Talk:Representative democracy

Misinformation

Misinformation? You are the one spreading misinformation. Not only Franklin, but Jefferson credited the Iroquois with more than a bit of credit for ideas used in the founding of our nation and form of government. See Forgotten Founders for one well researched source. William Pitt as well.23ascnidsewq "Representative government was invented in the sixteenth century when Deganawida established the League of the Five Nations of the Iroquois in what is now New York State. The Iroquois model of representative government influenced English philosophers, as well as Benjamin Franklin, and inspired the Americans and French to create representative democracies."

There is no historical data to support virtually any claim of this statement. There is data to the contrary that it was "invented" in the 16th Century or by the Iroquois. There is no data supporting the idea that the Iroquois Constitution was implmented in the 16th Century, some scholars would put the dat to five Centuries earlier some later, or that it was a real representative democracy in the sense that each tribe member was able to elect the tribal elders. This statement is pure misinformation. If a case can be made for it we should remove it.

There is plenty of historical data to support this claim although it does contain several errors. Deganawidah was a Huron man (not one of the five tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy) who influenced Hiawatha, a Mohawk chief to go woth him to the leaders of the five warring tribes to negotiate peace. The eagle holding the arrows on our one dollar bill is from that incident where Deganawidah shows how one arrow alone will break while five together cannot be broken. See Forgotten Founders-Bruce E. Johansen, Exiled in the Land of the Free,Indian Givers-Jack Weatherford. Even the textbook on American Government sent to me by Houghton-Mifflan acknowledges the influence of the Iroqois Confederation on the Articles of Confederation-the basis for our Constitution.(pg 25) You are correct about the date, however. "Using a combination of documentary sources, solar eclipse data, and Iroquois oral history, Mann and Fields assert that the Iroquois Confederacy's body of law was adopted by the Senecas (the last of the five nations to ratify it) August 31, 1142."(Bruce Johansen)MrgnsmsMFV

Isn't representative democracy and modern democracy equal to a republic?

What would you call a type of democracy that has every candidate getting elected? Each of say ten candidates in each constituency would get a few or a lot of votes, then serve to represent those who voted for them when voting on issues. This would allow candidates to be truthful about their politics rather than joining one or other party in order to get elected. Annual elections would allow good public servants to rise at the expense of poor ones in a reasonable time. Pay would depend on votes. Voters would be paid a small amount to get a good turnout. And every voter would have ten representitives to take their ideas or problems to. Representitives would have ten times less work to do, freeing them up to have a job or run a business. Representitives could elect an executive to form a government, and change it at will to improve the workability of it. No hoo hah at elections, just information and voting, then business as usual. Maybe there is a name for this type of representitive democracy, but I don't know it.

Was Athenian democracy (as the first democracy) a representative democracy? Did decision-makers represent the interests of the people? If so, did it matter if the representatives were randomly selected or elected?

Athenian Democracy is what is known as Direct Democracy where a group of privileged citizens meet to make decisions. This is comparable to a congress without the other two branches and who do not represent anyone else but themselves. Women, slaves and those without property were excluded from consideration. This only works of course in a small place like the city state of Athens. MrgnsmsMFV

Can representative democracy include methods of selecting representative that are more impartial (and, therefore more "representative") than elections? It appears that the current article on representative democracy propagates misinformation and limited thinking on what "representation" and "democracy" are all about by limiting the idea to elections.

representative democracy

I think that a representative democracy form an athenian standpoint did not represent the masses but the majority thus leaving out the minority to fend for themseleves. This type of democracy in a sense does work out in many societies today. We elect representatives to go and vote on what they beleive is the best intrest for the greater good of the people. I truly beleive if it were left up to the people in a direct democracy we would surley faulter and our country would be in grave economic devistation, People would not agree on things which in turn would cause greater tremoil within thus leaving a burden that should not be there. I like cheese!!!'_' I like bombs that have big boom booms

