The Death of Democracy

In my pervious blogs I was talking about the different ways in which the digital media world has helped inform us about democracy and also how it has shaped our concept of democracy. In this blog I will also be focusing on democracy but not on how we are informed about it through the media but more about democracy as a whole and the ways in which it is represented to us.  I will also be discussing abit about habermases theory and its influence towards democracy.

Direct democracy - One category of democratic system is direct democracy; direct democracy is basically when the right of every citizen who is over the age limit is allowed to attend political gatherings/congregations and  is also allowed to partake and vote on important issues being raised and discussed at political meetings. One major section of direct democracy is that everyone involved has the right to hold political responsibility if they wish to do so. This type of democracy also accepts that everyone who has the power to should with great force take part in the organization so that the representation of the people can have a serious impact on any law that is passed on as it will have many votes from the majority.

Representative Democracy - An additional type of democracy is representative democracy; before I go on to explain exactly what representative democracy is it is made apparent and clearly obvious to us from the first word which is ‘representative’ often when this word is mentioned it can mean one of two things which can either be seen in a positive and negative light. One which is when you are representing a country or a group of individuals for example prime minister, president, mayor, council etc, all of these are considered as representatives for the general public. However on the other hand every so often through the media and politics false representations are given out about a political party or Mp which influence and help mould people’s opinions and views about them, this is a fine example of a negative representation and outlook.

a good example of representative democracy would have to be great Britain as it is one of the few countries where citizens which are 18 and over gather to vote and elect a representative for their country this chosen representative will be held responsible for making important decisions about various topics such as travel fares/ school fees/ and other economic issues and changes. These elections take place every 5 years and the winning Mp becomes a representative for the general public in parliament. All the Mp’s assemble together in the House of Commons with the main intention to discuss important matters and pass on laws.

As part of my other assignments for journalism I was assigned to do an essay about Jurgen Habermas and his theory about the well speculated public sphere when doing my research I found that the public sphere and democracy slightly correspond in a way, because in the public sphere people would gather in various locations of coffee shops to discuss important and political issues and vote amongst themselves. This can be seen as a form of direct and representative democracy.

References http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/direct_democracy.htm

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/representative_democracy.htm