Democracy: how much do you have?
The essential reason for creating independence4you.org was the question, whether the states we (are forced to) live in are really democracies or something else.
How do you define a measure for democracy? Actually that is kind of simple: you just need to ask the right questions, define a few representative answers and assign a plausible value to them.
Lets start with the basic question about the basic set of rules that defines your society (probably organized as a state):
Does your state (or the society you live in, however it’s organized) have an existing constitution, which defines the state (organization) as “democratic”?
- Yes, our constitution states that the form of government is a democracy. (Democracy Score: 100%)
- No, we don’t have a constitution, or it states, that our govenment is not a democracy. (Democracy Score: 0%)
Wikipedia says: The term originates from the Greek δημοκρατία (dēmokratía) “rule of the people”, which as found from δῆμος (dêmos) “people” and κράτος (krátos) “power” or “rule”; Democracy is further defined as “government by the people; especially : rule of the majority”
(I am quoting the statements consistent with the original idea of democracy, not those stating, what it has been turned into in the meantime)
Rule of the people … so the people (via mojority votes) decide about the rules of their society.
This brings us to our second essential question:
Who made the constitution for your state?
- The citizens in a democratic process (suggestion, support of suggestion, poll). (Democracy Score: 100%)
- Representatives, who were selected in a direct democratic process by the people and charged with the task to make the constitution for them. (Democracy Score: 66%)
- Some politicians who happened to be in power at the time, due to some war or a revolution. (Democracy Score: 33%)
- Some power-elite, completely independent from any vote or involvement of the majority of the people. Democracy Score: 0%)
I wonder, if your state started out with a democratically made constitution. I know, mine didn’t (it get’s a 33% score).
We’ll continue this in the upcoming blog entries. There are many more questions and in the end, we’ll have a nice little measurement tool for a democracy score, that gives us a good idea, how much democracy we actually have (and if it’s even legit to call it a democracy)