hello this is Mr. Seymour and this will
be the first of our video lectures this
particular discussion will introduce the
essential concepts of democracy and
political thought first we must define
what democracy is.   As you can see in the
in the slide below power to the people
that's what democracy means demos is
people Cracy is power that people have
the power in a democracy and democracies
are measured by level so the question
that you have to ask in a democracy is
not whether or not it's majority rule or
is there an election system but how much
power do the people really have over
their government how much say do people
have in the actions of their
governmental system that becomes the
route of democracy the traditional Greek
definition is demos or people Kratos
or power power to the people
Webster's definition of democracy is a
form of government in which people
choose their leaders by voting so voting
is an important part of a democracy but
it's not the only part of a democracy
another definition is an organization or
situation in which everyone is treated
equally and has equal rights or a
government by the people especially the
rule of the majority but does the
majority always rule? where do where do
we leave room for a minority? that
becomes the question of balance that we
have in a democracy like the United
States a government in which the supreme
power is vested in the people and
exercised by them directly or indirectly
through a system of representation
usually involving periodically held free
elections so again elections are an
important part of democracy but it's not
the only thing that defines a democracy
and you need to understand that the
components of a democracy.  First
is strong institutions and
the rule of law where we maintain a
belief in popular sovereignty where the
people have the power we create a
constitutional or limited government in
which the government is limited in its
power and the people are given powers
over their government and the capability
to enforce public policy on the basis of
what the people want competitive and
free and fair elections are another
component which means offering citizens
a true choice in their election and
respecting the vote of the people rather
than just saying okay here's a 
rubber-stamp
and we're going to have a hundred
percent of the vote go to whoever it is
that's running.   Those kinds of societies
usually end up being very autocratic
which means ruled by one person
protection of political rights and
freedoms guaranteeing free speech free
press and the free flow of ideas and
debate
defending tolerance of an equality for
different groups in society this is
coming under a lot of strain in our
current political system given our
current environment especially
with regards to things like racism and I
would point out recent events
particularly as I'm as I'm doing this
lecture a KKK march in Charlottesville
Virginia led to a tremendous amount of
conflict between KKK members or members
who were alt-right and those who were
defending certain statues on their
campus there were people who wanted to
remove statues of of civil war heroes
like robert e lee and the white right
white members of society came down
often KKK and neo-nazi and they wanted
that they wanted to defend those statues
while others wanted to defend the right
to remove those statues because they
were not politically correct and it led
to a lot of conflict.   there are many
forms of democracy direct democracy or
Athenian democracy going back to Athens
Greece is where everyone participates
directly in every decision the only
problem with the direct democracy is
once you get to certain size in your
population it's very hard to give
everyone a direct involvement in every
decision so we have we have the issue of
how impractical it is for the population
of a country
to be given direct authority over its
government so we have representative
governments which are indirect forms of
democracy they're based on
representation and voting people vote on
others to represent them most nations
today can be measured by degrees or
levels of democracy with direct
democracy being one side and indirect to
representative democracy being on
another and then autocratic or or
one-person rule or rule by a group are
also on another side those are the
opposite of democracy now there's also
this theory of elitism elite democracy
means that the only role of citizens is
to choose their leaders and once
Election Day passes the citizens tune
out while the elected representatives
take care of business because the
elected representatives then become the
elite and they make decisions for us and
the idea then is in an elitist democracy
we we the people don't get directly
involved well that doesn't necessarily
work we support those that support the
elitist theory say that since voters are
choosing the cream of the crop to
represent the country citizens should
trust their leaders to do what is best
in this day and age you have to ask
yourself have we really elected the
cream of the crop I'm going to leave
that decision up to you as to the level
of which we can really trust who we are
electing and why we're electing them but
you can see that an elitist democracy
would say they have the power whether
they are the elected representatives we
just stay away the criticism of such a
theory is that it is dangerous to let
the government run roughshod over the
public the people should have some
control over what the elected
representatives say and do.  A pluralist
theory of democracy is its central tenet
is that group membership is the key to
political power because it encourages
elected officials to make decisions on
the group's behalf
so we have the idea that we
recognize things like special interests.
