Representative democracy which countries

Representative democracy is so popular because direct democracy is just too cumbersome, and people just too busy, to make it work.

However, there are still remnants of direct democracy within representative democracies. Switzerland is often called a semi-direct democracy.

Representatives handle the day-to-day administration and decision making, but citizens can propose changes to the constitution or request that a referendum be held on any law.

Other representative democracies also allow referendums to decide important issues hello, Brexit. But generally speaking, direct democracy has gone the way of the dodo. Chances are, you live in a representative democracy. A majority of people live under representative democracy in one form or another.

All EU member states are representative democracies, as are almost all countries in the Western Hemisphere. If you live in a democracy, you could say with near certainty that you live in a representative democracy.

Stay in the loop. According to the Democracy Index , put out by the publisher of The Economist magazine, there are countries in the world that are either full democracies, flawed democracies, or some form of hybrid regime.

Essentially all of these democracies are representative democracies. The remainder of the surveyed countries are considered authoritarian regimes, such as North Korea, the Middle East states or other countries run by an autocrat. But not all representative democracies are the same. Through a representative democracy, members of the public who may have limited knowledge or having limited interest in the political affairs of the country are given the opportunity to elect skilled representatives who are better placed to oversee and safeguard their interests.

Another advantage of a representative democracy system of government is that members of the public who have representatives conducting their political duties and decisions can focus on their daily activities.

The chosen representatives can aggregate to a wide range of demands from the public and model them into a practical and politically coherent program. Another advantage of a representative democracy is efficiency as the decision-making process in a representative democracy is streamlined and therefore quick as the representatives are few relative to the enormous number of people who they represent.

In a direct democracy where the public is involved in the decision-making , the process is faced with major logistical challenges particularly if such a system of government is practiced in a country with a large population. Accountability is another advantage seen in a representative democracy as the representatives are accountable for any decisions that they take despite being given the authority to represent the public in the governance of the country.

Accountability would be impossible in the absence of the chosen representatives. With all the advantages associated with representative democracy, it may seem to be the ideal system of governance to be practiced by any country.

However, a representative democracy also has numerous disadvantages against this system of government. The hopes and aspirations of all members of the public as well as their expectations on how their affairs are to be looked into rests on the elected representatives, who may turn a deaf ear to their interests. Madison expressed his fear of majority tyranny in an October 17, , letter to Thomas Jefferson:. Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.

In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

This is a truth of great importance, but not yet sufficiently attended to. Whenever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done, and not less readily by [a majority of the people] than by a. While these countries have free and fair elections and basic civil liberties, there are faults in other aspects, such as low levels of participation in politics or an underdeveloped or heavily partisan political culture.

The lower two categories of the index are reserved for countries that did not score well enough to be considered democracies. Nations that score between 4. The Democracy Index categorized 23 countries as full democracies, 52 as flawed democracies, 35 as hybrid regimes, and 57 as authoritarian regimes. The United States scored 7.

Intolerance of COVID restrictions, distrust in the government, bipartisan gridlock, and especially the increasing ideological polarization between democrats and republicans are all cited as contributors to the lower score. For the full list of all countries and their scores, see the table further down this page.

Political terminology can be difficult to parse. A frequent topic of debate in modern circles is whether the United States is actually a republic rather than a democracy. In truth, the most accurate answer may be that the United States is both a republic and a democracy—but a specific type of each.

The lynchpin of this debate is the fact that republics are very similar to direct democracies, but are different in one very important way.

A direct democracy has no elected officials and no constitution. The people have absolute power and make all decisions themselves via direct votes.