Democracy

"A democracy is ideally a society in which all adults have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. The most common form of modern democracy is parliamentary democracy in which the voting public takes part in elections and chooses politicians to represent them in a Legislative Assembly. A purer form is direct democracy when the voting public makes direct decisions or participates directly in the political process." Wikipedia 


Key terms included in the Wikipedia entry include: political self-determination, sovereignty, equality before the law, the separation of powers, representative democracy, consensus democracy, deliberative democracy, liberal democracy, political pluralism, due process, civil liberties, human rights, judicial independence, majority rule, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the social contract.


There are different types of democracy and different types of freedoms. However, true democracies do share similar institutions and common practices.


"A democracy is government by the people; a form of government 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. A state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges. A democratic state celebrates a democratic spirit of political or social equality." Dictionary.com