by Christopher Witt

Created on: October 13, 2010   Last Updated: October 16, 2010

Democracy, in the modern sense, is described as a system of government where the people have the full power to act. But to truly understand the democratic form of government, we must look at how the system was born and how it has evolved.

The first civilization to try a form of democratic government was the ancient Athenians. The Athenians instituted a form of democracy called direct democracy, in which the people themselves literally have the full power of a government. However, even this democracy was limited. Only free men were allowed to partake in government proceedings. Women, slaves, and others were not permitted to join the government. Those that were allowed HAD to vote or there would be a penalty lodged against them. The Athenian men were called an Assembly. Unfortunately, Athens' democracy did not last long, because when the Peloponessian War erupted with Sparta in 431 BC and Athens was defeated, the Athenian democracy collapsed.

Many believe that the Romans also instituted a form of democracy in its early days of glory, but I disagree. The Romans instituted a republican form of government, where the people elect representatives to voice their interests. The Roman Republic, as it was called, only lasted about five hundred years before the rise of the Roman Empire.

It was another thousand plus years before another country experimented with a form of democracy. After the Crusades, England's king had acquired almost absolute authority over his barons and lords. Since the Crusades had taken alot of England and other European nations, the kings had to tax their nobles heavily to cover the costs of the wars with the Muslims in the Holy Land. However, this kind of authority was ripe for overuse and corruption. It reached a boiling point in the reign of King John, the brother of King Richard I, the Lion-Hearted. John began taxing his nobles like crazy, and putting himself above the rule of law. The nobles began to complain. They believed that nobody was above any laws. If the nobles and the people had to obey the law with no questions asked, why couldn't the king? Surely he was one of them as well, was he not? So in 1215, the nobles began rebelling against King John. John could not muster enough strength to combat them and he submitted to the Magna Carta, a document drawn up by the nobles to bring the king down to their level, to where he had to follow the law and rules just as they did. Thus the king's power was reduced, and Parliament was formed for the first time as a counter to the king. Thus was born the system of parliamentary democracy in England.

Possibly the greatest example of a democracy is definitely the United States of America. The rights in which the American colonists fought for was similar to those the nobles of medieval England fought for more than six hundred years prior. The United States combined forms of a republic and a democracy to utilize the modern American government of today. While the people still elect their representatives to Congress, they officially elect the President of the United States himself. Switzerland has also experimented with the Athenian version of democracy, direct democracy, for a number of years. In this modern era after the fall of Communism and the Soviet empire, a majority of nations around the world are in some form of democracy.

Democracy is not a perfect form of government, nor it is the worst. It has its flaws, surely, but it has certainly proved its worth time and time again throughout the annals of world history.

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