Correct and rewrite the following Statements When elected leaders are unaware of the best interest of people in any non- democratic country, it leads to their resignation from the politics
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
OVERVIEW
The stories and the analysis in the previous chapter gave us a sense of
what democracy is like. There we described some governments as
democratic and some as non-democratic. We saw how governments in
some of those countries changed from one form to the other. Let us now
draw general lessons from those stories and ask the more basic question:
What is democracy? What are its features? This chapter builds on a simple
definition of democracy. Step by step, we work out the meaning of the
terms involved in this definition. The aim here is to understand clearly the
bare minimum features of a democratic form of government. After going
through this chapter we should be able to distinguish a democratic form
of government from a non-democratic government. Towards the end of
this chapter, we step beyond this minimal objective and introduce a broader
idea of democracy.
In the previous chapter, we have seen that democracy is the most
prevalent form of government in the world today and it is expanding to
more countries. But why is it so? What makes it better than other forms of
government? That is the second big question that we take up in this chapter.
CHAPTER 2
What is
Democracy?
Why
Democracy?
23
2.1 WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?
distinguishes these governments
from Pinochet’s rule in Chile,
communist rule in Poland or the later
period of Nkrumah’s rule in Ghana?
What do these governments have in
common with the military rule in
Myanmar? Why do we say that these
governments are not democratic?
On the basis of this analysis, write
down some common features of:
Democratic governments
Non-democratic governments
Why define democr ine democr ine democra c y?
Before we proceed further, let us
first take note of an objection by
Merry. She does not like this way
of defining democracy and wants
to ask some basic questions.
WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? WHY DEMOCRACY?
News items like this appear very often in newspapers.
Do they all use the word democracy in the same sense?
In Chapter One we read many stories
from different parts of the world.
Through these stories we discussed
various governments and
organisations. We called some of
these democracies. Others were
described as non-democracies. Can
you recall, for each of these countries,
something about the governments
that were described as democracies?
Chile, before and after Pinochet’s
rule
Poland, after the fall of communist
rule
Ghana, in the early period of
Nkrumah’s government
What do you think is common to
them? Why do we club them all under
the label of democracy? What is it that
24 DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
Her teacher Matilda Lyngdoh
responds to her questions, as other
classmates join the discussion:
Merry: Ma’am, I don’t like this idea. First we
spend one whole chapter discussing democracies in different parts of the world and then
we want to find out the meaning of democracy. I mean logically shouldn’t we have approached it the other way round? Shouldn’t the
meaning have come first and then the example?
Lyngdoh Madam: I can see your point. But that
is not how we reason in everyday life. We use
words like pen, rain or love. Do we wait to have
a definition of these words before we use
them? Come to think of it, do we have clear
definition of these words? It is only by using a
word that we understand its meaning.
Merry: But then why do we need definitions at all?
Lyngdoh Madam: We need a definition only when
we come across a difficulty in the use of a word.
We need a definition of rain only when we wish
to distinguish it from, say, drizzle or cloudburst.
The same is true for democracy. We need a clear
definition only because people use it for different purposes, because very different kinds of
governments call themselves democracy.