Promoting Democracy

Résumé du document

Chapter four of Payne's book deals with the notion of democracy, which is a very old one. Democracy is a process, that is to say it is in constant evolution. Today, we can say that most developed countries are democratic, and each country has followed a different path to achieve democracy. The author explains that the level of economic development of the country is an important dimension to consider in the democratic process. However, we can notice that this is not totally true: poor countries like India are democratic, whereas countries like Saudi Arabia are not wealthy.
Globalization has played a role in spreading democracy and this is still the case today; the development of communications, trade, etc., and if we move back more in the past, we can observe that the spread of ideas during the British colonial empire emphasized democracy. Globalization has also prompted private property, which helps to generate wealth. Finally, we learn that democracy, which is often assimilated to American values, is far more complex than we think and forms of democracy differ across countries.

Democracy: Democracy has been observed in many parts of the globe. If we search its origins, we observe that democracy means "rule by the people". However, historically (but also nowadays in some countries not), all people are considered as equal. For example, slaves, but also women in certain countries do not have the same rights. In order to govern, citizens chose representatives who will represent them as well as they can. The American James Madison participated in the affirmation of the notion of the division of the three powers: legislative, executive and judicial; The aim was to ban the abuse of power by separating them.