Signs and principles of democracy. Democratic regime: principles and practice

The concept of democracy, the emergence and forms of democracy

Information about the concept of democracy, the emergence and forms of democracy, development and principles of democracy

The term "democracy" comes from the Greek word demokratia, which in turn consisted of two words: demos - people and kratos - power, government.

The term "democracy" has several meanings:

1. A form of government in which political decisions are made directly by all citizens without exception, acting in accordance with the rules of majority rule, is called direct democracy or participatory democracy.

2. The form of government in which citizens exercise their right to make decisions not personally, but through their representatives elected by them and accountable to them, is called representative or pluralistic democracy.

3. A form of government in which the power of the majority is exercised within the framework of constitutional restrictions aimed at guaranteeing the minority conditions for the exercise of certain individual or collective rights, such as, for example, freedom of speech, religion, etc., is called liberal or constitutional democracy.

4. A form of government in which any political or social system, regardless of whether it is truly democratic or not, aims to minimize social and economic differences, especially caused by the unequal distribution of private property, is called social democracy, extreme the expression of which is socialist democracy.

Democracy (from the Greek. Demokratia - power of the people) is a form of government, characterized by the participation of citizens in government, their equality before the law, and the provision of political rights and freedoms to the individual. The form of the realization of democracy is most often a republic or a parliamentary monarchy with the division and interaction of powers, with a developed system of popular representation.

The concept of democracy was originally put forward by ancient Greek thinkers. In the classification of states proposed by Aristotle, it expressed "the rule of all", in contrast to the aristocracy (rule of the elect) and the monarchy (rule of one). Pythagoras blamed the Democrats. He called democracy one of the “scourges that threaten humanity”. The ancient Greek playwright Arisfan had an unconcealed contempt for democracy.

Pericles wrote: “Our state system is such that it does not imitate other people's laws; rather, we ourselves serve as an example to others. And our system is called democracy in view of the fact that it conforms not to the minority, but to the interests of the majority; by law, in private disputes, everyone enjoys the same rights; it also does not happen that a person who is capable of benefiting the state is deprived of the opportunity to do so, not enjoying sufficient respect due to poverty. We live as free citizens both in state life and in mutual relations, because we do not express distrust of each other in everyday affairs, we do not resent the other if he likes to do something in his own way ... We are especially afraid of the law in public affairs, we obey the persons in power at this time, and the laws, especially those of them that are created in the interests of the offended. We use wealth as a condition for work rather than as a subject for bragging; as far as poverty is concerned, re-consciousness in it is shameful for a person - it is shameful not to work to get out of it. "

Throughout history, the best minds of humanity have turned to the idea of \u200b\u200bdemocracy based on the principles of freedom and equality, enriching and developing this concept: Pericles (Ancient Greece),

B. Spinoza (Netherlands, XVII century),

J.-J. Rousseau (France, ХУIII century),

T. Jefferson (USA, XVIII century),

I.Franko (Ukraine, late 19th - early 20th centuries),

A. Sakharov (Russia, XX century) and others.

Each historical epoch brought its own characteristics into the concept of democracy and placed its own emphasis on their significance.

Definition of democracy

What is “democracy”?

When ancient thinkers, especially such “pillars” as Plato and Aristotle, answered this question, they had in mind first of all democracy as a form of government. They distinguished between forms of government, depending on whether one, a few, or the whole people ruled, and established three basic states: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. However, both Plato and Aristotle associated each form of government with the famous form of social life, with some deeper conditions of social development.

European humanism introduced significant "complications" to the "simplicity" of Greek definitions. The ancient world knew only direct democracy, to which the people (slaves, of course, were not considered a people) itself ruled the state through a general assembly. The concept of democracy coincided here with the concept of democratic forms of government, with the concept of direct "rule of the people". Although Rousseau also reproduced this Greek usage, it was he who created the theoretical basis for the broader understanding of democracy that has become established in our time. He admitted that various forms of state power - democratic, aristocratic, and monarchic - can be compatible with the rule of the people. Thus, he opened the way for a new understanding of democracy as forms of state, in which the supreme power belongs to the people, and the forms of government can be different. Rousseau himself believed that democracy was possible only in the form of direct “rule of the people”, combining legislation with execution. Those forms of state in which the people retain only the supreme legislative power, and the execution is transferred to the monarch or a limited circle of persons, he recognized as legitimate from the point of view of "popular sovereignty", but did not call them democratic.

Later, the concept of democracy was extended to all forms of state, in which the people have supremacy in the establishment of power and control over it. At the same time, it was assumed that the people can exercise their supreme power both directly and through representatives. In accordance with this, democracy is defined primarily as a form of state in which the supremacy belongs to the common will of the people. This is self-government of the people, without distinction between "blacks and whites," "proletarians and the bourgeoisie," that is, the entire mass of the people in the aggregate. Consequently, any class domination, any artificial elevation of one person over another, no matter what kind of people they may be, is equally opposed to the democratic idea. Thus, the class democratic theory, perceived by the Bolsheviks, was a contradiction to itself.

In this sense, modern political thought has come to a much more complex concept of democracy than that found in antiquity. But in another respect, it not only confirmed, but also consolidated the Greek understanding of the essence of democracy. Having put forward the ideal of the rule of law as a general ideal of state development, we often consider democracy as one of the forms of the rule of law. And since the idea of \u200b\u200bthe rule of law is inextricably linked with the idea of \u200b\u200bnot only the foundations of power, but also about the rights of citizens, the rights of freedom, the ancient definition of democracy as a form of free life is organically linked here with the very essence of democracy as a form of the rule of law.

From this point of view, democracy means the possible complete freedom of the individual, the freedom of his quest, the freedom of competition of opinions and systems. If Plato saw the essence of democracy in the fact that every person gets the opportunity to live here, in accordance with his desires, then this definition fits perfectly with the modern understanding of democracy. And now the idea of \u200b\u200bdemocracy corresponds to the possible full and free manifestation of human individuality, openness to any direction and manifestation of creativity, etc. And although democracy practically represents majority rule, as Roosevelt aptly said, “The best evidence of love for freedom is the position in which the minority is placed. Each person should have the same opportunity as others to express their essence ”.

Many scholars call democracy free government. This once again shows to what extent the concept of freedom is inextricably combined with the concept of a democratic form of the state and, it would seem, exhausts it.

However, without mentioning the inherent desire for equality in democracy, we might overlook one of the most important features of the democratic idea. De Tocqueville noted that democracy strives more for equality than for freedom: "people want equality in freedom, and if they cannot get it, they want it in slavery as well."

From the point of view of moral and political, there is the greatest relationship between equality and freedom. We demand freedom for a person, first of all, for the full and unhindered manifestation of his personality, and since the latter is an integral “attribute” eachperson, then we demand equality in relation to all people. Democracy aims to ensure not only freedom but also equality. In this desire for universal equality, the democratic idea is manifested no less than in the desire for universal liberation. Rousseau's thesis about the universal will of the people as the basis of the state in democratic theory is inextricably linked with the principles of equality and freedom and can in no way be separated from them. The participation of the entire people, the entire aggregate of its capable elements, in the formation of the “universal will” follows both from the idea of \u200b\u200bequality and from the idea of \u200b\u200bfreedom.

Democratic regimes can be characterized by the following features: recognition of the people as a source of power; election of the main bodies of power and officials, their subordination to voters; controllability of state bodies, formed by appointment, to elected institutions and responsibility to them; recognition of the actual equality of citizens; the proclamation of fundamental democratic rights and freedoms; legal existence of pluralism in society; state structure according to the principle of “separation of powers”; equality of all citizens before the law.

Based on the above-mentioned basic principles of a democratic regime, it is necessary to dwell in more detail on its characteristic features.

1. A democratic regime expresses the interests of classes and groups of the population that are successfully developing in a highly developed market economy. The social base, one way or another interested in a democratic regime, is always wider than under an authoritarian one. At the same time, the so-called ruling elite in a democratic society, in whose hands the levers of government are concentrated, may be very small. At the same time, pluralism of forms of ownership is the economic basis for political pluralism and the democratic regime itself. Political pluralism implies that life in a democratic society is built on the basis of competition and mutual influence of various political forces acting within the framework of the laws.

Signs of political pluralism are: the presence of a multi-party system, within which each political party is equal and does not have legislative advantages over its opponents; regular holding of free elections that ensure the legitimization of the authorities and allow voters to deliver their verdict; recognition of the rights of political opposition to freely express their views and beliefs through the media.

2. Under a democratic regime, along with pluralism, liberalism comes to the fore, which provides for the expansion of the rights and freedoms of citizens.