You miss two facts here. First, we haven't tried it yet(well, Athens tried it successfully but they were not millions(and most of them were spending too much time discussing at the "agora" anyway) and didn't represent all people that lived there, women and the slaves), and second, it's not practical or economical to hold polls all the time, at this time in history. The first point is very strong. By having people not caring about what's going on they may vote and leave it there till the next time. But if your vote affected your life in a negative way you'd know better next time. The second point is self explanatory. Even a sunday off at this time is too expensive, imagine doing polls all the time. If technology permits it, I believe it will happen more frequently in some distant future. A third point says, if you like "cheese!" you may be the only one, still the mojority would decide and you'd be left out. Just like now. --Fs 11:36, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

copied?

Not sure which came first, but a lot of this page is almost identical to this page: [1]

I think we should be careful in case this was plagarized from the original page.

Edit -- whoops, I take that back, I failed to see this quote at the bottom of their page: "This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Representative_democracy".". Sorry about that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.91.233.149 (talk • contribs) 2005-12-08

nah it aint copied

Article upgrading

Since the main democracy series of articles point directly to this one as a top-level division of types of democracies (direct/indirect=representative), I suspect it should be made more comprehensive. I'll see if I can find appropriate linkages to other articles, etc.

Also, I suspect that a fellow Canadian may have been involved in creating the current version, what with the Royal Commission and Canadian Senate references. Nonetheless, I'm not sure that deliberative democracy is the right phrase for a Royal Commission, at least considering how that article defines it. - David Oberst 01:47, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

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I made a few changes to the text:

• A representative democracy can involve more powers given to the legislators than under a constitutional monarchy or participatory democracy, so almost all constitutions provide for an independent judiciary and other measures to balance representative power. Since constitutional monarchy gives Canada and Australia as examples, it doesn't seem helpful to implicitly indicate they are not representative democracies, which the existing phrasing seemed to. I eliminated the reference to participatory democracy, as that article defines no state or other political region as such to make a useful comparison.

• To put things simply, representative democracy is also called republicanism. - recently added by an anon. This doesn't seem correct, and I've removed it.

• Moreover, while some contend that representative democracy eliminates demagoguery, there is little reason to believe the elected representatives are not themselves demagogues, or subject to the persuasive appeal of demagogues. I removed this, as a 50 year old book described as "pop sociology" hardly makes the case that representative democracy is inherently held hostage to demagoguery!

• I removed the "neutrality NPOV tag, as there seems to be no current discussion here on the Talk page regarding this, or what the perceived problem might be.

If someone would like to work on this, I'm sure the "Critique" section could be rewritten to avoid the simplistic (and unattributed) grumble about "the wealthy", and "corruption". Also, I'm not sure that "constitutional democracy" is the right phrase to describe "checks and balances" as something that is chiefly associated with the US as opposed to "other advanced industrial democracies". Other possible additions might be mention of electoral systems, contrasts with Anarchism, etc. - David Oberst 19:35, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Illiberal Democracy

I recently read the article on illiberal democracy. Generally, its contents seemed fine and worth saying somewhere on Wikipedia. However, what bothers me is the term illiberal democracy. I have never heard of it. Fareed Zakaria is quoted as a source but does this legitimise it as a proper political term? Why not non-liberal democracy for example?

Taken to its extreme, we could simply add any adjective to a known term to create a topic we want to write about. Contents-wise, no problem as it keeps expanding Wikipedia, but my point is the inventing of erroneous terminology in the process? If a young scholar were to quote all these invented terms from Wikipedia as part of a research project, they may be the laughing stock of academia. Is this what we want Wikipedia to become?

Does anyone share my concern? How can we create articles about certain subject matter without inventing new terminology? Eltharian ^Talk 31 August 2006

References and citations needed

This is a complex topic. The only link is to an advocacy website at the bottom of the page. The article needs solid sources to support the validity of the information presented. Alien666 13:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)