➜ democracies give power to their citizens to shape political decisions through free, fair, and competitive elections, and through allowing and encouraging active participation of the people during all phases of the policymaking process.
➜ public participation can be indirect through elected representatives, or direct through votes on specific policy proposals.
➜ political parties serve many crucial functions to democracies, including organizing majority rule, nominating candidates for office, and making political participation simpler and easier to understand.
➜ single-member-district (smd) election systems allow only one candidate to win representation in each area and tend to result in two-party systems.
➜ proportional representation (pr) election systems give representation to large and small parties alike based on the votes they receive and tend to result in multiparty systems.
➜ states can fuse the powers of the legislature and executive together in a parliamentary system, or separate them from one another in a presidential system.
After the Russian Revolutions of 1917, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party instituted a regime in which all political decision making was concentrated in a small, elite body of revolutionaries who were never subject to popular election. Traditional rights common to democracies, such as protections of freedom of speech and dissent, and basic guarantees of due process of law were completely absent. He called this system “democratic centralism.” After all, the system was built for the benefit of the common Russian proletarian worker or peasant farmer, not the old Tsarist noble elite. Furthermore, all Russians would now enjoy benefits such as guaranteed employment, and the system would finally be blind to birth status into social classes. This viewpoint begs the question, is democracy in the eye of the beholder? What exactly makes a political system democratic? This has been the subject of debate among philosophers and social scientists since 5 b.c.e. when the terminology was first used by classical Athenians. That said, modern political scientists, most notably Larry Diamond and Robert Dahl, have established some definitive minimum benchmarks to define whether a state deserves consideration as a democracy or not.
Indirect democracy allows the people to choose representatives to exercise policymaking power.
Direct democracy allows the people to vote directly on whether a policy will be enacted or not.
Democracy is a political system in which all of the people of the state or political division are involved in making decisions about its affairs, typically by electing representatives to a parliament or similar assembly. According to Larry Diamond, every democracy possesses the following four basic characteristics:
a political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections
The people must be empowered to hold the government accountable for its policies through elections. In most instances, the people wield power over the policies of the state through indirect democracy, which means they vote for representatives who will be empowered with policymaking authority. In the United Kingdom, for example, every adult citizen may cast a vote for a member of parliament (MP) from their area (called a constituency), and the parliament, once gathered, can pass laws that apply to everyone. There are numerous variations on these systems of elections, which will be addressed later in the chapter.
Another, but less common, method of empowering the people with political decision making is through direct democracy, which allows the people to vote directly on a policy question, rather than entrusting that power to a representative body. For example, a referendum is when the government proposes a specific policy change to voters, at which point a national election is held in which voters cast a “yes” or “no” vote on the question. A successful “yes” vote means the policy becomes binding law. One example of this was the passage of the Russian Constitution in 1993 by national referendum. The European Union also posed a draft constitution in 2004 that was to be adopted in each member state by referendum, but this vote was postponed in the United Kingdom after French voters rejected the constitution in 2005. Similarly, states may seek the input of their people, or seek to boost the legitimacy of a policy by staging a national plebiscite, in which voters may vote “yes” or “no” on a policy question, but unlike a referendum, the results of a plebiscite are not binding. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the new regime posed this question to voters: “Islamic Republic, Yes or No?”
But what determines whether these elections are indeed “free” or “fair”? Political scientist Robert Dahl’s work defined the necessary components:
While some of these may seem more obvious than others, studying the individual political systems of each of the countries in later chapters will reveal that holding what appear to be “democratic” elections does not necessarily result in the democratic vision of “rule by the people.”
the active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life
Holding elections is merely the beginning of the participation of the people in a democratic system. People in a democracy also play an active role in the formulation, discussion, execution, and response to policies and policymaking. In order to understand this, it is necessary first to explain a concept of growing significance in Comparative Politics; civil society. Civil society is defined as the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest the will of the people. Simply put, people join organizations, clubs, and institutions to give their input and express their interests. These groups include everything from large national trade unions and interest groups, all the way down to local churches and parent-teacher organizations. Countries in which civil society is formed organically, with associational autonomy (the freedom for people to join, leave, and speak freely in these groups), are called pluralist societies. Pluralism is characterized by a large, healthy, and freely organized civil society in which policymaking authorities are influenced by civil society organizations, who themselves are in free competition with each other for the attention of the policymakers. As one example, if a country were considering a potential new environmental regulation, like an increase in the required fuel efficiency for automobiles, many potential stakeholders could have strong opinions on the matter. Corporate business interests in auto manufacturing might be concerned about the rising costs of manufacturing under the new regulation. The autoworkers union might worry that lower profits for their employer might push their wages down. Environmentalist groups might believe the new standard would reduce the need for oil drilling around the world. Consumer groups might be optimistic about the potential savings on gasoline for regular auto owners. In a pluralist society, all of these groups would be free to lobby the government, engage in public awareness campaigns, back candidates for office based on their position on the issue, stage protests, or all manner of other activities in order to influence the final policy outcomes. Their success or failure is determined by the free competition they participate in for support for their ideas against those of other groups. By contrast, in a state corporatist society (which will be addressed in greater detail in Chapter 6, “Authoritarian Regimes”), the state would play a strong role in dictating which groups are allowed to provide their input, and which are left out of the conversation.
