what is american democracy how it works?
967061
Your question has a very large scope and could be answered in a book.\n\nIn USA people have the ultimate power.\nPeople vote to elect :-\nPresident, vice president of the country.\nCongressmen and senators from thier states in the legislature of the country.\nGovernors for their states.\nMayors of their cities\nSherifs for their towns.\nCouncil members for community councils.\nMost of the elected people belong to eother one of the two big poilitcal parties in USA. All the decisions in these parties are made by a majority vote. Hence any person can become a member of any political party if he is able to get enough vote.
1063672
Well, that's part of America's government. Because we are actually a republic (and NOT a democracy) like the idiots on television like to say, we vote for people to represent us. So in a sense, the people do decide by electing representatives on their own behalf who represent their own beliefs to go to Washington to do crap.\n\nAs where in a democracy, the people vote on absolutely everything, which is expensive.
996378
The United States system works.  Five calls for pull-out, three of them by Democrats.  All five fail.  The majority wins again.  The same thing happened and President Clinton was in office.  People that don't like it don't like democracy.  THEY are the enemy.\n\nThey attacked President Clinton with lies, rumors, name-calling.\nThey attack President Bush with lies, rumors, name-calling.\n\nSame type of people using each party as a way to undermine our country and spread seditious lies about us, usually the least educated, straight out of college or less, with little to no experience in how complex world-affairs and politics really is.\n\nSpeak up each time you see it.\n\nI'm a Democrat, but support our troops and their mission.  I dissent, I disagree, I even protest where I feel moved, but I NEVER undermine my own country.  I am a U.S.A. citizen first, a Democrat second.\n\nI'll work on my peers.\nYou cheer me on.
702955
In a true Democracy, everyone would vote on every desision.\nSo it's not a true democracy.\nIt is a representative democracy, basically a republic.\nWe vote for the people that will make the decisions instead of voting on every decision.
1169158
LOL, that's a good one.  It's all a matter of interpretation.  The buzzword is "democracy", when people use that word they can mean either an old fashioned American Style Democracy, or a European style social democracy.  Unfortunately since the mid thirties American government has been slowly morphing into the latter.  In a social democracy voting is merged with socialist ideology that everyone deserves a "minimum" standard of living.  In the older American model people got what they deserved through hard work or not.  Success was a prize to be won, not an entitlement to be taken for granted.\n      It all comes down to ideology, and niether one of the parties is "conservative" in the original American sense of limiting government's power, taxes on the citizens, and preventing a big central authority from dictating to the States or the people.  In my opinion, both parties are social democratic parties at their face value, but also elite privilege makers to keep corporate sponsors happy and donating to the campaigns.  We have evolved a strange two faced game where politicians try to placate the poor people with programs and the rich with tax shelters, leaving the hard working economic producing classes (middle or not) holding the bag.  The only real answer is a hard look at history (which most are scared to take) that inspires a new party that believes in limited government, freedom, and letting individual people sink or swim on their own merits, helped if they need help, by their families and local communities, not uncle sam's big fat pocket book. Happy surfing, I'm out.
233558
Like stated before, US is a flavor of democracy but ...\nthere are many aspects which aren't consistent with democratic principles. \nOne would be the lack of transparency and games of interests. Guess you've noticed how many decisions taken by the elected administration have been done behind the back of the people they are supposed to represent and protect. Creating an atmosphere of insecurity, furthering own interests, limitations of civil liberties, etc ... these are signs of a totalitarian system, not democracy. Maybe some infrigements on liberties are necessary in the current sstuation but that doesn't mean they are acceptable in a system that wants to appear democratic.\nAlso the relativity of freedom. A very small part of the media is actually free because those members of the media that aren't subjects in a race for profits serve the politicians. The result is that media doesn't want to inform the people, it wants to give them what sells best. This way the people aren't free because they won't be fully in touch with what happens around, they aren't fully controlled either, just in a state of half-thruts and sometimes deceit. Biased info, govt cover-up attempts (like the failures in Iraq, secret prisons, etc), these aren't part of democracy.
17961
In a true Democracy, every citizen is allowed to vote on every issue, like laws and people in office.  In a Representational Government or Democratic Republic, like the US, representatives are elected to vote on issues for us.  We elect the representatives and senators we think will make the best decisions.
