Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 16

In a democracy, all citizens can participate in the making of governmental policy, at least to some extent, even if indirectly. Though democracy is generally defined as “rule by citizens,” this definition is more an ideal than a concrete, observable phenomenon. As we will see in this section, a variety of factors influence how fully and how directly citizens in a democracy share in the rule of the country. In fact, there is no country in the world where all citizens have precisely equal roles in making the decisions of the country. However, a number of countries approximate the ideal well enough that we call them democracies. As shown in Figure 1.1, 116 countries—more than half of all countries in the world—are democracies.

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Figure 1.1 Democracies of the World

Source: Freedom House, Electoral Democracies 2018.