Liberalism presupposes the provision of democratic freedoms and individual rights, limiting the interference of the state and society in the activities of private individuals, sovereign subjects. It puts human rights and freedoms above national, class and religious interests, is focused on preserving the mechanism of a market economy, a multi-party system, a limited regulatory role of the state, moderate social reformism, ensuring international security and developing integration processes.

3. The functioning of the political system under a democratic regime of public administration is built on the basis of the separation of powers - legislative, executive and judicial. These bodies of power seem to be mutually balancing each other, and none of them can usurp power in the state.

The democratic system of public administration provides for the formation of the main bodies of the state through free elections - parliament, the head of state, local authorities, autonomous formations, subjects of the federation.

Taken together, the separation of powers, the system of checks and balances, federal, party, public and information structures in conditions of publicity can, through the mechanisms of state power, contribute to the conduct, within the framework of the constitutional legality, of a peaceful constructive dialogue of various political forces, the creation of political stability in society.

4. A democratic regime is characterized by a very broad constitutional and other legislative consolidation and implementation in practice of a fairly extensive list of economic, social, political, spiritual, personal rights and freedoms of citizens. An important role in this is played by constitutional legality, represented by the institution of constitutional supervision, which in modern conditions cannot ignore public opinion and the interests of the general population.

5. In any, even the most liberal society, there are law enforcement agencies - the army, internal affairs agencies, police, intelligence, counterintelligence, and state security agencies. The presence and powers of this ramified and diverse apparatus of coercion and violence are enshrined in constitutions and special laws. In cases where it is necessary to suppress mass protests, many countries have laws on a state of emergency, curfew, presidential rule, which lead to a temporary restriction of the rights and freedoms of citizens.

6. A democratic regime can function successfully only if there is a certain level of political culture. This means that all citizens comply with the same rules for all (legal, constitutional), taking into account certain traditions inherent in a given country. The nature of power, its forms, attitude towards ordinary citizens, methods of violence and suppression used in emergency situations largely depend on the level and type of political culture. Cognitive, moral-evaluative and behavioral elements are distinguished in the structure of political culture. For example, the behavioral element of political culture in a democratic regime presupposes the conscious participation of citizens in the political life of the country: when discussing drafts of state documents and acts; during referendums and plebiscites; in the elections of the legislative, executive and judicial branches; in the work of various state and public bodies and in a number of other campaigns of social and political activity.

7. Depending on who the people or their representatives directly exercises the power functions of a democratic regime, two forms of democracy are distinguished — direct (direct) and representative (participatory democracy). Direct democracy includes political regimes in ancient Novgorod and a number of city-states in modern Western Europe. They are characterized by direct participation in the adoption of important government decisions. In a representative democracy, broad strata of the population elect their representatives to government bodies, participate in referendums, conferences, meetings, etc.

History of democracy

Democracy has a long history and can be seen as the result of the development of Western civilization, especially the Greek and Roman heritage on the one hand, and the Judeo-Christian tradition on the other.

Direct democracy is one of the most obvious forms of organizing a political society. It can be found in primitive societies of the tribal period. In Western political tradition, the emergence of the idea of \u200b\u200bdemocracy is associated with the city-states of ancient Greece.

Plato and Aristotle, in their quest for a systematic theory of politics, characterized democracy as one of five or six main types of government.

Greek history during its heyday can be seen as the history of the struggle between democratic and oligarchic states, the most pronounced representatives of which were Athens and Sparta. Ancient Greek democracy in many of its aspects was significantly different from the democracy of our day. It was primarily a system of direct government, in which the entire people, or rather, the totality of free citizens, was a kind of collective legislator and in which the system of representation was not known. This situation became possible due to the limited size of the ancient Greek state, which covered the city and the adjacent rural area with a population of no more than 10 thousand citizens.

In ancient democratic city-states, every citizen was empowered to participate in making decisions concerning his life and work. A significant part of citizens during their life in one way or another held one of the many elective posts that existed in the city-state. There was no division between the legislative and executive branches - both branches were concentrated in the hands of active citizens. Political life was characterized by significant activity of citizens, who were keenly interested in all sides and aspects of the management process. Direct democracy of this kind was regarded by many modern thinkers as an ideal form. The referendum and civic initiative, preserved in the constitutions of a number of countries (Switzerland), can be viewed as elements of direct democracy, inherited by representative democracy from the past.

Another important difference between ancient and modern democracy is the treatment of equality. Ancient democracy was not only compatible with slavery, but also assumed it as a condition for the release from physical work of free citizens who devoted themselves to solving social problems. Modern democracies do not recognize differences and privileges in the political sphere based on social origin, class, race, and role.

Distinguish between democratic theory and democratic institutions. Since antiquity, democracy has undergone significant changes. In the Middle Ages, partly as a result of the rediscovery of Aristotle, interest in questions concerning the principles of the most perfect forms of government according to the ideas of that period increased. It has been argued that only that form of government that serves the common good and is based on the consent of all members of the community can be perfect. But at the same time, in the Middle Ages, most thinkers who were concerned with the problem of achieving the unity of society did not consider monarchy as the best form suitable for ensuring this unity. However, in the modern era, in the context of the formation of ideas of individual freedom, civil society, popular sovereignty, national state, etc., instead of feudal charters and liberties, legislative mechanisms appear to limit the sole power of monarchs. Thus, in the 16th century in Great Britain, during the struggle between parliament and the crown, the "Petition of Rights" (1628) was adopted,

"Habeas Corpus Act" (1679),

"Bill of Rights" (1689),

in which written juridical legal guarantees were fixed, establishing more or less precisely delineated limits of power. This trend was further developed in the "Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution,

in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen ”of the Great French Revolution of the late 18th century.

The idea of \u200b\u200bthe innate, inalienable rights of every person to life, freedom and private property, which arose in the modern era, was of fundamental importance for the formation and consolidation of democracy. The indissoluble interconnection of this triad is expressed in the conviction that private property is the basis of individual freedom, which in turn is considered as a necessary condition for the self-realization of an individual, the fulfillment of the main purpose of his life. Undoubtedly, political freedom is a necessary condition for democracy in any of its forms. But it cannot be properly implemented where there is no real choice in the social and economic spheres, where social inequality is high. Freedom as an ideal in a democracy is always correlated with the principle of justice. Where social inequality contributes to the undermining of the principle of justice, one or another system of redistribution of material wealth is needed. World experience shows that a market system and free competition provide the best conditions and opportunities for productivity growth and stimulation of individual initiative. But at the same time, the unlucky and unprivileged should also enjoy material benefits, they should not remain on the sidelines of public life. From this point of view, the contradiction between the requirements of social justice and the imperatives of economic efficiency remains, as it were, an insoluble dilemma of a modern industrial society. But, nevertheless, with the development of capitalism at the end of the 19th - 20th centuries, the principles of individualism of the free market were significantly modified, the role of the state in the life of society increased. Since the Great Economic Crisis of the 1930s, the system of Keynesianism, built on the postulate of the ideological, political and socio-economic insufficiency of individualism, free competition, free market, etc., and the need to strengthen the role of the state in the most important spheres of life society.

The state was recognized as a regulator of economic and social processes. The concept of the welfare state was put forward in opposition to the concept of the "night watchman" state. It is based on the idea of \u200b\u200bthe necessity and possibility of overcoming social conflicts by creating, with the help of government intervention, tolerable living conditions for all strata of society through the implementation of social assistance programs for low-income and disadvantaged categories of the population, taking measures aimed at solving the problems of unemployment, health care, etc. The ideas of the welfare state proceed from the premise that the market by itself is not capable of providing such a distribution of material benefits that would guarantee the low-income strata of the population the necessary minimum of goods and services. Moreover, they view political power as an important element in adjusting the social costs of the market. They postulate the equal importance of the economic and social spheres and the need for an organic combination of free market relations with the social policy of the state, combining market principles with social principles, humanizing the market through the development and implementation of a social policy system by the state aimed at guaranteeing a minimum standard of living for the underprivileged segments of the population. The main goal of the supporters of the welfare state saw and still see it in achieving a synthesis of economic freedom, social security and justice.

In other words, in the welfare state, political rights are complemented by social rights, which provide for the provision of all members of society with the minimum material benefits accepted in it. The principle of social responsibility of both private corporations and the state is introduced. Social programs are becoming an integral part of the rule of law, which takes the form of a welfare state. On this basis, the functions of the state are expanding, in many respects complementing, and in some cases replacing the functions of civil society institutions. Changing boundaries and interpretations of the welfare state are determined not simply by the decisions of political leaders, but by fundamental structural changes in modern industrial society. Therefore, it should be seen as a central building block of modern democracy.

