28 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
28 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
**Representative democracy** (also **indirect democracy**,
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**representative government** or **psephocracy**) is a type of
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[democracy](democracy "wikilink") founded on the principle of elected
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officials representing a group of people, as opposed to direct
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democracy. These should not be confused with directly democratic
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[libertarian socialist](Libertarian_Socialism "wikilink")
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[confederations](Confederation "wikilink"), in which 'representative's
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(called delegates for the sake of simplicity) are subject to recall,
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short-terms and only represent a small interest.
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## History
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*See Also: [Timeline of Representative
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Democracy](Timeline_of_Representative_Democracy "wikilink")*
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The development of representative democracy has been a long and unstable
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process, and that have been constant waves of representative governments
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forming as well as backslides into more authoritarian governments.
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## Criticism
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### Authoritarian Criticisms
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Sociologist [Robert Michels](Robert_Michels "wikilink") argued that all
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democratic institutions suffer from an [Iron Law of
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Oligarchy](Iron_Law_of_Oligarchy "wikilink"), which states that power
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tends to be concentrated over time in ANY democratic organisations,
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effectively dooming democracy to always be a failure. |