Democracy, the most successful style of management?

The government of the people, by the people and for the people

We live in a world filled with wondrous diversity of experiences, opinions, physical appearance, cultures, religions, etc. One of the challenges of this age is not only to learn in a way to live in harmony with people who differ from us, but to celebrate the diversity and learn from it. We have a chance to understand each other, to find the main links (common features, common problems) between all the nations from East to West, from North to South


By EVGENIA DONCHENKO
from Kyiv, UKRAINE


Sick of being fed up with information about the globalization or war? Well, look around and you would realize that global leader states are not a new thing! Remember the Roman Empire? Its influence used to spread over a third of the Eurasian continent... one government... one language... and it collapsed!

"History repeats itself"- did you know this one? So, it doesn't sound exactly bright... but everyone will agree that having a government would be useless if there are still people who just hate each other for whatever reason they find suitable, if they even do not want to think about the co-operation, democracy, equality. There are so many different cultures, religions and personal points of view in the world, but is it bad?

We live in a world filled with wondrous diversity of experiences, opinions, physical appearance, cultures, religions, etc. One of the challenges of this age is not only to learn in a way to live in harmony with people who differ from us, but to celebrate the diversity and learn from it. We have a chance to understand each other, to find the main links (common features, common problems) between all the nations from East to West, from North to South. We all have a role to play and everyone has a contribution and responsibility to improve our national wealth and lifestyles and what we leave for future generation.

What is most important now is developing our ability to bridge the differences that so frequently in the past have kept us apart and prevented us from achieving our ultimate destiny. These differences have between the black/white, the urban/rural, between privileged and the underprivileged, but not the least of these factors that thwarted our progress has been the inability of people living in East-West and North-South area to recognize their common goals and interest, in other words -to find the possible co-operation. Today the significant step is on that - to break down these old barriers and of course an improving of our desire - to co-operate!

Taking into account all what I mentioned above, could we see the confirmation of the following words said by Abraham Lincoln: "the government of the people, by the people and for the people"?

By this statement he meant Democracy! In other words "Democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people"!

The power of democratic idea has 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 Tomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence in 1776 to Andrei Sakharov's last speech in 1989.

Democracy is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercise directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system (Abraham Lincoln).

Today, the most common form of democracy whenever for a town or nations of millions of people, is representative democracy, in which citizens elect officials to make political decisions, formulate laws and administer programs for the public good.

All democracies are systems in which citizens freely make political decisions by majority rule. In democratic society, majority rule must be couple with guaranties of individual human rights that serve to protect the rights of minorities - whether ethnic, religious or political, or simply the losers in the debate. The rights of minorities are protected, because democratic laws and institutions protect the rights of all citizens.

In this busy private realm of democratic society, citizens can explore the possibilities of freedom and the responsibilities of self-government - unpreserved by the potentially heavy hand of the State. As for the political freedoms, they are the following: freedom of speech, information, assembly, democratization, association.

Last, but not least, the pillars of democracy are the following: sovereignty of the people, government based upon consent of the governance, majority rule, Minority rule, Guarantee of basic human rights, free and fair elections, equality before the law, Due process of law, Constitutional limits on government, Social, economic and political pluralism, Values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation and compromise etc.

Taking into account that I pointed out some features, characteristics of democracy, it doesn't mean that this style of administration - democratic one, is the most successful! I could be the best one from my point of view, but for the president of our country or our nation the worse one!

Somehow it would be unfair to state like this - this is the best and that is the worse! May be this comparison is funny, but it's like when you say "this cake with this filling is the best one! Or the vine from this region and country is the best in the world" in this case don't we forget about the taste?

Of course, in our case we don't speak about tastes, but, for example, we shouldn't forget about the peculiarities and features of the citizens who are living in this or that country, the history base, the political and economic heritage of this country and so on. In other words, it's up to the society and government to decide what will be better for them, because it is well-know that : "Person belongs to place where imagining" and "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams" (Roosvelt).