What is Democracy - Essay Example

This paper will examine the role of democracy in fostering equality, creating the concept of ‘the greater good’, its values of sovereignty and fostering good interpersonal relationships as well as its values of liberty. Democracy is all about representation and giving the people a voice (Brodie et al., 2014 pg 31-45). This was evident in the direct democracy system that was used in ancient Greece, where all people had a voice and participated in the decision-making process, which became the principle within democracy (Brodie et al.

, 2014 pg 31-45). In practice, all citizens had the ability to influence the direction of policies adopted by the state via the voting process (Brodie et al., 2014 pg 31-45). However, the huge population in contemporary times means that such as model would not be reasonable because the process would be too lengthy to respond to urgent matters. Instead, an indirect model has been adopted, one where a select group of people make the decisions for the rest of the population (Brodie et al., 2014, 2-15).

Therefore, the role of the policy-making bodies in contemporary times, in accordance with the existing democratic principles, is to make policies that benefit the people who voted for those in government (Brodie et al., 2014, 2-15). From this assumption, it follows that policies should be evaluated by their ability to reflect the needs of the citizens in the country (Brodie et al., 2014, 2-15). For example, in present day America, Americans put pressure on the government to recall troops from war-torn areas if the presence of these troops in battles is not in the best interests of citizens.

Therefore, the best democratic practices have to allow citizens to make changes while also simplifying life as much as possible. The concept of the greater good, as a democratic principle, examines the role of elected leaders to fulfill the wish of their voters (Brodie et al., 2014, pg