Civil society refers to the groups people choose to form and join in order to express their interests, such as clubs, churches, charitable organizations, and interest groups.
Pluralist societies allow civil society to form independently and freely.
Corporatist societies give the state a strong and controlling role in the organization of civil society.
protection of the human rights of all citizens
Democracy is rooted in the concept of “majority rule,” but equally important in its definition is the idea that there are a set of fundamental rights of all people, including the minority, which cannot be violated no matter what the will of the majority may be. Many of these basic rights are increasingly defined in international law agreed upon by states across the world, most notably in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though nearly every democracy will also codify these rights formally in domestic law. These rights include (but are not limited to):
Democracies allow all people to freely engage in these and other activities, provided they do not violate the rights of other individuals. One recent development is the emergence of regimes where elections are held in which the winner takes office and exerts political power, yet these rights are not respected by the state universally. This has led to a new differentiation in democratic regimes; liberal democracies and illiberal democracies. Liberal democracies adhere to these requirements of respecting the rights of the people in addition to holding regular, free, fair, competitive elections. Illiberal democracies will hold elections in which the winning candidate is in fact the candidate with the most votes, and does in fact come to wield political power, yet significant restrictions and violations of these rights occur consistently enough that it calls the very democratic legitimacy of the elections into question. Modern Russia since the rise of Vladimir Putin to power is often characterized as an illiberal regime. Similarly, transitional democracies, which are former authoritarian systems attempting to integrate democratic practices into the regime, may also not yet display the full characteristics of liberal democracies, given the resistance to change of the former power elites, or the lack of an established democratic political culture among the people.
a rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens
Rule of law is a concept that has emerged and evolved gradually over human history, beginning (in Western tradition, at least) with the Magna Carta in England in 1215. Revisiting the distinction between the government (those currently in power), and the regime (the rules of the political process), what rule of law essentially means is that the government is not empowered to reshape the regime to benefit its own interests or its hold on power. The government is limited by a constitution, a basic set of laws that define and codify the extent and limitations on the power of the government and each of the state’s institutions. Most constitutions are summarized in one formal document called the constitution for the country, and these are amended and/or reinterpreted over time as society’s needs and demands change. Interestingly, the United Kingdom (arguably the originator of the idea of constitutionalism) has no one single document that defines or summarizes its constitution, but rather the entire historical body of law and British tradition come to be the constitution collectively. Constitutionalism and rule of law do not require the existence of a single written constitution. Nigeria, by contrast, has had many written constitutions since its independence in 1960, while not yet demonstrating any true commitment to constitutional rule of law.
When it comes to criminal proceedings, systems with rule of law define processes that must occur, and assumptions that must be made, in order to guarantee fairness in the justice system and prevent the abuse of power beyond the limits of the constitution. These specific protections typically include (but again are not limited to):
In the end, rule of law strikes right to the heart of what democracy is all about, which is the establishment of a society in which all people are treated fairly and equally by the state.
There has been a great deal of scholarly debate on the topic of whether political parties are necessary to democracy or not. That being said, no modern liberal democracy has created a regime that functions without them. It seems that as long as majority rule is a fundamental feature of democracy, there must be some way for a majority to organize itself in order to govern as the majority, and for better or worse, that is the role of the political party.
In democratic regimes, political parties nominate candidates for office, organize majority rule, recruit elites to run the government, educate voters, and make participation simpler for the average voter.
