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The Pros And Cons Of Representative Democracy

Decent Essays

We chose to institute a direct democracy instead of a representative democracy. A direct democracy occurs when all of the citizens propose and vote on laws. This is modeled after the Assembly in ancient Athens. In contrast, a representative democracy happens when the people elect a representative who proposes laws for them and a group of government officials vote to pass or reject the law, which is similar to the current government of the United States of America. One of the biggest issues with a representative democracy is that it’s very easy to influence or bribe the officials. As a result, the bribers nearly always have the officials on their side. These bribes are in the form of campaign donations. An example of this “bribery” would be …show more content…

This problem does not appear a direct democracy. In a representative democracy, it is in the hands of the representative to be fair and impartial. Truthfully, the odds are that the representative won’t remain unbiased and will rule from his own personal opinion or what benefits his constituency. Since there are only so many representatives, all one side needs is the majority to win. However, in a direct democracy it is much harder to tip the vote in favor of one side. This is because there are so many people who each have a voice, it would be rare for thousands of people to have an unfair bias. The result of this is a more impartial outcome than if there was a representative democracy. This insures more viewpoints represented in the long …show more content…

Not all of the positions for government offices are filled through an election; many are filled simply by an important government official deciding who gets the job. This correlates with the issue mentioned previously about bias. In the United States of America, the seats for the Supreme Court are filled by the President rather than an election. Therefore, if the President is very conservative, he will appoint judges to the Supreme Court who have rulings which contain more conservative than liberal ideas. In addition, many other governmental posts are filled with people who are liked by those in higher positions. This proves one of the biggest arguments against a representative government. Even though people choose the representatives, there are so many positions that are filled without an election, the people don’t actually have a voice in the selection process. But the biggest benefit of a direct democracy is that the people actually get a say instead of appointing a representative and hoping that the representatives won’t end up being close minded to the needs of all the people. Also, because the people will actually get a say, then there won’t always be complaints that someone didn’t get a voice. Of course there will still be people who are unhappy, but this is to be expected in a democratic system. A direct democracy dismantles almost all of the other

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