Universal Properties of Democracy

The specificity and uniqueness of the democratic structure of power is expressed in the availability of universal methods and mechanisms for organizing the political order. In particular, such a political system presupposes:

Ensuring the equal right of all citizens to participate in the management of the affairs of society and the state;

Systematic election of the main authorities;

The existence of mechanisms to ensure the relative advantage of the majority and respect for the rights of the minority;

The absolute priority of legal methods of administration and change of power (constitutionalism);

The professional nature of the rule of the elites;

Public control over the adoption of major political decisions;

Perfect pluralism and competition of opinions.

The operation of such universal methods of forming power presupposes the vesting of the governors and the governed with special powers and powers, the most important of which are associated with the action of the mechanisms of direct, plebiscite and representative democracy.

Thus, direct democracy involves the direct participation of citizens in the preparation, discussion, adoption and implementation of decisions. Basically, these forms of participation are used when citizens do not need any special training. For example, such forms of participation in power are widespread in solving local issues, problems arising within the framework of self-government, and the settlement of local conflicts.

Close in meaning to this form of power is plebiscite democracy, which also presupposes an open expression of the will of the population, but is associated only with a certain phase of preparation of decisions, for example, the approval (support) or denial of a draft law or a specific decision made by the leaders of the state or a group of citizens. At the same time, the results of voting do not always have binding, legal consequences for the decision-making structures, that is, they can only be taken into account by the ruling circles, but by no means predetermine their actions.

Representative democracy is a more complex form of political participation of citizens. It involves the indirect inclusion of citizens in the decision-making process through their representatives elected by them to the legislative or executive bodies of power, or various intermediary structures (parties, trade unions, movements). These mechanisms basically constitute the structure of democratic governance. However, the main problem of representative democracy is connected with ensuring the representativeness of political choice, that is, with creating conditions under which the choice of certain persons would correspond to the mood and interests of the population. (5, 275).

Greece

Our current concept of "country", which means a certain area, on the territory of which all its population lives in a single state ruled by a single government, is not applicable to ancient Greece. On the contrary, it was a conglomerate of several hundred independent towns surrounded by agricultural land. Unlike the so-called nation states - the USA, France, Japan and other countries, which for the most part form the structure of the modern world, the sovereign states located on the territory of Greece were city-states. The most famous of these in both the classical and later eras was Athens. In 507 BC. e. its citizens applied the system of "people's governments", which existed for almost two centuries, until Athens was conquered by the more powerful Macedonia, bordering on them in the north (after 321 BC. the Athenian government was freed for several generations from under her power, and then the city was again conquered - this time by the Romans).

It was the Greeks (most likely, the Athenians) who coined the term "democracy". Apparently, the term democracy, which bore a connotation of ill will, was used by aristocrats as an emotionally colored epithet and expressed contempt for the commoners who managed to push the aristocrats away from government. In any case, the Athenians and other Greek tribes applied the concept of demokratia in relation to the system of government in Athens and in many other city-states.

Among all Greek democracies, Athenian democracy was the most significant, and then and now the most famous, it had a great influence on political philosophy and was subsequently often viewed as a perfect example of citizen participation in government, that is, in other words, it was an example of representative democracy.

The system of power in Athens was a complex structure - the central place in it was assigned to the so-called assembly, in which all citizens were to participate. The assembly elected several senior officials, such as military leaders. But the main way of choosing citizens to perform other public duties was by lot, and all citizens with voting rights had an equal chance of being elected to one or another post. According to some estimates, an ordinary citizen, at least once in his life, had the opportunity to receive the highest position in the state by lot.

Although at times the Greek cities united, forming a kind of prototype of a representative government that led the activities of various confederations, leagues, unions that were created primarily to organize collective defense, little is known about these representative systems. They literally left no trace in the history of democratic ideas and procedures and did not influence the formation of later forms of representative democracy, just as the Athenian system of appointing citizens to certain posts by lot was not used later as an alternative to elections.

Thus, the political institutions of Greek democracy, which were innovation for their time, remained unnoticed during the development of the modern representative system.

Around the same time, when the system of "people's governments" arose in Greece, the same system of government appeared on the Apennine Peninsula, in Rome. However, the citizens of Rome preferred to call it a republic (in Latin res means “deed”, “thing”, and publicus means “common”), that is, in a broad sense, something belonging to the people.

At first, only patricians or aristocrats had the right to participate in governing the republic. However, in the course of the development of society and after a fierce struggle, the commoners (in Rome they were called plebs) achieved the same right for themselves. As in Athens, only men were eligible to participate, and this limitation persisted in all subsequent types of democracies and republics until the 20th century.

Originally born in a rather modest city, the Roman Republic, through annexations and conquests, spread far beyond its borders and, as a result, began to rule over all of Italy and other countries. Moreover, the republic often granted the highly valued Roman citizenship to the peoples of the countries it conquered, and they thus became not just subjects, but Roman citizens, fully endowed with the corresponding rights and privileges.

No matter how wise and generous this gift was, there was a very serious flaw in it: Rome could never fully bring its institutions of democracy in line with the constantly growing number of its citizens and with the factor of their geographical distance from the center of the republic. From a modern point of view, it looks more than ridiculous that the meetings at which the Roman citizens were ordered to participate took place, as before, in Rome itself - at the very, now destroyed Forum, where tourists are taken today. However, most of the Roman citizens living in the widespread territory of the republic were not able to attend these popular assemblies, for Rome was too far away and travel there became possible at best at the cost of exorbitant effort and expense. As a result, an ever-increasing, and in the end the overwhelming majority of citizens were practically deprived of the opportunity to participate in popular assemblies, the venue of which remained the center of the Roman state.

Although the Romans proved to be creative and practical people, the elective nature of filling important government posts did not lead to a solution that looked quite obvious and consisted in creating an effective system of representative government based on the activities of democratically elected representatives of the people.

Although the Roman Republic lasted much longer than Athenian democracy and than any modern democracy, however, starting from about 130 BC. e. it was undermined by civil strife, wars, militarization, corruption, and the decline of the unyielding civic spirit of which the Romans were formerly proud. The establishment of the dictatorship of Julius Caesar put an end to true democratic procedures - almost nothing remained of them. And after the assassination of Caesar in 44 BC. e. the republic, which was once ruled by citizens, has become an empire obedient to the will of its ruler.

With the fall of the Republic in Rome, the “people's governments” disappeared completely in southern Europe. Democracy, apart from the fact that it remained the political system of the few tribes scattered across Italy, was forgotten for almost a thousand years. (4, 17).

Middle Ages

The fall of the Western Roman Empire under the onslaught of the barbarians, who were culturally immeasurably lower, put an end to the entire era of ancient civilization. For more than a thousand years, Europe plunged into the Middle Ages. It would seem that the catastrophe and the deepest historical regression are obvious. Discontinuity.

By the way, the very term "Middle Ages" belongs to the Italian humanists of the 15th-16th centuries, who viewed and evaluated this era precisely as intermediate between the two great European civilizations - ancient and new, which began with the Renaissance.

The political and legal achievements and finds of antiquity, as well as the spiritual values \u200b\u200bof the ancient world as a whole, were lost. In this respect, European civilization was thrown far back, and the new peoples that entered the historical arena had to make their round of development from tribal organization and primitive proto-states to centralized national states and absolute monarchies on the threshold of the New Age.

The collapse of the ancient world was a regularity of the historical process and in this sense does not need either condemnation or approval, but only a statement. And the very ancient civilization of the era of decline and collapse was already infinitely far from its own democratic institutions and discoveries. Not because of the onslaught of the barbarians, but because of the contradictions of their own development.

Of course, we can only talk about medieval democracy with a great deal of convention, we will not find serious progress in the formation of democratic institutions, but this does not mean at all that nothing from the experience of the Middle Ages was later claimed.

It is difficult to discuss "the Middle Ages as a whole" from a strictly scientific standpoint - it is, after all, a thousand years. This era was neither single nor static. On the contrary, there was an active accumulation of those ideas, contradictions, relations, class conflicts, mini-revolutions, etc., which ultimately led to the New Time and without which modern civilization could not have taken place.

In the history of the European Middle Ages, science identifies several successive forms of government, unknown to antiquity. Their evolution is not at all the subject of our attention. We are interested in those institutions that have become a step in the development of forms of state democratic organization. However, a few words about this evolution and the general features of the entire medieval civilization still need to be said.

Until about the middle of the 9th century, early feudal monarchies were formed and established in Europe, under which the emerging class of feudal landowners rallied around royal power with the support of the church and communal peasants. A striking example is the history of the state of the Franks.

