POLS 1150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Political Religion, Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin
30 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
The word democracy is an english adaptation of a medieval french term, which was derived from greek: demos the people, kratia the power to rule, democracy rule by the people. Held elections, but they weren"t fair or democratic in any way. In the 20th century, the only major regimes that didn"t claim that they were democratic were fascism and national socialism: the leader embodied the people so talking about democracy was irrelevant. Electoral democracies can also come in many forms: direct democracy, semi-direct democracy, indirect (representative) democracy. Systems in which the people make all of the decisions themselves without politicians, legislators, leaders, etc. Everyone is equal in the process of making a decision (no one is above or below anybody else) True direct democracies are very rare: relatively small communities, can be religious or secular, most common forms are anarchist societies.
