democracy

de·moc·ra·cy

noun \di-ˈmä-krə-sē\

plural de·moc·ra·cies

Definition of DEMOCRACY

1

a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority

b : 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

2

: a political unit that has a democratic government

3

capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the United States <from emancipation Republicanism to New Deal Democracy — C. M. Roberts>

4

: the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority

5

: the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

Examples of DEMOCRACY

1. The nation has chosen democracy over monarchy.
2. In a democracy, every citizen should have the right to vote.
3. The company is not a democracy; decisions are made by a board of directors, not the workers.
4. There is democracy within the company.
5. Democracy, I would repeat, is the noblest form of government we have yet evolved … —Norman Mailer, New York Review of Books, 27 Mar. 2002
6. … this and the economic failures of faithful democracies in places such as India or the Anglophone Caribbean demonstrated conclusively that there was no inherent link between freedom and capitalism … —Orlando Patterson, New Republic, 8 Nov. 1999
7. Even in democracies today, crucial knowledge is available to only a few individuals … —Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 1997

Origin of DEMOCRACY

Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dēmokratia, from dēmos + -kratia -cracy

First Known Use: 1576

Related to DEMOCRACY

Synonyms

republic, self-government, self-rule

Related Words

pure democracy; home rule, self-determination; autonomy, sovereignty (also sovranty)

Near Antonyms

despotism, dictatorship, monarchy, monocracy, totalitarianism, tyranny

Other Government and Politics Terms

agent provocateur, agitprop, autarky, cabal, egalitarianism, federalism, hegemony, plenipotentiary, popular sovereignty, socialism

Rhymes with DEMOCRACY

autocracy, bureaucracy, Eurocracy, kleptocracy, mobocracy, plantocracy, plutocracy, slavocracy, technocracy, theocracy

democracy

noun    (Concise Encyclopedia)

Form of government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodic free elections. In a direct democracy, the public participates in government directly (as in some ancient Greek city-states, some New England town meetings, and some cantons in modern Switzerland). Most democracies today are representative. The concept of representative democracy arose largely from ideas and institutions that developed during the European Middle Ages and the Enlightenment and in the American and French Revolutions. Democracy has come to imply universal suffrage, competition for office, freedom of speech and the press, and the rule of law. See also republic.