A political party is an institution that seeks to gain control of government for the purpose of wielding political power to achieve goals common to its members. Parties perform a series of crucial roles to make large-scale democracy possible. They organize majority rule by nominating candidates for election under an organized hierarchy. They give voters an easy shorthand to act as code for which candidates support or oppose certain policies, making it much easier for the average voter to express their wishes in elections. They hold elected elites accountable for their actions, as party officials want to ensure that their reputation and their chances to win future elections are not tarnished by the current officials. They also prevent tyranny of the majority, since factions and disagreements can occur inside of parties, as well as between different parties. Parties are distinct from interest groups and other civil society institutions in a few important ways. First, political parties run candidates for office in elections. Interest groups may back or endorse candidates for office, but they do not actually compete for direct control of political offices. Second, political parties tend to be policy generalists, with a broad array of policy concerns grouped under a “big tent” in which many interests are working together to get members elected for their mutual concerns. Interest groups, on the other hand, have very narrow areas of policy concern. For example, the British Labour Party brings together the concerns of industrial labor union workers, environmentalists, students, and social liberals under a “big tent.” An interest group like a workers’ union might back the Labour Party and help it get elected to make policy in all of these areas, but the union’s only real concerns are bettering the wages and working conditions of its members.
Political parties perform certain functions for democracy in common with interest groups, as well. Interest groups begin the process of interest articulation, in which the group communicates the common interest of its members with relevant policymakers, government officials, and the public at large. After interest articulation, both the interest group and the political party are involved in the processes of interest aggregation, which is the combining of the interests of many individuals and groups into a formal policy program. It is difficult for any individual to exert much control over the policy agenda in a democratic system, but groups can exert tremendous political influence. Whether through civil society generally, or interest groups and political parties specifically, groups will always play a foundational role in democratic government.
While there are certainly many basic core principles that all liberal democracies have in common, no two democracies are created identically. Every country establishes its own system based on its founding circumstances, historical progression, and social conditions. Some of the common themes in the differences in democratic election systems are outlined below.
Every democracy involves the election of representatives to some form of representative lawmaking body. The root question of structuring these bodies involves how legislative constituencies will work.
In a proportional representation system (PR), there is a large geographic constituency (perhaps even the entire country) that will elect a large number of representatives. Voters in the constituency cast a vote not for an individual candidate, but rather for a political party. The political party receives a percentage of legislative representatives from the constituency roughly equal to the percentage of the vote they received. For example, let’s assume there are 100 seats up for election in the constituency, and Party A received 45 percent of the vote, Party B received 35 percent of the vote, and Party C received 20 percent of the vote. If the country is using a pure PR system, voters have just elected 45 candidates from Party A, 35 candidates from Party B, and 20 candidates from Party C to take office in the new legislature. But since voters only voted for parties rather than candidates, which 45 candidates from Party A will take office? This question is answered by a party list published before the election, in which the political parties specify a ranking of their candidates for voters to review. The top 45 names on Party A’s list will take office, the top 35 names from Party B’s list as well, and so on. The candidate ranked 46 on Party A’s list is simply out of luck, and will need to do what he can to move up his party’s ranking list for the next election, or hope the party fares better next time around. This tends to lead to high party unity in PR systems compared to single-member-district (SMD) systems. Since an individual candidate’s political ambitions are largely dependent upon the candidate’s position on these lists, individuals tend to be highly influenced to support the party and stay in the good graces of the party leadership consistently, at the risk of being lowered or moved off of the next election’s party list. Interestingly, one point of comparison indicates that women are much more likely to win seats in national legislatures in PR election systems, as voters in many countries still seem reluctant to vote for a woman candidate over a man when they are against one another in an SMD race. When women are on a party list of candidates in a PR system, on the other hand, voters seem no more reluctant to vote for their preferred party, and a greater percentage of women win legislative seats. This same trend is also observable with minority race or ethnicity candidates.
Proportional Representation systems give parties seats based on the percent of vote they receive.
Single-member-district systems give seats only to the candidate with the most votes in each district.
In addition, PR systems create another common phenomenon of coalition government. Notice in the election result that no single party received a majority of the vote, which means none of these parties is currently empowered to pass laws without the cooperation of other parties. A coalition government occurs when parties “team” together to choose a government (likely a prime minister and cabinet), and compromise with each other on a policy agenda for the legislative session.
Why doesn’t this occur with the same frequency in a Single-member-district (SMD) system? First, let’s define what a SMD system is. Single-member-district systems divide the country into many constituencies, each of which will allow one “single member” to represent the constituency in the legislature. In other words, only one party’s candidate can “win” each election. Suppose that the same example country with 100 representatives converted to a SMD system and divided the country into 100 constituencies with relatively equal populations. In each constituency, the candidate with a plurality (the most votes, but not necessarily a majority) would win representation (this concept is called first-past-the-post in Britain and a few other countries), but all other losing candidates and their parties would receive nothing. Here is a sample of election returns from a few of the new constituencies:
Proportional systems tend to create multiparty democracies.
