Democracy

• Impractical - Disadvantage

  Direct. Direct democracy could be claimed to be impracticable in a large-scale society, direct democracy is not achievable with a voting population of millions of people. Continually relying on the general population to vote on every matter is unrealistic, voter fatigue can easily occur.


  Over 46 million people are registered to vote in the UK.
• REPRESENTATIVE- AD

  practical

  Representative democracy is the only practical form of democracy in a large modern society, given the numbers now involved, other more direct forms of democracy are generally unpractical for a host of reasons. By having elected representatives, it does not exhaust voters.


  Even in Ancient Greece in the city state of Athens despite an estimated population of 250,000, only around 40,000 male citizens had the right to participate in the democratic process.
• Expertise

  direct

  Direct democracy demands from citizens a relatively high level of knowledge of issues that are sometimes complex. It can be argued that not every member of the electorate can make informed and educated choices on certain affairs that may require a high level of expertise.

  Plato, argued that the ‘masses’ do not know what is best for them, he compared the state to that of a ship, he said leaders of the state should know how to ‘steer the ship’
• Expertise

  representative

  Representative democracy allows for the government to be in the hands of those with expert knowledge, experience and perhaps be better educated. This means that reliable decisions can be made due to those elected having a higher knowledge of what the outcome results in

  • Of the 650 UK Members of Parliament, 85% of which went to university.

  • Joseph Schumpeter considered representative democracy a credible solution to the problem of most people simply not having the time or expertise to be able to continuously engage in a complex political debate.
• representation

  Direct

  In a direct democracy, those of ethnic minority backgrounds, those in a disabled minority or other types of groups may find their voices drowned out by the majority. Typically, white males dominate political settings, excluding all other opinions and viewpoints


  Had direct democracy been allowed to dictate civil rights in 1950-60s America, racial segregation would not have disappeared from the South, as most voters there were supportive of it.
• representation

  representative

  In most western democracies, the majority of representative are white and male. The under representation can lead to ‘tyranny of the majority.’ Decisions could effectively lack authority and respectability as many voices may be overlooked and go unrecognised


  of July 2021, there are 222 women in the House of Commons which makes up only 34% of all MP’s despite the UK population being 51% female
• More participation-Direct 


  Seen through high Scottish independence turnout 85%
• Direct-legitimacy

  Direct democracy can be seen as an important way to confer legitimacy upon policy plans, especially if they involve major constitutional change or the introduction of novel ideas. This can be done through referenda, which gets the electorates majority opinion.


  There has been, largely acceptance of decisions made by referendums in the past, for example the Scottish Parliament in 1997 and in Scottish Independence in 2014


  S