attributes UKIP’s success in the election to be a result of the growth in the significance of issue voting. This is suggested in Figure 4, where the two most covered issues by television news agencies were policies both central to UKIP’s manifesto. Cushion argues that UKIP’s heavy concentration in the media contributed to their victory in the European election (Cushion et al 2015: 321). Considering UKIP’s lack of a traditional partisan base of voters, it can be concluded that their ability to win the majority of votes in the 2014 European election was most likely owing to their ability to resonate with British voters, who are now less partisan and more inclined to vote based on how a party deals with one or two key salient issues, on the matters of immigration and the EU independence

Contemporary Western populism stands in a bilateral relation to digital communication: as a necessary underside of democracy, it amplifies and, at the same time, is amplified by the imbalances between the micropolitical logic of presentation and the macropolitical logic of representation, which are being constantly produced and reproduced within the digital networks. Populism points to the inevitability of macropolitics, but the current modes of governance of the digital networks tend to reinforce the micropolitical forms of practice. As this project maintains, these imbalances belong to a specific affective regime on which populism can effectively feed and where, from a theoretical point of view, the political and technological paradigms collide.

the loss of votes from a certain demographic groups marks a difference in the outcome of a democratic representative election.Each group that was under-represented would influence election results and might ultimately influence government choices or public policies.Without the “low voter turnout” voters, a democracy is only representative of political enthusiasts,who tend to prefer one status quo or

Political parties act as an integral part to the working of democracy. It serves as an organization (of the people) to represent their common interest and needs. However, the effectiveness of a democracy can vary greatly and political parties play a significant role in doing so, thus, strengthening or weakening the democracy. In the following paragraphs, I hope to point out that Political parties do, in fact, help in promoting and strengthening democracy even if they are flawed. Democracy, as I see it, is a political system consisting of four key elements, (i) free and fair elections, (ii) active participation of people in politics, (iii) protection of human rights and (iv) rule of law. A democracy is strong when they execute these four-key elements with effectively although, it tends to weaken if even one of these criterions aren’t met. I analyzed how political parties such as PT in Brazil, the PJ in Argentina and PAN in Mexico helped in promoting democracy by proposing an alternative to the current political system and increasing the involvement of the citizens into the political system. Political parties can have both positive and negative impact on Democracy, however, they are indispensable for the working of a Democracy as well as promoting it.

up rules to secure the basic rights of been in the workforce. One of the disagreements

The Importance of External Influences in Building a Democracy In Democracy in the Third World, Robert Pinkney analyzed circumstances that have been important in the past for building a democracy for current democratic regimes. Pinkney studies seven comparatives and their theories for the cause and effect of democracy and identifies their pros and cons. The most important of these conditions stands in the external influences and foreign participation in building the state as a democracy of a non-democratic country.

Democracy is one thing, and constitutional liberalism quite another. In the inexorable march of modernity, Fareed Zakaria argues in The Rise of Illiberal Democracy, the message of constitutional liberalism has gotten lost in the clamor for democracy. This is problematic because, without a strong foundation of pluralism and constitutional liberalism, the apparatus of democracy can easily be hijacked by forces that hardly espouse the liberal values that have, in the Western mind, become transparently conflated with democracy. The fact that liberal constitutional democracy has become the unmarked case for Western pundits serves and most likely will continue to serve, Zakaria points out, as a

Public participation in political decision-making has been regarded as the foundation stone of the democratic process since the time of Aristotle and Plato’s archaic Greece. It is thinking that has transcended the ages: 18th-century political thinker Jeremy Bentham argued that government must make their deliberations publicly known so ordinary people are “placed in a situation to form an enlightened opinion and the course of the opinion is easily marked” while John Stuart Mill held that public involvement in democratic institutions strengthened ‘civic virtues’ through education on public matters, deepening politician’s understanding of citizen’s opinion and building trust with the people (Ginsborg, 2008 p.60). A more recent position held by political theorist Francis Fukuyama believes that in order for power between political actors to be balanced, democracy requires for "personal interest [to be] corrected by the widest publicity" (2012 p.325). To do otherwise, as contemporary political thinker Robert Dahl posits, will likely see unchecked governments “blunder, sometimes disastrously” (2006 p.5).

As the Economist article highlights, “democracies are going through a difficult time” and currently its forward momentum seems to be at a standstill in the modern-day world (The Economist, n.d.), but the mere fact that democracy has the ability to have “taken root in the most difficult circumstances possible” (the article noting Germany, India, and South Africa of major importance) should be a testament that the democratic ideal is effective and perhaps more importantly, supported, amongst many citizens universally (The Economist, n.d.). One of the first actions towards reinstating and balancing the effectiveness of current democracy is popular participation. Getting citizens to become fully engaged and passionate about participating in politics is integral to a democracy’s success, one that entails not having to compromise in order to achieve an effective yet limited government. As the textbook highlights, without the participation of the public from the entirety of society, governments are less likely to respond to the people’s needs and put the people’s interests at the forefront (Mintz, et al., 2013). A more effective government and a stronger display of democracy will be allowed only when the majority of citizens participate in the voting process freely. In the 2011 Canadian election, the Conservative government found itself obtaining a majority of seats in the House of Commons with only 25 percent of the potential electorate; to begin with, only 61 percent of the

What does the word “populism” actually mean? The meanings of populism are various. There is no any single word or sentence can describe it. It has been defined based on political, economic, social, and discursive features (Weyland 2001,1). The widespread of this word is started at two places, the United States