Single-member-district systems tend to create two-party systems.
| Constituency | % of Vote for Party A | % of Vote for Party B | % of Vote for Party C | Winning Candidate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 42% | 36% | 22% | Party A |
| 2 | 54% | 27% | 19% | Party A |
| 3 | 34% | 47% | 19% | Party B |
| 4 | 23% | 48% | 29% | Party B |
| 5 | 59% | 30% | 11% | Party A |
Notice that Party A has won three of these five seats, Party B has two seats, and Party C has none. In the PR system, Party C received 20 percent of the vote, and therefore received 20 percent of the legislative representation. Party C has done just as well in these SMD races (averaging 20 percent in each district), yet received no representation, because they are never the winning party in any individual district. Furthermore, voters in future elections may be inclined to think that voting for Party C (or other less popular party options that emerge) could be tantamount to throwing away a vote, and will possibly think strategically about choosing between one of the two “major” parties (A and B) who, in their mind, actually have a realistic chance of winning office. Another possibility is that Party C voters simply give up on participating, reducing the overall voter turnout. As a result, SMD systems (like in the United States and United Kingdom) tend to create dominant two-party systems, in which any party may freely run, but the competition for power in government is almost exclusively between two parties for majority control. SMD systems tend to inflate the representation of the winning party, or the two dominant parties, as compared to the actual percentage of votes they received. See page 84 for an example from the British General Election in 2017.
The SMD system disproportionally benefits the largest parties (Conservative and Labour) compared against their share of the vote, while substantially reducing the share of seats for the Liberal Democrats and other minor parties compared to their share of the vote. This system makes a coalition government much less likely, as in the vast majority of cases, one of the two major parties will manage to gain majority control of the legislature, and coalitions among parties will be unnecessary to establish majority rule. Oddly enough, 2017 was an exception to this general rule, as it resulted in a coalition government in Britain between the Conservatives and Democratic Unionists. (Notice that no party had over 50 percent of the seats.) Coalition government is still a relatively rare occurrence in the British election system. Among the countries of study in Comparative Government and Politics, the United Kingdom, Iran, and Nigeria use exclusively SMD election systems for their legislatures. Russia used an exclusively PR system to elect the State Duma from 2007–2012, but a 2013 reform returned Russia to the mixed SMD and PR system used before then. Mexico uses a mixed system in both houses in which some seats are elected in SMD constituencies, and others are elected from PR party lists.
| Country | Legislative Election System | Party System |
|---|---|---|
| Britain | SMD first-past-the-post for the House of Commons | 2 major parties (Labour, Conservative); other minor parties have less representation |
| Russia | PR for all seats in the State Duma | 4 parties have representation in the Duma; United Russia has held majority since 2003 |
| China | No elections for National People’s Congress | One-party system; Chinese Communist Party holds all representation |
| Mexico | Mix of SMD and PR for both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate | 3 major parties (the PRI, PAN, and PRD) compete for control of the government |
| Iran | SMD first-past-the-post for seats in the Majlis, but candidates must receive at least 25% of the vote to win | Parties are numerous and unstable, but generally fall into two competing camps, reformist or conservative |
| Nigeria | SMD first-past-the-post for House of Representatives; while Senate elects 3 in each state | Transitioning into a two-party system (APC and PDP) |
Executive power is also wielded by an elected official in a democracy, but the way the executive is chosen can vary greatly from state to state.
Presidential systems let the voters directly elect the executive.
Parliamentary systems give the legislature the power to choose the executive, usually the leader of the majority party.
In a presidential system, the voters cast a direct vote for a specific candidate to serve as the chief executive, usually, though not always, titled “president.” The executive, as a result, is a separate and distinct institution of government apart from the legislature (this is often referred to as a separation of powers). A president need not maintain the support of legislators, nor even members of his or her own party, necessarily, in order to wield executive power. In fact, it is not completely unusual in presidential systems for one party to control the executive branch after its candidate wins a presidential election, while an opposition party controls at least one house of the legislature simultaneously. (This is sometimes called “divided government.”) As a result, presidential systems are much more prone to gridlock, or an inability for the legislature and executive to agree on forming and finalizing policy decisions.
