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Here is a list of different varieties of democracy. The types listed here are not all mutually exclusive.
Direct democracy is any form of government based on a theory of civics in which all citizens can directly participate in the decision-making process. Some adherents want both legislative and executive powers to be handled by the people, but most extant systems only allow legislative decisions.
Modern direct democracy is characterised by three pillars:
Various governments around the world exhibit one or more of the above pillars; for example, just over half the states in the United States have citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives and the vast majority have either initiatives and/or referenda.
Switzerland provides the strongest example of a modern direct democracy, as it exhibits the first two pillars at both the local and federal levels. In the past 120 years more than 240 initiatives have been put to referendum. The populace has been conservative, granting about 10% of the initiatives put; in addition, they have often opted for a version of the initiative rewritten by government.
The second pillar can include the ability to hold a binding referendum on whether a given law should be scrapped. This effectively grants the populace a veto on government legislation.
With the advent of the Internet, there have been suggestions for e-democracy/Internet democracy, which comprises various mechanisms for implementing direct democracy concepts.
For more detail see direct democracy.
Direct democracy becomes more and more difficult, and necessarily more closely approximates representative democracy, as the number of citizens grows. Historically, the most direct democracies would include the New England town meeting, the political system of the ancient Greek city states and Oligarchy of Venice.
There are concerns about how such systems would scale to larger populations; in this regard there are a number of experiments being conducted all over the world to increase the direct participation of citizens in what is now a representative system:
We can view direct and indirect democracies as ideal types, with actual democracies approximating more closely to the one or the other.
Some modern political entities are closest to direct democracies, such as Switzerland or some U.S. States, where frequent use is made of referenda, and means are provided for referenda to be initiated by petition instead of by members of the legislature or the government.
Indirect democracy is a broad term describing a means of governance by the people through elected representatives.
The most common system found in today's democratic states is the representative democracy. The people elect government officials who then make decisions on their behalf. Essentially, a representative democracy is a form of indirect democracy in which representatives are democratically selected, and usually difficult to recall.
A doctrine often known as Edmund Burke's Principle states that representatives should act upon their own conscience in the affairs of a representative democracy. This is contrasted to the expectation that such representatives should consider the views of their electors - an expectation particularly common in states with strong constituency links, or with recall provisions (such as modern British Columbia).
Another form of indirect democracy is delegative democracy. In delegative democracy, delegates are selected and expected to act on the wishes of the constituency. In this form of democracy the constituency may recall the delegate at any time. Representatives are expected only to transmit the decisions of electors, advance their views, and if they fail to do so they are subject to immediate recall with only minimal process.
One critique of indirect democracy is that it centralizes power into the hands of a few, thereby increasing the likelihood of corruption in and abuse of power by the government. To reduce this risk, most of today's states with representative democracies constitutionally separate powers to establish a system of checks and balances.
Moreover, while some contend indirect democracy eliminates demagoguery, there is little reason to believe the elected representatives are not themselves demagogues, or subject to the persuasive appeal of demagogues.
Some believe that the distinction between direct and representative, or between broadly franchised majority rule, and more limited supervision of police and military primarily engaged in defending property rights, are not as important as the actual process by which decision making occurs. Some further consider the adversarial process implied by legalist mechanisms, e.g. Supreme Court challenges, election campaigns themselves, political party structures, to often obscure the larger opportunities the public may have, or the long-term dangers they may face, which are not amenable to the kind of quick-retort interplay that characterizes both direct and representative means of governing. Some of the models that are proposed to reform it include:
There are also debates about street democracy and electoral reform which emphasize the more local and situated means by which the public comes to know the issues, and directly encounter the consequences of making major decisions. Some of these debates overlap with those about truth, anarchism, and the role of tolerances versus preferences in making major public decisions.
World democracy simultaneously comprises two approaches, both mutually reinforcing:
There has been a great deal of research about global trends of democracy. For example, over the last century, the percent of world population living in democracy has increased from 12% in 1900 to 63% in 2000. The majority of increase in democracy has been in developed countries, but about half of less developed countries are now democracies as well.
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