Democracy is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation, or to choose governing officials to do so. Who is considered part of "the people" and how authority is shared among or delegated by the people has changed over time and at different rates in different countries, but over time more and more of a democratic country's inhabitants have generally been included. Cornerstones of democracy include freedom of assembly, association, property rights, freedom of religion and speech, inclusiveness and equality, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights.
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral systems under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical and political divisions of the electorate. The essence of such systems is that all votes contribute to the result—not just a plurality, or a bare majority—and that the system produces mixed, balanced representation reflecting how votes are cast.
Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies. This differs from the majority of currently established democracies, which are representative democracies. The theory and practice of direct democracy and participation as its common characteristic was the core of work of many theorists, philosophers, politicians, and social critics, among whom the most important are Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and G.D.H. Cole.
Deliberative democracy or discursive democracy is a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision-making. It adopts elements of both consensus decision-making and majority rule. Deliberative democracy differs from traditional democratic theory in that authentic deliberation, not mere voting, is the primary source of legitimacy for the law. Deliberative democracy is closely related to consultative democracy, in which public consultation with citizens is central to democratic processes.
Mixed-member proportional representation is a mixed electoral system in which voters get two votes: one to decide the representative for their single-seat constituency, and one for a political party. Seats in the legislature are filled first by the successful constituency candidates, and second, by party candidates based on the percentage of nationwide or region-wide votes that each party received. The constituency representatives are usually elected using first-past-the-post voting (FPTP) but the Scandinavian countries have a long history of using both multi-member districts and nationally-based compensatory top-up seats.
Participatory democracy or participant democracy is a form of government in which citizens participate individually and directly in political decisions and policies that affect their lives, rather than through elected representatives. Elements of direct and representative democracy are combined in this model.
Elections in Cuba are held at municipal, provincial, and national levels. Cuba is a one-party state, with the Communist Party of Cuba being described as the "superior driving force of society “
Big tent or catch-all party is used in reference to a political party's policy of permitting or encouraging a broad spectrum of views among its members. This is in contrast to other parties that defend a determined ideology and seek voters who adhere to that ideology and convince people towards it.
In the United Kingdom, a Member of Parliament (MP) is an individual elected to serve in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Professor Christopher Harvie is a Scottish historian and a Scottish National Party (SNP) politician. He was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Mid Scotland and Fife from 2007 to 2011. Before his election, he was Professor of British and Irish Studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany.
Matthew Søberg Shugart is an American political scientist. He is a Distinguished Professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. He is also an Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa. Shugart specializes in electoral systems, party systems, and the design of political institutions, primarily through empirical studies of political systems across large numbers of countries. Shugart is also an orchardist, and runs the Fruits and Votes blog on electoral systems and fruit growing.
Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, politics is observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Politics consists of "social relations involving authority or power. The definition of "politics" from "The Free Dictionary" is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power. Politics study include political philosophy, which seeks a rationale for politics and an ethic of public behavior, and public administration, which examines the practices of governance.
In governance, sortition is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. Sortition is generally used for filling individual posts or, more usually in its modern applications, to fill collegiate chambers. The system intends to ensure that all competent and interested parties have an equal chance of holding public office. It also minimizes factionalism, since there would be no point making promises to win over key constituencies if one was to be chosen by lot, while elections, by contrast, foster it. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy.
Pippa Norris is a political scientist specializing in comparative politics. She is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and she has served as the Australian Laureate Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and Director of the Electoral Integrity Project.
There are five types of elections in the United Kingdom: elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, local elections, mayoral elections and Police and Crime Commissioner elections. Within each of those categories, there may also be by-elections. Elections are held on Election Day, which is conventionally a Thursday and under the provisions of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 the timing of general elections can be held at the discretion of the Prime Minister during any five year period. All other types of elections are held after fixed periods, though early elections to the devolved assemblies and parliaments can occur in certain situations. The five electoral systems used are: the single member plurality system (first-past-the-post), the multi-member plurality system, the single transferable vote, the additional member system and the supplementary vote.
A citizens' assembly is a body formed from randomly selected citizens to deliberate on important issues.
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is a collaborative research project among national election studies around the world. Participating countries and polities include a common module of survey questions in their national post-election studies. The resulting data are collated together along with voting, demographic, district and macro variables into one dataset allowing comparative analysis of voting behavior from a multilevel perspective.
Felix Augusto Antonio Ulloa Garay is a Salvadoran politician and lawyer who became Vice President of El Salvador on 1 June 2019.
Jane Suiter is an Irish political scientist, professor and director of Dublin City University's Institute for Future Media, Democracy, and Society ("FuJo") and research lead of Ireland's Constitutional Convention and the Citizens' Assembly. She is the co-author or co-editor of three academic books and one guide book, and over 40 journal articles. In December 2020, she was named "Researcher of the Year" by the Irish Research Council and in February 2021, she was promoted to the position of professor by DCU.
