The word “democracy” literally means “rule by the people”, taken from the Greek terms, demos (meaning “people”), and kratos (meaning “rule”). It is a political concept and form of government, where all people are supposed to have equal voices in shaping policy (typically expressed through a vote for representatives).

Global democracy

Global democracy is a field of academic study and political activism concerned with making the global political system more democratic. This topic has become a central area of inquiry for established literatures including political philosophy, international relations (IR), international law, and sociology. Along with global justice, global democracy has also been critical to the emergence of international political theory as a discrete literature in recent decades. Whereas global justice scholars tend to focus on how burdens and benefits should be distributed by international institutions, global democrats probe how political power can be legitimated beyond the nation-state. Global democracy is therefore concerned with how transnational decision-making can be justified and who should be entitled to participate in the formation of global rules, laws, and regulations.

This short entry contains four sections which elaborate upon the possibility and problems for global democracy. The first discusses how globalization impacts upon the nation-state and what this means for traditional conceptions of democracy. The notion of a global democratic deficit—in which individuals are removed from transnational decision-making in problematic ways—is introduced, and reasons to pursue global democracy are fleshed out. The second section outlines some prominent normative proposals for global democracy. Specifically, five ‘models of global democracy’ are presented and some general criticisms are formulated. The third section then highlights the recent turn toward pursuing ‘values of democratization’. This new direction for the literature has both methodological and substantive implications. The final section highlights persistent criticisms that should be addressed in future research on global democracy.

The spread of democracy in the 20th century
During the 20th century the number of countries possessing the basic political institutions of representative democracy increased significantly. At the beginning of the 21st century, independent observers agreed that more than one-third of the world’s nominally independent countries possessed democratic institutions comparable to those of the English-speaking countries and the older democracies of continental Europe. In an additional one-sixth of the world’s countries, these institutions, though somewhat defective, nevertheless provided historically high levels of democratic government. Altogether, these democratic and near-democratic countries contained nearly half the world’s population

Democracy

Democracy is almost everywhere in the world. Europe has used its form of government for almost half a century. North and South America are now virtually a hemisphere of democracy; Africa is experiencing democratic reform; and new, democracies have taken root in Asia. Democracy may be a word familiar to most, but it is a concept still misunderstood and misused. Freedom and democracy are often used to mean the same thing, but they are not the same. People in democracy have many rights. This form of government isn’t just for the government, it helps the people. Also how democratic leaders are elected.
Democracy is mostly good for small and older communities, where the whole town or community can get together and vote together on decisions that can be an advantage to all the towns people. This form of democracy is called a direct democracy. Modern society, with its size and complexity, offers few opportunities for direct democracy. Today, the most common form of democracy, whether for a town of 50,000 or nations of 50 million, is representative democracy, in which citizens elect officials to make political decisions, formulate laws, for the publics’ good.

Rights include freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of assembly, and the right to equal protection before the law. While the state protects the rights of its citizens, in return, the citizens give the country their loyalty. Citizens in a democracy enjoy the right to join organizations of their choosing that are independent of government and to participate freely in the public life of their society.

That’s all for today..

The source of this information is internet.