POLS 2100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Jawaharlal Nehru, Liberal Democracy, Direct Democracy
20 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Democracy comes from the greek word: demos, meaning the common people. Power is the hands of the people. Democracy assumes that the people are capable of ruling themselves. It is defined by o"neil as follows: political power exercised either directly or indirectly through participation, competition, and liberty. Democracy is also defined by others in procedural terms: democracy is a political system that holds relatively fair, contested elections on a regular basis . The word democracy has inherently positive connotation for many people: thinfs that are democratic" are good; things that are undemocratic" are bad democracy advocates. This book does not claim a particular kind of democracy, or even democracy itself, is the best way to organize politics . Critics, skeptics, and doubters theocrats argue that democracy is bad because only god can or should rule humans. Some members of the israeli knesset believe that the country should be run as a theocracy. Marxists claim liberal democracy is really bourgeois democracy.
