Positive And Negatives Of Representative Democracy

Democracy is a political system in which the people have the power to rule the government. Citizens can influence and affect the decisions made by the government, directly or indirectly. The country we live in is a representative democracy, where we indirectly affect our government. Citizens elect an official that represents their population in governmental decisions and political issues. On the other hand, in a direct democracy each individual represents himself and can directly participate in governmental decisions without depending on an elected official. Governmental control is placed “in the hands of the people themselves”, assuming that the public is well informed to “make wise decisions on political matters, whether through referenda, town meetings, citizen initiatives, or other direct means” (Dalton, et al.). In this essay I will be discussing the positives and negatives of a direct democracy, and comparing it to a representative democracy. In an experiment by Benjamin Olken, forty-nine Indonesian villages were studied to compare the effects of …show more content…
In this form of government, the public can “express their preferences at elections, but public policy is actually made by the representatives that the citizenry selects” (Dalton, et al.). Populations choose a candidate that best fits their beliefs and values. The advantage of this form of government is that the chosen representatives have a political background, and are better prepared than the rest of the public when it comes to political decisions. The negative side of this form of government, however, is that no candidate can perfectly represent a population. All candidates will have opinions that will be both favorable and unfavorable to the public. In this case, the public has to compromise, electing a representative that best matches their ideas, but also has ideas they do not