How do You Define Democracy?

In Australia, as soon as you turn 18 you can register to vote. This means you will be part of electing the people that you would like to represent you in local, state or federal government.

No ruler, minister, or political party can tell a judge how to decide a case

Yet the power of the democratic idea has also evoked some of history's most profound and moving expressions of human will and intellect: from Pericles in ancient Athens to Vaclav Havel in the modern Czech Republic, from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence in 1776 to Andrei Sakharov's last speeches in 1989.

In Australia, we have three levels of government that share the power: federal state and local. Each of these holds elections, makes laws for the citizens and provides public goods and services.

The Limits and Requirements for Democracy

The word ‘democracy’ originates from the Greek language. It combines two shorter words: ‘demos’ meaning whole citizen of a place and ‘kratos’ meaning power or rule. Together this means that the rule and power should involve all the citizens of a place.

democracy is to work, citizens must not only participate and exercise their rights.  They must also observe certain principles and rules of democratic conduct.

In the dictionary definition, democracy "is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

There are lots of symbols of democracy including flags, coats of arms, and parliament houses.

People must respect the law and reject violence.  Nothing ever justifies using violence against your political opponents, just because you disagree with them

Every citizen must respect the rights of his or her fellow citizens, and their dignity as human beings.

In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Freedom and democracy are often used interchangeably, but the two are not synonymous. Democracy is indeed a set of ideas and principles about freedom, but it also consists of a set of practices and procedures that have been molded through a long, often tortuous history.

The Australian Coat of Arms is the formal symbol of the Commonwealth of Australia. It has a kangaroo and emu holding a shield with symbols of the six Australian states. Above this there is a gold, seven-pointed Commonwealth star – six points represent the states and the final point represents all the territories. Finally, it has the word ‘Australia’ and is on a background of golden wattle (our national floral emblem).

No one should denounce a political opponent as evil and illegitimate, just because they have different views.

All Australian citizens over the age of 18 must vote in federal and state elections. This is not the case in all democracies. In many other countries people may choose not to vote.

In short, democracy is the institutionalization of freedom. For this reason, it is possible to identify the time-tested fundamentals of constitutional government, human rights, and equality before the law that any society must possess to be properly called democratic.

Every group has the right to practice its culture and to have some control over its own affairs, but each group should accept that it is a part of a democratic state.

As well as being a representative democracy, Australia is also a constitutional democracy. This means we have a constitution which is a set of rules that are used to govern our country. Our constitution has been in place since 1 January 1901.

No one should denounce a political opponent as evil and illegitimate, just because they have different views.

Democracies fall into two basic categories, direct and representative. In a direct democracy, all citizens, without the intermediary of elected or appointed officials, can participate in making public decisions.

Since federation, Australia has had 29 Prime Ministers, 28 men and one woman. Our first Prime Minister was Edmund Barton (from 1901 to 1903) and our female Prime Minister was Julia Gillard (from 2010 to 2013).

Democracy requires compromise. Groups with different interests and opinions must be willing to sit down with one another and negotiate.

Such a system is clearly only practical with relatively small numbers of people--in a community organization or tribal council, for example, or the local unit of a labor union, where members can meet in a single room to discuss issues and arrive at decisions by consensus or majority vote

In a democracy, one group does not always win everything it wants.  Different combinations of groups win on different issues.  Over time, everyone wins something

Ancient Athens, the world's first democracy, managed to practice direct democracy with an assembly that may have numbered as many as 5,000 to 6,000 persons--perhaps the maximum number that can physically gather in one place and practice direct democracy.