The development and strengthening of land ownership of the feudal class, the emergence of serfdom among the peasants led to a sharp political decentralization, feudal fragmentation. Europe in the 9th-13th centuries was a conglomerate of mini-states - estates and possessions. Relations between landowners were built on the basis of a system of customs and contracts; a multilevel feudal hierarchy of relations between suzerain-seniors and vassals was formed. The medieval state of this era took the form of a senior monarchy.

In the XIII-XV centuries, the final formation of the feudal estates with their own diverging interests took place, conditions and the need for some consolidation of states on a national basis developed. In the struggle against the feudal freemen and anarchy, the royal power began to rely on the estates and to develop mechanisms for resolving conflicts not through wars, but through a compromise of interests. The formation of estate-representative monarchies took place.

Finally, at the end of the Middle Ages, in the 16th – 17th centuries, the old forms of government no longer met the needs of the established nation states and explosive economic growth. The objective need to strengthen the centralized power led to a sharp increase in the role of the monarch and the state apparatus - the bureaucracy, the police. Power was completely cut off from society, and the estate-representative monarchy was replaced by an absolute monarchy. The collapse of absolutism was the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the New Age.

Behind this entire historical sequence was the struggle of the estates and the struggle within the very estate of the feudal lords. This is one of the internal conflicts of the era, but not the only one.

First of all, we note that the European Middle Ages in any of its facets cannot be understood without clarifying the role that Christianity played in this era. This is not only about the unconditional hegemony of the church in the spiritual life of medieval society - from philosophy and astronomy to everyday rituals and diet. No! In the XI-XII centuries, the church turns into a powerful political organization and really claims to be the leadership of the entire Christian world. Moreover, the power of the Pope was extraterritorial, the whole of Europe in the 13th century turned, in essence, into a theocratic monarchy: even the enthronement of monarchs was carried out by an act of the pope, and he could excommunicate any monarch. The whole history of the Middle Ages is a symbiosis and at the same time a conflict between church and royal power, which sometimes took the form of bloody wars.

The great Russian jurist GF Shershenevich wrote about this in an interesting way: “The world outlook of the Middle Ages is characterized by the striving for liberation from earthly bonds, the transfer of one's ideals into the afterlife. However, in this pursuit of spiritual freedom, man, imperceptibly to himself, found himself completely bound by the earthly chains of the church and was deprived of that very treasure, for the sake of which he neglected everything else. He could not believe as he wanted, but had to believe as he was forced. The Church takes possession of a person with the help of the state, which she turns into a means for establishing her power. The state and the church merge into one, the norms of law coincide with religious canons ... "

Finally, another line of fault and conflict, important and characteristic of the mature Middle Ages, is the confrontation between the city and the power of the feudal lords. For all the peculiarities of economic existence, concentration of education and culture, the guild organization of the population, who fought and sought personal independence from the feudal lord, medieval cities played the role of the "fermenting wort" of the era. These were islands of limited but obvious freedom in the unfree feudal organization of Europe.

Some of these cities have traced their history since ancient times, and although there is no reason to talk about the preservation of ancient traditions in medieval cities, nevertheless, it was in the cities that the intellectual and economic potential was accumulated that hacked the Middle Ages from the inside. The origins of the Renaissance are in urban culture, which served as a conductor of the values \u200b\u200bof ancient democracy.

The very history of medieval cities is extremely dramatic and interesting - it is the history of the struggle for self-government and independence. And some cities have sought them. The Western European Middle Ages as a whole do not know republican forms of government, but republics were established in some cities of Italy. These are Venice, Genoa, Padua, and splendid Florence. It seemed that the resurrection of the ancient city-state was taking place, but these were already different cities and other states of a different era. And the further development of democracy did not go along the line of city-states.

The main thing that the Middle Ages brought in the field of democratic institutions was the estate-representative organization of power. Its role should not be exaggerated, but also underestimated.

In France, such an organ was the States General, first convened by King Philip IV the Fair in 1302. The highest clergy and the largest feudal lords were personally invited to participate in the States General; over time, the practice of electing representatives to the States from the small and middle nobility, churches, conventions of monasteries and cities (two or three deputies) was established.

It is not so important that the powers of the States General were generally not very significant and almost all issues - from the regularity of the convocation to the agenda - were determined by the king, who could find out the opinion of the deputies on the bills, or he might not. But already only in the States-General did the king receive permission to introduce new taxes, only there he could turn to the estates for help, etc.

Even more interesting and - most importantly - more important in its consequences was the introduction of estate representation in medieval England. This mini-revolution dates back to the 13th century.

At that time in England, a fairly large and rapidly growing stratum of personally free peasants, urban artisans, whose interests in opposing the arbitrariness of the central royal power for the most part coincided with the interests of petty feudal lords and chivalry. Their role and influence grew, but this was not reflected in any state and legal forms. At the beginning of the century, the confrontation with the royal power sharply escalated, the movement was led by large barons, and in 1215 King John Lackland was forced to compromise and signed the Magna Carta - the first document of the unwritten English constitution.

At its core, the Charter is a treaty that enshrined a compromise between royalty and the opposition. Of course, the largest feudal lords received the greatest benefit from this agreement, but not only them - something fell to the knighthood, and the cities, for which ancient liberties and customs were assigned, and the merchants, who received freedom of movement and trade without illegal duties.

Many articles of the Charter were devoted to justice, the prohibition of arrest and imprisonment, deprivation of possession and outlawing otherwise than by the legal sentence of equals and by the law of the country.

Soon after the signing of the Charter, the king refused to comply with it, but then it was reaffirmed and reaffirmed and continued to operate. The charter did not create representative institutions, but it was an important step along the way.

By the end of the same XIII century, it became obvious for the royal power that a political compromise with the main estates - feudal lords and townspeople, the interconnection of political and economic interests was vital. This could have been ensured by estate representation, and in 1295 the British Parliament was created. Initially, it included large secular and ecclesiastical feudal lords, invited personally, and two representatives from each of the 37 counties and each of the cities.

Until the middle of the XIV century, the estates met together, later the large feudal lords separated into a separate chamber - the House of Lords, and representatives of chivalry, cities and ordinary clergy made up the House of Commons.

The powers of parliament changed and developed, and gradually three major functions were assigned to it: to participate in the publication of laws, regulate taxes and control the actions of senior government officials, even acting as a special judicial body if necessary. At the end of the XIV century, a parliamentary impeachment procedure took shape - the nomination by the House of Commons before the House of Lords accusations of abuse of power of royal officials.

In the 13th century, under the king, the closest circle of advisers was formed, concentrating executive and judicial power in their hands - the Royal Council, which usually included the chancellor, judges, ministers (ministers) and the treasurer. The prototype of a government separated from parliament is seen in this construction quite clearly.

However, there are enough descriptions: our task does not include a detailed exposition of the system of power, either in England or anywhere else, - we are primarily interested in "typical portraits" of new democratic institutions. So what new have the organs of estate representation brought?

First, these were the bodies of compromise, inter-social agreements, and the coordination of interests. Of course, they arose and acted in conditions of a fierce struggle, but they made it possible not to overcome the conflict by force by suppressing one of the participants, but to a political solution mediated by agreements through specially created institutions. From the point of view of methods of resolving political contradictions, this is the essence and meaning of democracy, its spirit.

Secondly, as we have already mentioned, the most important drawback and manifestation of the underdevelopment of ancient democracy was that it was a form of direct democracy. Antiquity did not know representative democracy. Institutions of estate representation, born of the Middle Ages, were created on completely different principles - the principles of representation from the main population groups (estates). A transition was made from direct to representative democracy. The new emerging civilization was no longer built on a polis statehood, but on an immeasurably more complex foundation of vast national states, the administration of which required different forms and methods.

Of course, this was a medieval democracy, and one can only talk about its representative character conditionally. Yes, and democracy in the literal sense - democracy - medieval democracy cannot be called, since in reality it did not express the interests of the majority of the population and did not ensure its power. All this is true, and yet European parliaments, as one of the foundations of democracy, did not grow out of the Athenian people's assembly, but out of class representation.

Later, throughout Western Europe, caste-representative monarchies were replaced by absolute ones, which reflected the logic of economic and social development, requiring strict centralization of power, elimination of feudal barriers, but this in no way negates the significance of the very principle of representative democracy, born of the Middle Ages.

There are ideas, without which it is impossible to understand institutions that have arisen much later than these same ideas. We will not talk about "Catholic political scientists", since very little of their legacy remained to live in the subsequent skeptical centuries. There is, however, a name that cannot be overlooked. We are talking about Marsilia of Padua (about 1275 - about 1343). His immense work Defender of the World anticipated many of the ideas underlying later ideologies and institutions. In the era of the undivided hegemony of the church, Marsilius insisted on the separation of the church from the state and its subordination to the state secular power. His ideas about the origin of the state are very similar to those of Aristotelian, but Marsilius goes much further.

