Government Essay Samples
[...] Democracy is a form of an autocracy, shaped in a different way. In an autocratic country, one ruler stands out against the rest. However, in a democracy, the popular beliefs, rule the rest who are not on their side. When I think about this idea, it really is similar in ideology. In a way, we are all getting controlled, the two forms just differ in the number. Mills makes a good point when he says that just because the popular opinion agrees with a certain idea, it does not make it correct. No one actually sets standards to which we have to believe in an ideology, the deciding factor is the popular vote because people who do not want to be ostracized will not go against the popular beliefs. This possibility makes democracy more powerful than any other form of governing a society. [...]
[...] Democratization in China is concerned with the process of creating a democratic political system at local and country levels. Democratization of a society is an evolutionary process and in case of China it is significantly different from the multi-party, parliamentary democracy that most Western countries are practicing. While any country that is building a democratic system ahs its own peculiarities, this is especially true for China.
According to Chinese officials the grassroot democratization program is divided into three main areas. The first one is the establishment and development of a self-government system in villages, which would allow the villagers to conduct democratic elections. The second area lies in improvement of the People's Congress system at urban and country scale, so as to allow the people's congresses to become true power institutions. The last step is the slow but sure expansion of the scope of local official elections, which includes holding competitive elections at all levels, from village, to city to state (Democratic Implications, 26). [...]
[...] New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world that exercises constitutional monarchy. The power is represented through Queen of New Zealand. The representative of the queen is Governor-General who has just as much power as the queen in relation to the state. The queen and Governor-General are an indivisible part of the state, yet their political engagement is minimal. They remain politically neutral, while the actual governance of the country comes through the parliament.
The primary task of the parliament, which in New Zealand consists of the single chamber, is to establish laws, allocate funding, provide government and supervise government's administration. The election to parliament occurs using mixed member proportional system. Once every three years the election takes place. People, who reached eighteen years, are eligible to both participate in elections and vote. The voter has a right to submit two votes. The party vote is given by an elector to the party that the person voting wants to be represented by in Parliament. The more votes the party gets the more representatives it will have in the parliament and the chance of getting more people from the same party to increase their effectiveness and strength in the parliament. In general the votes decide the distribution of the 120 places for members of the parliament. [...]
[...] The argument behind abandoning winner-take-all election is that it denies representation to large numbers of voters, which in turn causes the legislative bodies to produce legislation that reflects the views of only a part, even if a major one, of society. These drawbacks are easily explained: only those who voted for the winning candidate would receive representation, while the rest of voters are left without such. This turns the democracy that the United States claim to have into a 'majocracy', infringing the rights of a significant part of society. This problem is especially evident for racial and ethnic minorities, whose voice often cannot be heard due to winner-take-all system used in most of the districts throughout the nation. [...]