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Representative democracy

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The second type of democracy is referred to as a representative democracy. In a representative democracy, such as the U.S. or Great Britain, citizens don’t make policy for the country directly. Instead, they vote for a representative, or office holders, who will act on and make policy on their behalf. If the representatives follow the people’s wishes, implementing policies they support, they’ll get reelected. If, on the other hand, they anger the population, the people can replace them with new and hopefully better representatives.

Representative democracies work well in larger countries and give the people the freedom to disengage from politics. They don’t directly have to participate in decision making. They can pick someone else to do it for them. However, this can result in a major problem. Often, many citizens choose not to participate, allowing for a small minority to take over policy making. In the U.S., for example, almost 40 percent of the people don’t vote for president. Every president for the last 100 years has actually been elected by a minority of the people. Is this still democracy?

Today, two types of representative democracies exist: parliamentary democracy and presidential democracy.

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