By contrast, parliamentary systems give executive power to the chosen leader of the majority party (or coalition) in the legislature, usually, though not always, titled “prime minister.” A prime minister comes to power first by earning the role of party leader among his or her fellow party legislators, and then by leading the party to victory in a national election. In a parliamentary system, the people as a whole do not directly vote for the person they want as the new chief executive. Boris Johnson is the current British prime minister, but the only voters who had his name on the ballot were in the constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where he runs as an MP candidate. Other voters across the country, however, are aware that voting for the Conservative MP candidate in their respective constituency will almost certainly translate to a vote for Johnson as prime minister. Parliamentary systems do not have separation of powers, as the legislative and executive institutions are inherently fused together by the system. The majority party in the legislature will always have a cooperative party mate as their chief executive, and they retain the power to remove and replace the executive through internal party processes or a vote of no confidence if they cannot resolve their differences. Compared to a presidential system, there is little to no chance of gridlock in a parliamentary system. Among the countries of study, Russia, Mexico, and Nigeria use a presidential system, and the United Kingdom uses a parliamentary system. In Iran, the president is elected directly by voters, though the real chief executive (the Supreme Leader) is unelected. China chooses its executive through a unique set of internal Chinese Communist Party practices, which do not involve any form of democratic election.
The state is a complicated institution, and states have emerged from wildly diverse historical circumstances and cultural practices. Depending on whether a state has come from a long monarchical tradition, or emerged due to a recent popular revolution, executive structures can take many shapes. Head of state functions involve the ceremonial responsibility of an individual to display the pomp, majesty, power, and might of the state in formal settings, whether they be welcoming foreign dignitaries, presiding over national celebrations, or giving speeches to inspire patriotic loyalty from the people. These functions are distinct from those of a Head of government, who is responsible for the day-to-day administration of the policies of the state, including overseeing disbursements from the treasury, regulation of industry, and law enforcement. Presidential systems tend to unite the two roles into a single individual (usually the president), while parliamentary systems are more likely to divide the roles between two distinct leaders. The chart below details these arrangements in the six countries of study.
| Country | Presidential or Parliamentary? | Head of State | Head of Government |
|---|---|---|---|
| Britain | Parliamentary | Monarch | Prime Minister |
| Russia | Presidential | President | Prime Minister |
| China | N/A | President | Premier |
| Mexico | Presidential | President | President |
| Iran | Presidential | Supreme Leader | President |
| Nigeria | Presidential | President | President |
While the level of democracy in a country may seem like a subjective notion, Freedom House and other organizations are applying data collection to this field to place statistical values on the performance of countries in a variety of democratic metrics. These metrics include the level of rule of law, the fairness of elections, and the transparency of the state’s internal and decision-making processes. These data are categorized into “political rights,” such as the right to participate in elections or run for office, and “civil liberties,” such as the protection from unjust criminal prosecutions, or the right to speak dissenting opinions without consequence. Based on their data, Freedom House scores each country on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being “free,” and 7 being “not free.”
| Country | Political Rights Rating | Civil Liberties Rating | Total Freedom Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Britain | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Russia | 7 | 6 | 6.5 |
| China | 7 | 6 | 6.5 |
| Mexico | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Iran | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Nigeria | 3 | 5 | 4 |
In 1989, former Vice President Dan Quayle famously said, “I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy, but that could change.” Although 1989 and beyond has seen a remarkable increase in the number of states around the world that elect their leaders, the path to democratization is never an easy one. The hopes that supporters of democratization had for Russia and the former members of the Communist bloc after the fall of the Berlin Wall have been realized through the success stories of societies that fully embraced liberal democratic rights, principles, and structures. Poland is one such example. In the meantime, in recent decades, other societies (most notably Russia) have gradually restored many of the repressive elements of the former regime. After reading this chapter it should be clear that democratization does not require any specific constitutional structure; nonetheless, it does require a commitment to its root principles from both the elites and non-elites alike.
*Note: Terms with an asterisk (*) are those that consistently appear on the AP Comparative Government and Politics exam as tested concepts.
Democracy must necessarily include which of the following characteristics?
The vote of the people would determine whether a proposal is passed into law or not on
Pluralist systems
Compared to political parties, interest groups
An SMD plurality election system
Civil society refers to
A proportional representation (PR) legislative election system
In a parliamentary system, a coalition government would need to be formed
Presidential systems of government, as opposed to parliamentary systems, include the possibility of
Which of the following countries unites the roles of head of state and head of government?