Marsilius considered the people to be the real source of power. Not all, of course, but the best, to which he attributed priests, military and officials, who care not about their own welfare, but about the general welfare, which is what Marsilius distinguished from merchants, farmers and artisans who were preoccupied with materialistic interests.

So, not the monarch, but the people is, according to Marsil, the bearer of sovereignty (supreme power) and the supreme legislator. Marsilius also proposed a mechanism for the realization of this sovereignty - through the most worthy people elected by the people. Moreover, the laws being issued are equally binding both for the people and for those who issue them.

Based on the experience of the Italian medieval city-republics, Marsil considered the election of officials of all ranks, including monarchs, as an extremely important principle, since he believed that election was better than the institution of succession to the throne.

Marsilius clearly divided the legislative and executive powers, giving the indisputable advantage to the first, which should determine the conditions of the executive power. And let the specific form of the state be any, if only it would contribute to the implementation of the will of the people-legislator.

Many of Marsilia's ideas were developed several centuries later and formed the basis of ideas about democracy.

The core of the Renaissance that arose in the northern Italian republics was the establishment of a humanistic culture and anti-scholastic thinking, secularization (liberation from the influence of religion) of public consciousness and public institutions. Qualitatively new socio-philosophical views appeared: self-worth, autonomy and freedom of the individual, respect for his dignity, the right to decide his own destiny. These ideas were incompatible with the class organization of society and the class predetermination of the status of the individual - the cornerstones of the Middle Ages. Personal valor, talent, activity, service to the common good were put forward in the first place. Accordingly, the principles of republican government, equality of citizens began to be affirmed in political science views; the idea of \u200b\u200ba social contract received a new development.

The Reformation began as a religious movement (primarily in Germany and Switzerland) against the exorbitant claims of the Roman papal curia. But objectively it was also an anti-feudal, anti-social movement that promoted the establishment of a new bourgeois order.

As already mentioned, neither the Renaissance nor the Reformation created fundamentally new democratic institutions. Moreover, sometimes the assertion of “reformist” statehood led to an increase in total oppression, general surveillance, godly denunciations and violent religious intolerance, as, for example, in the Geneva consistory, which in 1541-1564 was actually led by one of the Reformation ideologists, John Calvin. But this does not negate the main thing - the orientation of the Reformation was antifeudal.

At the same time - at the end of the Middle Ages - in the work of the great French political thinker Jean Boden (1530-1596) "Six Books about the Republic", a theory of state sovereignty was developed in detail, which "lies in the totality of free and intelligent beings that make up the people." Intellectually, Boden already belonged to the New Time, and it was in the New Time that many ideas born more than two thousand years ago were embodied.

Basic theories of democracy

Thinkers of different peoples of the world were engaged in the search for a better state system, who, over two and a half millennia, created many theories of democracy. Each era, each state brought novelty and originality to the interpretation of democracy. And today there is a new vision of the content of democracy. Let's consider the most basic and modern theories of democracy: proletarian (socialist), pluralistic, participatory, corporate, elite.

Proletarian (socialist) theory of democracy

The proletarian (socialist) theory was based on the Marxist class approach. It arose in the 19th century. as the antithesis of bourgeois (liberal) democracy, which prioritized civil liberty, i.e. complete independence of the individual's personal life from political power, from the state, which is only called to guarantee and ensure the freedom of the individual.

According to the proletarian theory (K. Marx, F. Engels, VI Lenin), democracy and freedom are provided only for the "working masses", primarily for the proletariat.

The focus is on political freedom, but civil freedom is out of the question. The dictatorship of one class - the proletariat against the other - the bourgeoisie, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, directed against the overthrown exploiting classes, was proclaimed.

Attention was focused on the leading role of the working class. The proletarian theory ignored the general civil consensus and developed class confrontation.

The complete denial of private property, and, consequently, any autonomy of the individual, the substitution of the working class for the people in the proletarian theory was developed in the program documents of the CPSU. They focused on the leading role of the Communist Party as the vanguard of the working class, leading the transition to full democracy - communist self-government. The fundamental principle of separation of powers was denied, without which democracy is impossible. The principle of economic, ideological and political pluralism was rejected. The "Marxist-Leninist" party was viewed as a state structure, not as a social organization. In reality, the advertised "socialist rule of the people" allowed democracy only within narrow limits, which were determined by the highest party and state leadership, concentrating all real power in their hands.

Socialist Democracy:

I.The concept of the leadership of the CPSU, according to which the political structure of the USSR and the communist countries - satellites of the USSR is an example of genuine democracy, which qualitatively expands the participation of the people in the management of social affairs in comparison with the “formal”, “limited”, bourgeois democracy in capitalist countries.

The ideologists of the CPSU argued that the establishment of public ownership of all means of production under socialism makes it possible to put under the control of the people not only the state, but also the economy and culture. It was declared that under socialist democracy, along with the traditional institutions of representative democracy, forms of direct democracy also develop (activities of public organizations, the system of popular control, nationwide discussion of drafts of important laws, referendums, etc.), and the rights and freedoms of citizens are not only proclaimed (as in capitalist countries), but also guaranteed.

Special emphasis is placed on the fact that socialist democracy includes not only traditional political rights and freedoms, but also socio-economic rights (the right to work, education, housing, health care). The basic principles of socialist democracy were enshrined in the USSR Constitutions of 1936 and 1977. The creator of the concept of socialist democracy is in fact JV Stalin; it was based on the teaching of VI Lenin about the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of modern power as the maximum of democracy for workers and peasants. The main postulates of the concept of socialist democracy (“socialist democracy”) were formulated by Stalin in his report “On the draft Constitution of the USSR” at the Extraordinary VIII All-Union Congress of Soviets on November 25, 1936. The Soviet leader argued that bourgeois democracy does not care about the possibilities of exercising the rights of citizens formally enshrined in constitutions, while Soviet democracy, thanks to public ownership of all means of production, provides the material means for their implementation. Stalin denied the existence of political equality in the capitalist countries on the grounds that there could be no real equality between the exploiter and the exploited; at the same time, he said, the elimination of exploitation in the USSR actually ensures the equality of citizens' rights.

According to Stalin, democracy in capitalist countries is democracy "for the possessing minority", "democracy in the USSR ... there is democracy for the working people, that is, democracy for all", and "The USSR Constitution is the only fully democratic constitution in the world." These principles were proclaimed by the leadership of the CPSU in the post-Stalin era. However, it should be noted that Stalin regarded the dictatorship of the proletariat (proletarian democracy) as the highest form of democracy; the Program of the CPSU, adopted under Nikita Khrushchev in 1961, indicated that the dictatorship of the proletariat had fulfilled its historic mission, proletarian democracy had turned into a nationwide socialist democracy. In reality, the modern regime had a totalitarian character, and the doctrine and institutions of social democracy were used to mask the monopoly of power by the party bureaucracy. The uncontested elections in the USSR and other communist countries bore the character of a farce and were used as an instrument of mass legitimization of the regime, the councils were actually a powerless appendage of the party-state, constitutional rights and freedoms remained only on paper and were constantly violated in practice, there was no equality of citizens before the law and the court. Only socio-economic rights were relatively real.

II. The form of the political organization of socialist society as seen by the theorists of the left non-communist forces of the West (social democrats and neo-Marxists), as well as some communists in the communist parties of Western and Eastern Europe. According to the concept of socialist democracy, democracy in a socialist society should extend not only to the sphere of politics (as in bourgeois democracy), but also to the economy, work, and culture. This will be possible due to the establishment of public ownership of all or most of the means of production, which will overcome the limitations of democracy associated with private property and abuse of power by the owners. Socialist democracy is not a denial of bourgeois democracy, but its expansion and extension to all spheres of human activity, which will provide people with a qualitatively greater freedom than that which is provided by bourgeois democracy under capitalism.

Supporters of this concept criticized "real socialism" in the USSR and other communist countries, pointing out the lack of democracy in them, the totalitarian nature of their political systems. According to the supporters of socialist democracy, modern society will become truly socialist only after complementing it with democracy, that is, first of all, after the elimination of the monopoly on the power of the Communist Party and the establishment of political and ideological pluralism.

