What is the name of this form of government?

Question

Dictatorship: One person decides.
Democracy: Everyone decides and has equal weight.

What is is called when everyone is involved in a decision, yet the weights are not equal?

Answer 1

Plutocracy

And the current form of democracy in the US can be considered an example of a Plutocracy due to the augmented influence of corperate America and interest groups on our leaders.

Answer 2

Actually, most representative democracies have some form of the system you describe. For instance, in the US senate, Wyoming (with less than 500,000 people) has two senators, and therefore 2% of the vote in the senate. California, with over 36 million people, has two senators, with 2% of the senate votes. Therefore, a vote for a senator in Wyoming counts 70 times more than a vote for a senator in California. Interesting note, the 550,000 residents of the District of Columbia (washington DC) have no voting senators nor representatives. They are completely unrepresented.

In Canada, there are some of their electoral districts (called ridings) with a few thousand people, while others have over 50,000. Again, some people's votes count for more than others.

This form of government is still democracy, but is representation-by-area. Other possible systems would be representation-by-group, like in Lebanon where each sectarian group has a quota of representatives not necessarily tied to the number of people in that group.

Plutocracy is a form of government where really only monied interests have any power, not a way of describing a system with different representational weights. The fact that our system does allow for other possibilities shows that the USA is not a plutocracy, even though monied interests have disproportionate influence.

Answer 3

There are two possible answers to your question:

1. A Representative Democracy.
2. A Republic.