Direct vs Representative Democracy: Which One is Better?

In this video, I make an ideal comparison of direct and representative democracy in order to establish which system is better. As you will understand throughout the episode, there are a number of different principles and institutions that stem from these two forms of state. Centuries passed and there is more than one reason that led to the prevailing of the latter in modern-day nation-states. Nevertheless, these reasons are not often presented, and this short video may be interesting for many viewers.

Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:32 Ancient Greece: the cradle of direct democracy
00:58 The institutions of the Athenian direct democracy
02:21 Modern Greece: a representative liberal democracy
02:53 The reasons for representation
03:15 The main differences between direct and representative democracies
03:48 Who would win between the direct and representative democracy?
05:20 It is actually not that simple
05:44 Any organization can be democratic

Learning Objectives
- What is a direct democracy
- What is a representative democracy
- What are the institutions and principles characterizing both systems
- Which system is better and why
- How power framing can be applied to any organization

#directdemocracy #understandingpolitics #gianmarcomoise

References

A simple definition of democracy given by National Geographic:

Acknowledgments

The intro has been realized with footage from Pexels.

[sagittariusa]

Im pretty happy with the direct Democracy here in Switzerland :D

[johnhendricks]

Im still learning about the difference direct Democracy, republican democracy, interesting stuff.

[lucofparis]

Drawing a comparison between a modern representative democracy and an ancient direct democracy is of dubious relevance. Here me out and judge for yourself.

What does it matter to the effectiveness of its form of government, that Athens was a slave state with _soldier-restricted_ citizenship (not all free males were citizens, only those who had performed their military duties), and blood-right citizenship access rather than soil-right citizenship access?

You've said it yourself: Athens had just moved from the genos to the demos. Put simply, bloodright citizenship was already part of its common law and not yet expanded, and so was the link between compulsory service and citizenship. Sociocultural change ain't exactly easy or straightforward, especially in the midst of constant regional power struggles with Sparta, a city-state which was even bigger on slavery, militarization, and bloodrights.

On the other hand, modern direct democracies such as Switzerland and Liechtenstein, are sovereign nation-states who benefited from the same millennia of sociocultural and political evolutions as the representative 'democracies' you'd be wishing to compare them to.

These are much more relevant case studies which actually lack the disadvantages you've presented so far. In addition, modern representative democracies evidently lose their apparent advantages when compared to modern direct democracies reaping the benefits of the Enlightenment and its major strive fro equality and separation of powers (which Athens already had, although the Assembly naturally had the final say).

By the way, let's keep in mind that the separation of powers isn't meant to protect the people from itself, rather it's meant to protect the people from its elected magistrates and representatives and their notorious abuses of power.

Situations like the tyranny of the majority would occur only if isonomia and isegoria were not in fact respected, unless by that we decide to mean regular discrimination, in which case representative democracies are equally inefficient at dealing with such issues purely on the basis of their political system.

[raskeltv]

This wont show in algorithm unless you search for direct democracy lol