Thus, the Austomarxist O. Bauer wrote in 1936 that the contradiction between the democratic socialism of the West and the revolutionary socialism of the East "will be eliminated on the day when the modern dictatorship will take the path of its decisive transformation into socialist democracy." This transformation, according to Bauer, proposed the democratization of the modern state and economy, the establishment of workers' control over the bureaucracy, its income and privileges. Later, social democratic leaders and ideologists also recognized the transformation of modern totalitarianism into a system of socialist democracy. This concept of socialist democracy was adopted by the reformist communists (in modern terminology - “right-wing revisionists”) in Eastern Europe after Stalin's death in 1953 and the exposure of his crimes in 1956. In 1968, it was actively used by supporters of democratic socialism in Czechoslovakia. Thus, the well-known leader of the “Prague Spring” philosopher I. Svitak considered it necessary to replace the totalitarian dictatorship with socialist democracy without abandoning socialist gains, especially public ownership of the means of production. Czechoslovak reformists believed that the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is not a democracy, but inevitable at the first stage of building socialism, in Czechoslovakia fulfilled its historic task, therefore, the transition to the second stage of socialism - nationwide democracy or socialist democracy (obviously the difference between this concept and the official Soviet interpretation , which in fact put an equal sign between social democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat). Socialist democracy, according to M. Jodl, M. Kusa, I. Svitak and other reformers, presupposed political and ideological pluralism, the right to opposition, and the separation of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from the state. The concepts of socialist democracy in the West, close to these ideas, were developed by the communist theorists E. Fischer (expelled from the Austrian Communist Party in 1969) and R. Garaudy (expelled from the French Communist Party in 1970), later by the European Communists. (1, 332).

The theory of "pluralistic democracy"

The theory of "pluralistic democracy" was most influential in the 60-70s. XX century (R. Allen, R. Dahl, M. Duverger, R. Dahrendorf, D. Riesman), although the term "pluralism" was introduced into political circulation in 1915 by the English socialist G. Laski. According to this theory, classes have disappeared in modern bourgeois society.

Modern bourgeois society consists of different interacting "strata" - layers. They arise as a result of the commonality of certain interests (professional, age, material, spiritual, religious, etc.). Since these interests are not antagonistic, then the relations between the strata are devoid of antagonism.

For all its harmony, the theory of "pluralistic democracy" has internal contradictions and weaknesses. First of all, it is unrealistic to aim at uniting the entire population into "pressure groups", on their equality in influence. Although it is declared desirable to attract as many citizens as possible to the "pressure groups", most of them are doomed to passivity in the political process.

In the late 70s - 80s. XX century, in connection with the fall in popularity of the theory of "pluralistic democracy", some of its former supporters (G. Parsons, R. Dahl) switched to the position of the theory of elite democracy.

Democracies, which are characteristic of most Western European countries, proceed from the assumption that the main subjects of politics are not individuals and not the people, but different groups of people. At the same time, it is believed that only with the help of the group a person gets the opportunity to politically express and protect his interests. And it is in the group, as well as in the process of intergroup relations, that the interests and motives of the political activity of the individual are formed. The people are viewed as a complex, internally contradictory entity, and therefore they cannot act as the main subject of politics. In pluralistic democracies, the focus is on creating a mechanism for political interaction that would provide an opportunity for all citizens to openly express and defend their interests. The dominant role in this mechanism is assigned to independent groups of political influence. There are many groups operating here - parties, public associations and movements - seeking to participate in the exercise of power or to influence the activities of the ruling group. Great importance is also attached to ensuring a balance of interests of various social groups, creating counterbalances to the usurpation of power by the most powerful social groups or the majority of citizens.

The theory of elite democracy

The theory of elite democracy emerged in the 70-80s. XX century on the basis of combining elements of the theory of elites and the theory of "pluralistic democracy" (S. Keller, O. Stammer, D. Riesmen).

The early theory of elites ("elite" - the best, the best, the chosen), was developed by V. Pareto, G. Mosca, R. Michels (late XIX - early XX centuries). Its main position is that there are two classes in power: ruling (elite) and subordinate (people, working people). Having nothing to do with democratic theories, the early theory of elites denied the power of the masses to rule. An exception is the assumption of G. Mosk about the renewal of the elite at the expense of the most capable of managing from among the active lower strata of society. But this by no means testifies to the democratic position of the theory of early elitism. Its ideologists were convinced that the ruling class concentrates the leadership of the country's political life in its own hands, and the intervention of an uneducated people in politics can only destabilize or destroy the existing socio-political structures.

Before World War II, the center of propaganda for elitism was in Europe, the United States was its “periphery” (the works of Mosca, Pareto, Michels began to be translated there only in the 30s of the XX century). After the war, this center moved to the United States. Several elite schools were formed. If we compare the American and Western European theories of elites, we can find that the first is more empirical, it is dominated by interpretations of the elite in terms of power structure and socio-political influences. The second is characterized by the “value” interpretation of the elite.

Thus, the theory of elite democracy proceeds from the understanding of democracy as a free rivalry of candidates for votes, as a form of government for elites more or less controlled by the people, especially during elections. The essence of the concept of elite democracy lies in the idea of \u200b\u200bpluralism of elites that “grow” on the basis of the interaction of social groups. The idea of \u200b\u200bpluralism of elites is opposed to the idea of \u200b\u200bpower in the hands of one elite.

The theory of participatory democracy

The theory of participatory democracy (participatory democracy) (J. Wolf, K. McPherson, J. Mansbridge) is based on the reformist concepts of neoliberals and social democrats. In general, while remaining in the position of adherence to the institutions and values \u200b\u200bof the liberal-democratic model of society, supporters of the theory of participatory democracy have a negative attitude towards the theories of pluralistic and elite democracy. They set themselves the task of achieving more effective freedom and equality than it really is and than it is written in other liberal-democratic concepts. Rejecting the view that the masses are incapable of constructive political action, proponents of participatory democracy are actively seeking ways to effectively engage citizens in political decision-making. As an incentive for the political activity of the lower strata of society, it is proposed to raise their general educational level, to familiarize themselves with the foundations of political culture.

Supporters of the theory of participatory democracy believe that it is possible to avoid being elected by the legal way of tyrannical rule due to the incompetence of the majority of the people. For this it is not necessary to exclude the popular masses from the political process.

Participatory democracy is a mixed form - a combination of direct and representative democracy - organized as a “pyramidal system” with direct democracy at the core and democracy of delegates at each successive level starting at the core.

Thus, the theory of participatory democracy substantiates the need for wide direct participation of citizens both in making vital decisions and in their preparation and implementation, i.e. throughout the political process.

The theory of corporate democracy

The theory of corporate democracy is one of the common ones. It emerged concurrently with the emergence of business and working-class organizations that defended not the interests of individual entrepreneurs or workers, but the corporate interests of all members of the respective organizations. Democracy is presented as an institutional mechanism for policy making, government decisions with the help of representatives of the country's political elite and leaders of a limited number of workers' organizations, i.e. business elites and trade unions.

This theory views democracy as a conciliatory, non-competitive government of corporate leaders, employees and entrepreneurs, and parties. At the same time, corporations have the right to represent all employees of a particular industry. The state, in their interpretation, acts as an arbiter. The theory of corporate democracy has points of contact with the theory of "pluralistic democracy". Both the one and the other recognize the existence of a center of power outside the government. However, while the former argues that competing "pressure groups" influence the formulation of state policy, corporatists proceed from the premise that only a limited number of groups - non-competing, hierarchically organized, under state control, can influence the formation and implementation of policy. Proponents of this theory put consensus decision-making methods in place of competition among elites.

The theory of corporate democracy has found practical application in the regulation of social relations (pay and labor protection, social security, etc.). However, its provisions cannot be extended to all the activities of the state, since they infringe on the rights of the individual in favor of large corporations and the bureaucracy.

It is believed that corporate theory is closer to the theory of elitist democracy and can be considered as its variation.

Liberal or Hindu democracies

They proceed from the priority of the rights of the individual over the rights of the state. Therefore, they prioritize the creation of institutional, legal and other guarantees for individual freedom, preventing any suppression of the individual by power. To this end, liberal democracies seek to create mechanisms to ensure the rights of the individual at the expense of limiting the power of the majority. The sphere of activity of the state here is reduced mainly to the protection of public order, security and legal protection of the rights of citizens. In this form of democracy, great importance is attached to the separation of powers, improvement of mechanisms for their mutual restraint and balancing in order to prevent abuse of power, and create conditions for the manifestation of individual autonomy.

It should be noted that liberal democracies are in fact very rare. For example, the United States of America gravitates towards this form of democracy. However, here, too, attempts to implement it in a “pure” form constantly encounter the need to overcome the contradictions between individual, group and general interests. The modern state is called upon to act not only as a guarantor of individual rights and freedoms, but also to regulate economic and social processes in order to harmonize the interests of various social groups.

