A democratic deficit (or democracy deficit) occurs when ostensibly-democratic organizations or institutions (particularly governments) fall short of fulfilling the principles of democracy in their practices or operation. Representative and linked parliamentary integrity have become widely discussed. [1] The qualitative expression of the democratic deficit is the difference between the democracy indices of a country from the highest possible values.
The phrase "democratic deficit" is cited as first being used by the Young European Federalists in their Manifesto in 1977, [2] which was drafted by Richard Corbett. It was also used by David Marquand in 1979, referring to the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the European Union. [3]
The term "democratic deficit" is commonly used to refer to situations where territories under the jurisdiction of a sovereign state do not enjoy equal participation in electing representatives that legislate for them. Examples include:
Tokelau, a dependent territory of New Zealand with no representation in the New Zealand Parliament, could also be said to be in a similar position. [12] However, in practice, no legislation from New Zealand is extended to Tokelau without the territory's consent. [13]
Some scholars have argued that the ratification of European Union treaties by repeated referendums, such as those held in Ireland for the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Lisbon, is also associated with a democratic deficit. [14] National parliaments have given up power to the centralised European Parliament. As European Union citizens elect those who make up Council who then elect those become that Commissioners, there is a real fear it is too distant for many citizens. [15] Often, EU elections are treated as second-order elections; with protest votes more common during national and local elections, example of this would be the success of anti-immigration parties such as Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy. Another problem in the EU is that voters vote more on the basis of national issues in the European Parliament elections and that the election is more used by voters to punish their government in the middle of their term. [16] There is also insufficiently a European public opinion or European public sphere that votes against or rewards European politicians. [17] Another problem is the big influence of lobbying groups on European institutions. [18] [19] The European Parliament was created to give more democratic legitimacy to the EU but shares legislative power with the Council of the European Union, which has one vote per country.
The UN Parliamentary Assembly has been proposed as a way of ameliorating a democratic deficit within the United Nations. [20]
A study of the Columbia University concluded that policy in US states is congruent with the majority only half the time. The largest influences were found to be legislative professionalization, term limits, and issue salience. Partisanship and interest groups affect the ideological balance of incongruence more than the aggregate degree thereof. Policy is found to be overresponsive to ideology and party, which leads policy to be polarized relative to state electorates. [21] The large differences in voter turnout during US elections for various income groups are also seen as a problem for the functioning of democracy. [22] Sanford Levinson argues that campaign financing and gerrymandering are seen as serious problems for democracy, but another of the root causes of the American democratic deficit lies in the US Constitution itself. [23] For example, there is a lack of representation in the US Senate for highly populated states such as California as all states in the United States regardless of population receive 2 seats in the Senate. [24]
Politics in North Macedonia occur within the framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Prime Minister is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated North Macedonia a "flawed democracy" in 2022.
The politics of Malta takes place within a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the president of Malta is the constitutional head of state. Executive authority is vested in the president of Malta, with the general direction and control of the Government of Malta remaining with the prime minister of Malta, who is the head of government and the cabinet. Legislative power is vested in the Parliament of Malta, which consists of the president of Malta and the unicameral House of Representatives of Malta with the speaker as the presiding officer of the legislative body. Judicial power remains with the chief justice and the judiciary of Malta. Since independence, the party electoral system has been dominated by the Christian democratic Nationalist Party and the social democratic Labour Party.
Politics of Slovakia takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, with a multi-party system. Legislative power is vested in the parliament and it can be exercised in some cases also by the government or directly by citizens.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy where executive power is delegated by legislation and social conventions to a unitary parliamentary democracy. From this a hereditary monarch, currently King Charles III, serves as head of state while the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, currently Rishi Sunak since 2022, serves as the elected head of government.
The Netherlands is a parliamentary representative democracy. A constitutional monarchy, the country is organised as a decentralised unitary state. The Netherlands can be described as a consociational state. Dutch politics and governance are characterised by a common striving for broad consensus on important issues, within both of the political community and society as a whole.
Albania is a unitary parliamentary constitutional republic, in which the president of Albania is the head of state and the prime minister of Albania is the head of government in a multi-party system. The executive power is exercised by the Government and the prime minister with its Cabinet. Legislative power is vested in the Parliament of Albania. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. The political system of Albania is laid out in the 1998 constitution. The Parliament adopted the current constitution on 28 November 1998. Historically Albania has had many constitutions. Initially constituted as a monarchy in 1913, Albania became briefly a republic in 1925, and then a authoritarian monarchy in 1928. In 1939 Albania was invaded by Fascist Italian forces, imposing a puppet state, and later occupied by Nazi German forces. Following the partisan liberation from the Nazis in 1944 a provisional government was formed, which by 1946 had transformed into a communist one-party state. In March 1991 democracy was restored with multi-party elections.
