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Alfonso IX (15 August 1171 – 23 or 24 September 1230) was King of León and Galicia from the death of his father Ferdinand II in 1188 until his own death. He took steps towards modernizing and democratizing his dominion and founded the University of Salamanca in 1212.
- Overview
- Fundamental questions
Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the “people,” a group historically constituted by only a minority of the population (e.g., all free adult males in ancient Athens or all sufficiently propertied adult males in 19th-century Britain) but generally understood since the mid-20th century to include all (or nearly all) adult citizens.
Where was democracy first practiced?
Studies of contemporary nonliterate tribal societies and other evidence suggest that democracy, broadly speaking, was practiced within tribes of hunter-gatherers in prehistoric times. The transition to settled agricultural communities led to inequalities of wealth and power between and within communities and hierarchical nondemocratic forms of social organization. Thousands of years later, in the 6th century BCE, a relatively democratic form of government was introduced in the city-state of Athens by Cleisthenes.
How is democracy better than other forms of government?
States with democratic governments prevent rule by autocrats, guarantee fundamental individual rights, allow for a relatively high level of political equality, and rarely make war on each other. As compared with nondemocratic states, they also better foster human development as measured by indicators such as health and education, provide more prosperity for their citizens, and ensure a broader range of personal freedoms.
Why does democracy need education?
The etymological origins of the term democracy hint at a number of urgent problems that go far beyond semantic issues. If a government of or by the people—a “popular” government—is to be established, at least five fundamental questions must be confronted at the outset, and two more are almost certain to be posed if the democracy continues to exist for long.
(1) What is the appropriate unit or association within which a democratic government should be established? A town or city? A country? A business corporation? A university? An international organization? All of these?
(2) Given an appropriate association—a city, for example—who among its members should enjoy full citizenship? Which persons, in other words, should constitute the dēmos? Is every member of the association entitled to participate in governing it? Assuming that children should not be allowed to participate (as most adults would agree), should the dēmos include all adults? If it includes only a subset of the adult population, how small can the subset be before the association ceases to be a democracy and becomes something else, such as an aristocracy (government by the best, aristos) or an oligarchy (government by the few, oligos)?
(3) Assuming a proper association and a proper dēmos, how are citizens to govern? What political organizations or institutions will they need? Will these institutions differ between different kinds of associations—for example, a small town and a large country?
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Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, dēmos 'people' and kratos 'rule') is a system of government in which state power is vested in the people or the general population of a state.
Jan 29, 2021 · Democracy, literally meaning “rule by the people,” empowers individuals to exercise political control over the form and functions of their government. While democracies come in several forms, they all feature competitive elections, freedom of expression, and protection of individual civil liberties and human rights.
- Robert Longley
People also ask
Who was Alfonso IX?
What does democracy mean in Greek?
What does democracy mean?
What is democracy & how does it work?
Defining Democracy Let’s look at a more formal definition of democracy 2 and work through its three central elements. Democracy is a political system in which 1. all adults are empowered as citizens and have the ability to hold officials accountable for their actions, typically through free, fair, and frequent elections. In those electoral
Jul 27, 2006 · First, it proposes a definition of democracy. Second, it outlines different approaches to the question of why democracy is morally valuable at all. Third, it discusses the issue of whether and when democratic institutions have authority and different conceptions of the limits of democratic authority.
The Life and Death of Democracy is a 2009 book by John Keane published in the UK by Simon & Schuster. Keane claims his book is the first attempt to write a full history of democracy for well over a century.
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