Collectivistdemocracy

They are also known as the People's Democracies, on the contrary, they proceed from the fact that it is the people as an entity, and not separate individuals or groups of people, who have the indivisible and inalienable right to establish laws and determine the activities of government. Collectivist democracies, one way or another, recognize the priority of the people or a large social entity identified with it (for example, the working class, an indigenous ethnic community) in expressing a common will and exercising power. Such democracies actually proceed from the homogeneity of the people as a social subject, the infallibility of their will, and therefore they absolutize the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority, and also deny the autonomy of the individual. Attempts to implement collectivist democracy in a "pure" form led in fact to rule on behalf of the "people" of a narrow group of individuals, to the suppression of political rights and civil liberties, to brutal repressions against other dissent. The experience of their implementation in a number of countries shows that the power of the people cannot be real without the simultaneous recognition and institutional and legal consolidation of the individual as the most important subject of politics.

Direct or plebiscitedemocracy

They proceed from the fact that the people themselves must make the most important political decisions, and the representative bodies of power should be minimized and made fully controlled by the citizens. With the trend towards the development of direct democracy in the country, as is the case, for example, in Switzerland, the range of issues addressed directly by citizens is constantly expanding. This is the adoption of the most important legislative acts, and the choice of political decisions of a strategic nature, and the adoption of decisions of local importance. It is easy to see that plebiscite democracy makes it possible to develop the political activity of citizens, to ensure a strong legitimacy of the authorities, to exercise effective control over the activities of state institutions and officials.

Prepresentative, or representative democracies

On the contrary, they proceed from the fact that the will of the people can be expressed not only directly by themselves during the voting, but also by their representatives in the government.

With this approach, democracy is understood as a competent and responsible representative government before the people. The participation of citizens in political decision-making is generally not rejected, but it is limited to a very narrow range of issues. A fairly accurate definition of the essence of representative democracy was given by the German political scientist R. Dahrendorf. “Democracy,” he believes, “is not“ rule of the people ”, this simply does not happen in the world. Democracy is a government elected by the people, and if necessary, then by the people and removed; besides, democracy is a government with its own course ”. In the form of democracy under consideration, relations between the people and their representatives are built on the basis of trust and control in the form of periodically held elections, constitutional limitation of the powers of government bodies and officials with their full independence within the law. (6, 124).

Primitivedemocracy

Democratic forms of organization are rooted in a deep, still pre-state past - in the clan system. They arise along with the appearance of the person himself. Some ethnographers argue that democracy is one of the most important factors in anthropogenesis, the emergence of the entire human race, since it stimulated the development of equal communication between people, their self-awareness and free thinking, individual responsibility and personal dignity. As evidenced by ethnographic research, non-democratic forms of organization based on strict hierarchy and subordination, rigid individual consolidation of managerial and executive roles on the model of an anthill or a bee swarm, led the development of our ancestors to a dead end.

All peoples have passed through generic forms of democracy. Their typical example is the organization of government among the American Indians - Iroquois. All adult men and women of this kind had an equal right to vote in the selection and removal of their highest leaders - the elder (sachem) and the leader (military leader). The supreme power in the clan was the council - the assembly of all its adult representatives. He elected and displaced sachems and leaders, decided questions of war and peace, and the acceptance of outsiders into his race.

The clan was a democratic unit of a more complex organization - the union of phratries - a fraternity of several clans especially close to each other in terms of territory, communication, kinship and other ties of clans, which, while maintaining their autonomy, had a general council as the highest authority. Several phratries made up the tribe. It was led by a tribal council composed of sachems and war chiefs of all kinds. The meetings of this council were held in public, with the participation in the discussion of any members of the tribe, who, however, did not have the right to vote. Decisions at such councils were usually made on a unanimous basis.

Individuals, and then most of the tribes, had supreme chiefs, chosen from among the sachems or generals. Their powers were limited. Some of the tribes formed alliances, which were led by alliance councils of sachems and chiefs.

Similar forms of democracy existed among the ancient Greeks, Germans and other peoples. Everywhere tribal democracy was based on kinship ties, common property, low density and relatively small population, and primitive production. She did not know a clear division of managerial and executive division of labor, did not have a special apparatus of management and coercion. The functions of power were limited. The main sphere of relations between people was regulated by customs and taboos. The power of the councils and leaders (elders) rested on the moral authority and support of their fellow tribesmen. It was a rather primitive, pre-state democracy, or communal self-government.

With the development of production and social division of labor, population growth, the emergence of private property and the deepening of social inequality, primitive democracy was undermined and gave way to authoritarian (monarchical, aristocratic, oligarchic or tyrannical) forms of government. However, even in authoritarian states for many centuries, and in some countries to this day, some traditional democratic forms of organization have survived, especially communal self-government. The traditions of primitive democracy greatly influenced the emergence of democratic states in ancient Greece and Rome. ...

Antiquedemocracy

One of the forms of the political organization of the ancient state (polis). The nature and essential features of ancient democracy are most accurately revealed through its definition as a polis democracy. The ancient polis was a unity of political, civil and religious communities; it lacked the separation of state and church, state and civil society, political and military organizations, rights and duties of a citizen. The community was based on collective ownership of land. Only full citizens had access to land property. Equality of political rights in the ancient polis was a necessary condition for the equality of economic rights (from the history of Ancient Rome it is known that the economic meaning of the struggle of plebeians for equal political rights with patricians in the tsarist period and during the early republic was to obtain the right to occupy the lands of the "public field", which used only by patricians - full citizens). Political and economic rights, in turn, were granted only to those who made up the city militia, were part of the military organization of the polis. The unity of the rights (privileges) and duties of a citizen - a warrior-owner predetermined the absence of grounds for the emergence of the idea of \u200b\u200bpolitical representation - ancient democracy could only be direct democracy. The interdependence of political and economic rights dictated the limits of expanding the circle of full citizens - polis democracy at all stages of its history remained a democracy of a minority. So, in Athens, the practice of granting civil rights to the allies was absent, and in Rome, the inhabitants of the provinces who served in the allied forces began to receive citizenship rights in some massive order only during the empire. The main institution of ancient democracy was the National Assembly, in which all full citizens took part: in Athens, which gave history the most perfect example of polis democracy, National Assemblies were convened regularly, every 10 days. All issues related to the domestic and foreign policy of the city-state were resolved there: it elected senior officials, determined the procedure for spending the city treasury, declared war and determined the conditions for concluding peace. The affairs of the current administration, or, in terms of modern principles of state organization, the functions of the executive branch, belonged to officials elected by the National Assembly: in Athens it was a council of 500, in Rome - magistrates (consuls, tribunes, praetors, censors, quaestors, aediles; in extraordinary circumstances, in case of external danger or a real threat of civil war, the People's Assembly for a limited period, no more than six months, handed over power to the dictator). Another important institution of ancient democracy, which distinguished its most developed forms, was the People's Court. According to Aristotle, who studied the history and comparative advantages of the political structure of contemporary Greek city-states, the establishment of the People's Court signified a decisive step towards the establishment of democracy in Athens: “When the People's Court strengthened, the political system turned into the current democracy”. In Athens, in the era of Pericles, during the "golden age" of Athenian democracy (5th century BC), 6 thousand judges were elected to the People's Court annually, of which 5 thousand formed 10 sections of dicasteries, who tried cases in open court sessions. In its social foundations, ancient democracy was a democracy of medium and small landowners. Relative economic equality served as a guarantee of freedom and real equality of political rights; it protected democracy from degeneration into extreme forms, into ochlocracy, and from the establishment of an oligarchy, followed by a dictatorship. During the formation of modern democracy, historians, philosophers, and legal scholars often turn to the institutions and norms of ancient democracy. ...

Ochlocracy

When evaluated in accordance with its first, most important principle - the sovereignty of the people - democracy is classified depending on how the people are understood and how they exercise their sovereignty. Such a seemingly obvious and simple concept of “people” has not been interpreted in the same way in the history of political thought. In contrast to the modern understanding of how (in relation to democracy - adults) the entire population of the country, until about the middle of the nineteenth century, demos, people were identified either with free adult men (as was the case in ancient democracy), or with owners with real estate or other considerable values. , or only with men.

The restriction of the people to certain class or demographic boundaries gives reason to characterize states that subject certain groups of the population to political discrimination and, in particular, do not grant them voting rights, as socially limited democracies and distinguish them from universal democracy - states with equal political rights for the entire adult population.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, none of the previously existing democracies offered equal political rights to the entire adult population of the country. These were predominantly class and patriarchal (male only) democracies. In the history of political thought, the interpretation of the people as the common people, the poor of the lower strata, the rabble, who make up the majority of the population, prevailed. This understanding of the demos is found even in Aristotle, who considered democracy to be an incorrect form of state, interpreted it as the power of the demos, the rabble, incapable of managing, balanced, rational decisions that take into account the common good. In modern political theory, this type of government reflects the concept of "ochlocracy", which translated from Greek means "the power of the mob, the crowd."

