What is democracy?

Democracy is generally interpreted to mean ‘people power’ or ‘government by the people’ (Abraham Lincoln, 1863). The word democracy comes from the Greek word demokratia which is from demos (people) and kratos (rule). Direct democracy is when everyone in a country votes on new laws; for example, there would be a referendum on every decision or new law. However, direct democracy is considered to be impossible in a lot of countries, so we have a form of indirect democracy or representative government which means that we vote for someone (a Member of Parliament or MP) to represent us when important decisions are being made.

For a country to be a representative democracy, it needs to have the following characteristics:

• Everyone needs to be able to vote (we call this universal suffrage).
• There should be free, fair, competitive and regular elections.
• Only a fairly elected government should have the power to make decisions that affect the public; in other words, there should only be government by consent.