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums. In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vote is called active suffrage, as distinct from passive suffrage, which is the right to stand for election. The combination of active and passive suffrage is sometimes called full suffrage.
On the federal level, Russia elects a president as head of state and a parliament, one of the two chambers of the Federal Assembly. The president is elected for, at most, two consecutive six-year terms by the people. The Federal Assembly has two chambers. The State Duma has 450 members, elected for five-year terms. The Federation Council is not directly elected; each of the 89 federal subjects of Russia sends 2 delegates to the Federal Council, for a total of 208 (178 + 30, members.
The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) is an independent advocacy organisation in the United Kingdom which promotes electoral reform. It seeks to replace first-past-the-post voting with proportional representation, advocating the single transferable vote, and an elected upper house of Parliament. It is the world's oldest still-extant electoral reform campaign.
A legal voting age is the minimum age that a person is allowed to vote in a democracy. For general elections around the world, the right to vote is restricted to adults, and most nations use 18 as their voting age, but for other countries voting age ranges between 16 and 21. Voting age may therefore coincide with a country's age of majority, but in many cases the two are not tied.
Direct election is a system of choosing political officeholders in which the voters directly cast ballots for the persons or political party that they desire to see elected. The method by which the winner or winners of a direct election are chosen depends upon the electoral system used. The most commonly used systems are the plurality system and the two-round system for single-winner elections, such as a presidential election, and proportional representation for the election of a legislature or executive.
An indirect election or hierarchical voting, is an election in which voters do not choose directly among candidates or parties for an office, but elect people who in turn choose candidates or parties. It is one of the oldest forms of elections and is used by many countries for heads of state, cabinets, heads of government, and/or upper houses. It is also used for some supranational legislatures.
In the politics of the United States, elections are held for government officials at the federal, state, and local levels. At the federal level, the nation's head of state, the president, is elected indirectly by the people of each state, through an Electoral College. Today, these electors almost always vote with the popular vote of their state. All members of the federal legislature, the Congress, are directly elected by the people of each state. There are many elected offices at state level, each state having at least an elective governor and legislature. There are also elected offices at the local level, in counties, cities, towns, townships, boroughs, and villages; as well as for special districts and school districts which may transcend county and municipal boundaries.
Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by universal adult suffrage; with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are the second largest democratic elections in the world after India's.
Malta elects on a national level 6 MEPs representing Malta in the European Parliament, on a district level the legislature, on a local level the local councils, and on a community level the Administrative Committees.
Suffrage, the right to vote, is sometimes extended to non-citizens. This right varies widely by place in terms of which non-citizens are allowed to vote and in which elections, though there has been a trend over the last 30 years to enfranchise more non-citizens, especially in Europe.
The question of whether the governance of the European Union (EU) lacks democratic legitimacy has been debated since the time of the European Economic Community in the late 1970s. This led in part to an elected European Parliament being created in 1979 and given the power to approve or reject EU legislation. Since then, usage of the term has broadened to describe newer issues facing the European Union. Voter turnout at the elections to the European Parliament fell consecutively at every election from the first in 1979 up to 2014 when it hit a low of 42.54%, before finally rising in 2019. The 2014 turnout figure is lower than that of any national election in the 27 countries of the European Union, where turnout at national elections averages 68% across the EU.
Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results.
As of 2020 a total of 141 countries grant expatriates the right to vote in elections in their countries of origin. There is considerable variation across countries in regard to voter eligibility, voting modalities, i.e. voting in person at diplomatic missions or other physical locations, by mail or online, which elections nonresident citizens may vote in, i.e. elections of the national legislature, executive elections, referendums, or sub-national elections, and how nonresident citizen voters are represented. The number of countries enfranchising nonresident citizens accelerated significantly in the 1990s. Social scientists have advanced a number of claims about the causes and consequences of this development and debated its normative implications or pros and cons of nonresident citizen voting.
Elections to the European Parliament saw declining voter turnout between 1979 and 2014. However, voter turnout in 2019 European elections increased by 8 points compared to 2014. In spite of this exception for all Member States, the electoral mobilization remains weak compared to the national parliamentary elections. Moreover, turnout significantly differs from one country to another in Europe and across a time: in 2019 Belgium citizens participated the most with 88.47% and Slovakians the less with 22.74%. The potential factors that might influence these trends and their implications have attracted great scholarly attention. Identifying and analysing the factors that determine the relative low turnout at European elections is therefore critical, as it is one element that weakens the democratic legitimacy of the European Parliament.
The resulting 'democratic deficit' would not be acceptable in a Community committed to democratic principles.
'Democratic deficit' is a term coined in 1979 by the British political scientist . . . David Marquand .
Since David Marquand coined his famous phrase 'democratic deficit' to describe the functioning of the European Community, the debate has raged about the extent and content of this deficit.