315601
The United States has a representative democracy....\n\nThe citizens of the United States choose who will represent them in the government. Voting rights are established by the U.S. and state constitutions...Everyone is not allowed to vote in America....for example...in many states...convicted felons can never vote again.
196160
Yes, it is.  (It's also a republic, capitalist, etc.)  It's not a "direct" democracy in the sense of submitting everything to a direct vote of the people, but the people do have ultimate power.  As a practical matter, the people frequently don't exercise the power they have -- they often don't bother voting, or don't educate themselves on issues -- but the power is there if they choose.
36645
Democracy is a joke! us americans think that we are free that is not the case, and america thinks that it's there job to polize the world
1127145
In a democracy the masses can vote the posessions and rights from the few.\nIn this hypothetical Democracy \n...there is a guy who owns a movie theater\nthe townspeople get together and decide that movies should be free to everyone.\n\nSensibly, In my country (USA) our forefathers had the sense to create a Republic instead.
734796
Democracy (literally "rule by the people", from the Greek demos, "people," and kratos, "rule") is a form of government for a nation state, or for an organization in which all the citizens have an equal vote or voice in shaping policy or electing government officials. While the term democracy is often used in the context of a political state, the principles are also applicable to other bodies, such as universities, labor unions, public companies, or civic organizations.............enjoy just dont believe it actually exists!
1130802
there is this "idea" that democracy is good and other types of government are bad and/or evil.  no one system of government is inherently good or evil, but that just not how it is viewed.  i'm a little more curious as to why america thinks it can "teach" democracy with bombs and force....but then historically what we see more of is the idea that america teaches a system of rule that supports the US is more what it means, be it a democracy or dictator.
396719
You say American democratic, but the US system is not a democracy, but a representative republic.\n\nThe disadvantage of a democracy is that a marginal majority, through its vote can control everything in the country, and that the system is itself clumsy in that all the eligible people will vote on every issue, which is time consuming and open to great corruption.\n\nThe advantage of the representative republic is that representation can, and has, been established so that the minorities of the public and of the states are not disenfranchised, not removed from participation in the decision making processes. The smaller states (in population) have a say in government and laws through principally the US Senate, where every state gets 2 votes regardless of its population. That prevents the 10 most populous states of California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, and Georgia, which are decidedly more eastern (2 exceptions) from deciding all of the laws for all the 50 states. Those 10 states, with 1/2 the population would be able to by voting together over ride the vote of the other 40 states if we had a democracy and not a republic. So unless you want the complete control of this country to fall into the hands of a few states, you had better not vote for equal counting in presidential elections, nor in congressional representation.\n\nThere is actually less corruption in representative government than in totalitarian government, because there are more people that a corrupter must pay-off in a representative. If you don't understand or believe that, witness the state of things in the former Soviet Union where the government was "representative" in name only, with all candidates selected by the Communist Party, a group of fat cats who acted together as a governing unit.
803469
The federal government is specifically laid out in the constitution of the united states. it has grown through laws passed by congress and through judicial interpretation of these laws, for instants, congress has the right to oversee interstate commerce, judicial review says that they can now shut an  establishment down if they aren't handicapped accessible, and so on. a local government regulates everything else from property tax to speed limits to zoning laws. You have a direct say who runs your local government where as you vote for a representative to voice your opinion in federal matters.  This could literally take weeks to go over but I hope you get the basics, read up some government web sites on US democracy or get the cliff notes on Tocqueville's Democracy in America, an old book but a knowledgeable one written by a Frenchman.
342760
I don't know what your talking about! The problem here in America, is that America is under a one sided party rule, and a Dictatorship with George Bush. There isn't anyone to oppose them right now; because the Democrats can't pass any legislation without it being pushed down. It's all a waist of time until America wakes up and brings back a Democracy to the American people. These people that are in charge of our Government are warmongers and terrorists like Adolf Hitler was. They are even following quite a few of Hitlers ideologies with rule of the Country.
812498
Representative democracy is just elected officials making the laws and decisions for the majority.  Direct democracy is not feasible because of the large numbers of people.  Even in a smaller community, you would have thousands of people who would want to speak about each and every thing that came up.  \n\nIn government, there is a thing called "The Iron Law of Oligarchy," which means no matter how much you try to maintain direct democracy, eventually there comes a need for representaties to speak for the majority, instead of individuals speaking for themselves.