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The term democracy first appeared in ancient Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of Athens during classical antiquity. [46] [47] The word comes from dêmos '(common) people' and krátos 'force/might'. [48] Under Cleisthenes, what is generally held as the first example of a type of democracy in 508–507 BC was ...
Athenian democracy – democracy in the Greek city-state of Athens developed around the fifth century BCE, making Athens one of the first known democracies in the world, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica. It was a system of direct democracy, in which eligible citizens voted directly on legislation and ...
A liberal democracy is a representative democracy with rule of law, protection for individual liberties and rights, and limitations on the power of the elected representatives. An illiberal democracy is a representative democracy with weak or no limits on the power of the elected representatives to rule as they please.
A parliamentary system, or parliamentary democracy, is a form of government where the head of government (chief executive) derives their democratic legitimacy from their ability to command the support ("confidence") of a majority of the legislature, to which they are held accountable.
The power of representatives is usually curtailed by a constitution (as in a constitutional democracy or a constitutional monarchy) or other measures to balance representative power: [7] An independent judiciary, which may have the power to declare legislative acts unconstitutional (e.g. constitutional court, supreme court).
On my recent visit to Taiwan, which holds presidential elections Jan. 13, Vincent Chao of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party told me that the election itself was a form of national security ...
A sham election, or show election, is an election that is held purely for show; that is, without any significant political choice or real impact on the results of the election. [ 28 ] Sham elections are a common event in dictatorial regimes that feel the need to feign the appearance of public legitimacy .
Term Description Examples Autocracy: Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power (social and political) is concentrated in the hands of one person or polity, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection).