The purpose of this essay is to discuss the meaning of democracy. We will do this by discussing the arguments made by three journal articles. We will discuss their particular definitions of democracy and the application there off. Democracy, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is “"a system of government in which all the people of a polity or state are involved in making decisions about its affairs, typically by voting to elect representatives to a parliament or similar assembly”. It is one of the five most common political systems used in the world. There are different variants of democracy. The two most popular once are direct democracy and representative democracy. In a direct democracy, every citizen has an equal say and directly participates in the governing process and the making of laws. In a representative democracy, citizens elect representatives who make the laws and handle the process of government. Diamond and Morlino (2004:20) state that political regimes need to be evaluated in order to improve their quality. These regimes need to be looked at both as governments and democratic governments. They argue that there are eight dimensions according to which all democracies should operate and according to which the quality of the democracy can be measured. First, there is the rule of law. Under a rule …show more content…
Each level (rule of law, participation, competition, vertical and horizontal accountability, freedom, equality , responsiveness) can be assessed on its own. But for a democracy to ultimately succeed as a whole, these dimensions need to be investigated as interacting with one another to ensure optimum functioning. A high quality democracy does not rate high on every measure of democratic quality, but instead represents a balancing of virtues that lie in tension (Diamond, Morlino