What is the simularitys and diffrences between represenitive and direct democracy?

Question

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each

Answer 1

Direct Democracy:

1.Continuous participation of citizens
2.Self-government
3.Mass meeting/referendum

benefits:

citizens have more control
they are better informed and become more politically sophisticated
public can express own views rather than the politicians
rule is legitimate as the people agree

Representative Democracy:

1.Indirect and limited democracy
2. Participation is infrequent (ie.voting)
3. public dont exercise power themselves

benefits:

more practical
no burden on citizens
stability is maintained as citizens are distanced from politics and more willing to compromise

Answer 2

Representative democracy describes a system where the people vote for representatives to make the law. Those representatives are elected to represent their constituents but they are also expected to use their own judgment in topics where they may be more informed than the citizens. Direct democracy is often used to describe things like ballot propositions where the people directly decide on an issue. The best example is a New England town meeting where all the citizens in a town come together to discuss and vote.

Many people think that direct democracy is a "purer" form of democracy because it more accurately reflects the will of the people. The problem though, is most people are not willing to take the effort to educate themselves on the key issues to make an informed decision. You occasionally see this in the passing of ballot propositions which sound good but which most experts believe have a negative effect.

Representative democracy elects professionals who can devote their time to educate themselves. Unfortunately, corruption, special interests, etc. can prevent them from actually representing the people or work towards the common good.

Answer 3

Direct democracy is when every single person has a say. It is good to use when there is a relatively small amount of people, since everyone has a say.

Representative democracy is when the people elect people to make the decisions for them. This work better than Direct democracy in countries like the US, where it would be impossible to get everyone in the country to a meeting. However, one has to be careful that the politicians that one elected are protecting ones interests.

Answer 4

I would prefer direct democracy over representative democracy.
With representative democracy, you have to go with the herd of lobbyist in Washington. I suppose the politicians get to hear more side of the wealthiest and most powerful this way but the middle guy is left out in the cold.
Now direct democracy which is more like individual areas governing themselves. That will never happen because there are some classes and races of people that do not want the white middle class to have what they want - which is good clean crime free communities and schools and business and streets, etc.
They prefer all to have to deal with trash everywhere and any kind of music or behavior those that live only by pleasure pursue.
And it seems that we aren't allowed to keep our own culture but must instead give over to whomever is the lowest behaving among us and adopt their culture. Just seems to me anyway.