A simultaneous advantage and
disadvantage of a pluralist democracy
requires more activity from its citizens
a participatory democracy is a form of
government where citizens play a very
active role in controlling all of the
major aspects of their lives it
generally requires the citizens to vote
on each major issue that may affect them
it requires an enormous amount of effort
time and knowledge for citizens to
possess most observers of American
politics believe that we fit under a
pluralist democracy umbrella where we
look at the diminutive the majority and
we look at groups special interest
groups then we have the problem of hyper
pluralism hyper pluralism is pluralism
gone sour-- too many cooks spoil the broth
you could say groups that they are so strong
that government which gives in to the
many different groups is weakened and
you can often tell when
hyper pluralism is happening because
elected leaders play to their base those
that elected them into office and in
Texas we have a saying you dance with
the ones that brung ya and that means
that if you were elected by a particular
group of people you play to that group
because they are the ones that you owe
your job to this occurs because there's
too many alternate voices and little or
no incentive to reach a consensus
through debate or compromise and there
are a lot of people that argue that we
are in an era of tremendous hyper pluralism
democracy's common thread is the
participation of the citizen and this
particular painting below is basically
 called the town meeting and
the town meeting is probably the most
democratic method of
people participating directly in their
government where people show up and
directly address issues and the people
vote right then and there the underlying
assumptions of a democracy are the
democratic governments tend to have
common threads which can be demonstrably
measured and compared the first of those
is who controls the agenda of the
government second is there an
enlightened understanding of political
processes and of the will of the people
third is there effective participation
and fourth  is the
voting system one that grants equality
to people everyone has their same that
their vote counts the same or do we
have an elitist system or do we have one
in which every vote counts the same the
public needs to have an opportunity to
decide which political issues and
initiatives should be brought up for
deliberation by the government and this
is how we define control of the
agenda enlightened understanding is that
before the decision-making process
begins citizens themselves, the voters,
must have ample and equal opportunity to
discover and affirm the policies and
their consequences with a full
disclosure of all details and I would
argue that you could look as an example
where we didn't have an enlightened understanding
is the issues of Trump care versus Obama
care and in both cases these are pieces
of legislation that were voted on
without a lot of feedback from citizens
but when citizens let their 
representatives know that they're
following their actions and that they
care about what's going to happen, you
have enlightened understanding
effective participation then is that
during the decision-making process how
much opportunity do citizens have to
adequately and equally form preferences
on each topic and make other people
aware of them and we're in an era where
we have a lot of debate over a lot of
different kinds of legislation not a lot
of legislation is getting made right now
in Congress because of this problem
voting equality as the decision-making
process reaches its final stage a
citizen must have an equal opportunity
to vote with the assurance that his or
her vote will be given equal weight now
this is a map from a place called
Freedom House you can go to www.freedomhouse.org
or freedomhouse.org and the link is at
the bottom here
now the green are free countries
the yellow are partly free and
the purple are not free and if you look
Africa has a lot of purple the Middle
East has a lot of purple and Asia has a
lot of purple whereas the Western
Hemisphere has a lot of green and with
the exception of Mexico it looks like
and Venezuela is one is another country
that that doesn't have a lot of say
alright so those are yellow or partly
free countries Cuba is down there past
the coast of Florida in purple that's
the only part in purple it's in the
western hemisphere can you see that and
that means that they are not 
considered not to be purely free but as
you look on the other side of the of the
world as you look in the the eastern
hemisphere what you're going to see is
your European Western European nations
in green
and then you start to see Asia and you
start to see Africa either purple or
yellow with very little green  areas
One area that is green is South Africa and that's
amazing because there wasn't a lot of
freedom in South Africa prior to the
1990s another area that you see you'll
see in two areas you'll see in in the
eastern hemisphere one is India and
another is Australia so what do you need
to know from all of this first of all is
the underlying assumption of democracy
and that is that people will be involved
in their own government where in the
Constitution are both democracy and
civil liberties directly addressed in
the Bill of Rights the first ten
amendments to the Constitution and you
need to know that that really this is
where we set up the rules of how people
are going to have power within their own
government
so constitutionality the idea of
constitutional limits are in the Bill of
Rights the foundations of democracy are
that we have strong institutions and the
rule of law which means a functioning
state capable of delivering public
services strong judicial institutions
routine political processes and
standards of political behavior that
lead to peaceful resolution of conflict
and change of leadership competitive and
free and fair elections universal
suffrage and the ability to run for
office no government coercion or
predetermined outcomes competitive
political party systems voters are
offered true choices not just fake names
on a ballot
citizenship and civil society citizens
who act alone or collectively can
influence public policy decisions
government allows for the free creation
of associations and allows them a role
in the political process the government
and elected officials are held
accountable for their actions and policy
decisions also there's a protection of
political rights and freedoms of course
this is in the United States is in our
bill of rights free and open exchange of
information and public debate including
a free press or media constitutionally
protected political rights and civil
liberties tolerance among citizens and
there we have to ask ourselves do we
really have of these three things? to
what degree do we have today? and is our
democracy being challenged because these
things are not available?  some
contemporary issues the question becomes
is the United States a true democracy
today and does democracy have to model
the American system is the American
export of democracy a positive or
negative impact on our political system
in the world today for example US
involvement in Iraq the Arab Spring and
post-colonial governments in Latin
America and I will also argue the threat
to get involved in North Korea do we do
we say that we're going to export
American democracy to other countries
with the hope that they're going to
adopt our system and by adopting our
system will they be as free as we are
will they understand how that democratic
system works that's a big question one
in which we're going to discuss that in
our in our online forum this week that
concludes this particular discussion on
democracy and its foundations