So, depending on the understanding of the composition of the people, its power can act as general or socially (class, ethnically, demographically, etc.) limited democracy, as well as ochlocracy.

Plebiscite democracy(from lat.plebs - common people and scitum - solution; plebiscitum - the decision of the people; plebiscite - popular vote).

In the history of socio-political thought, the concept of plebiscite democracy is firmly associated with the name of M. Weber, although with some assumptions features of plebiscite democracy can be found in the political history of ancient Greek city-states. The meaning of the concept of plebiscite democracy in his theoretical research is revealed by the logic of the theory of bureaucracy. For Weber, the internal interconnection of the processes of the growing role of bureaucracy and the spread of the institutions of modern democracy, the principles of freedom, equality and representative government was obvious. The people, who are included in the routine of regular democratic elections, are unable to independently put a limit to the uncontrolled power of the bureaucracy. A break is needed, giving the system a new quality, ending the “arbitrariness of political cliques,” which, according to Weber, is only possible if a charismatic leader comes, whom the people, through a plebiscite, endows with the broadest powers of power up to the suspension of legislative acts and the dissolution of parliament.

Thus, in Weber's concept, plebiscite democracy is one of the main, and under certain conditions, the only instrument of democratization, a means of solving by authoritarian methods those problems that are powerless to “formal” democracy, a transitional stage to the democratic principle of legitimacy through charismatic domination. However, the practice of modern authoritarianism and totalitarianism refuted Weber's conviction in the temporary, transitional nature of the stage of charismatic leadership, the natural evolution of authoritarian institutions in democracy, and the inevitability of strengthening the role of the representative branch of government. In the hands of leaders of an authoritarian and totalitarian persuasion, a plebiscite can become a means of strengthening the system of personal power, eliminating political rivals and suppressing opposition, a method of solving problems facing the regime bypassing parliament, political parties and other democratic institutions.

Proceduraldemocracy

A complex of political technology that ensures the existence and development of democratic institutions, the electoral process (regulation, electoral laws, documenting rules, etc.), procedural rules for the work of state and other institutions, the norms and conditions for their interaction, the rules of production procedures - meetings, reports, requests, relationships between institutions and within them. Procedural democracy is an organizational form of democracy. In the absence or deficiencies of the substantive foundations of the democratic process, procedural democracy turns out to be its main disciplining basis, fulfilling the functions of a code of conduct for citizens of a democratic society.

Dparticipatory democracy

The concept of democracy, developed in the 20th century (L. Strauss, E. Fegelin, and others) suggests that for the successful functioning of the political system, it is necessary that more and more part of society actively participate in all spheres of its political life. The degree of participatory democracy determines the political culture of a country.

Psigns of democracy

The word "democracy" is used in different meanings:

As a form of state;

As a political regime;

As a principle of organization and activity of state bodies and public organizations.

When they say about a state that it is democratic, they mean the presence of all these meanings. Democracy as a form of state is possible in countries with a democratic regime, and, consequently, with a democratic principle of organization and activity of all subjects of the political system of society (state bodies, government organizations, public associations, labor collectives), which are also subjects of democracy. Of course, the subjects of democracy are primarily the citizen and the people.

Democracy has never existed anywhere without a state.

In reality, democracy is a form (variety) of the state, characterized by at least the following features:

1) recognition of the people as the highest source of power;

2) the election of the main bodies of the state;

3) equality of citizens and, above all, equality of their electoral rights;

4) the subordination of the minority to the majority when making decisions.

Any democratic state is built on the basis of these common features, but the degree of development of democracy can be different. The democratization of society is a long-term constant process that requires not only domestic, but also international guarantees.

Modern democratic states (and being a democratic state is prestigious) are complemented by a number of other features and principles, for example:

1) observance of human rights, their priority over the rights of the state;

2) constitutional limitation of the power of the majority over the minority;

3) respect for the rights of a minority to their own opinion and its free expression;

4) the rule of law;

5) separation of powers, etc.

Based on the modern filling of democracy with qualitative additional content, one can define democracy as a model, an ideal, towards which civilized states strive.

Democracy is a political organization of the power of the people, which ensures: equal participation of each and every one in the management of state and public affairs; the election of the main organs of the state and the legality of the functioning of all subjects of the political system of society ensuring human and minority rights and freedoms in accordance with international standards.

Signs of democracy.

1. Democracy has a state character:

a) is expressed in the delegation by the people of their powers to state bodies. The people participate in the management of affairs in society and the state both directly (self-government) and through representative bodies. He cannot exercise the power belonging to him and delegates to state bodies part of his powers;

b) ensured by the election of state bodies, i.e. a democratic procedure for organizing state bodies as a result of competitive, free and fair elections;

c) manifests itself in the ability of state power to influence the behavior and activities of people, to subordinate them to themselves in order to manage public affairs.

2. Democracy is political in nature: it provides for political diversity. Democracy, like the market economy, is impossible without the existence of competition, i.e. without opposition and pluralistic political system. This is manifested in the fact that democracy acts as a principle of the activity of political parties in the struggle for the possession of state power. Democracy takes into account the diversity of political opinions - party and other, ideological approaches to solving social and state problems. Democracy excludes state censorship and ideological diktat.

The legislation of the developed Western states enshrines a number of principles that should guarantee political pluralism:

2) equality in elections;

4) direct elections, etc.

3. Democracy provides for the proclamation, guarantee and actual implementation of the rights of citizens - economic, political, civil, social, cultural, as well as - their obligations in accordance with international standards enshrined in the Charter of Human Rights (Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, International the pact on civil and political rights of 1966 and the international pact on economic, social and cultural rights of 1966, etc.). the procedure for the application of international norms on human rights has been established.

4. Democracy provides for the rule of law as a regime of social and political life. The regime of social and political life is expressed in the requirements for the entire society - for all subjects of the political system (they are also subjects of democracy) and, first of all, for state bodies - to establish and function on the basis of strict and unswerving observance of legal norms. Each state body, each official should have as many powers as necessary to create conditions for the realization of human rights, their protection and protection.

5. Democracy presupposes mutual responsibility of the state and the citizen, which is expressed in the demand to refrain from committing actions that violate their mutual rights and obligations. The arbiter in possible conflicts between the state and the citizen is an independent and democratic court.

Functions and principles of democracy

The functions of democracy are the main directions of its impact on public relations, the purpose of which is to increase the social and political activity of citizens in the management of society and the state.

Since democracy is not a static, but a dynamic state of society, its functions have changed, enriched, and deepened in different historical periods.

The functions of democracy can be divided into two groups:

1. disclosing the connection with public relations;

2. expressing the internal functions of the state;

The most general functions of democracy include the following:

1. Organizational and political - the organization of political power on a democratic basis. It includes the subfunction of self-organization of the people (self-government) as a source of state power and is expressed in the presence of organizational ties between the subjects of democracy: state bodies, state organizations, public associations, labor collectives;

2. Regulatory-compromise - ensuring the pluralism of the activities of the subjects of democracy in a civilized framework of cooperation and compromise, concentration and consolidation of various political forces around the interests of civil society and the state. The legal means of ensuring this function is the regulation of the legal statuses of the subjects of democracy;

3. Social stimulating - ensuring optimal service of the state to society, stimulating, taking into account and using public opinion and the activity of citizens (consultative referendums, orders, letters, statements, etc.) in the development and adoption of state decisions;

4. Constituent - the formation of public authorities and local governments in a democratic way (competition, elections);

5. Control - ensuring the activities of state bodies within their competence in accordance with the prescriptions of regulatory legal acts; control and accountability of all parts of the state apparatus (for example, control of representative bodies over executive bodies, a report of the latter to the first);

6. Protective - provision by state bodies of security, honor and dignity of every person, protection and protection of the rights and freedoms of the individual, minority, forms of ownership, prevention and suppression of offenses.

The last three functions of democracy express the internal functions of the state.

The principles of democracy are indisputable initial requirements that apply to all participants in political activity, i.e. to the subjects of democracy.

The international community's recognition of the basic principles of democracy is explained by the desire to strengthen international anti-totalitarian policy.

The basic principles of democracy are:

1) political freedom - the freedom to choose the social system and form of government, the right of the people to determine and change the constitutional system, to ensure the protection of human rights. Freedom has a primary purpose - on its basis equality and inequality can arise, but it presupposes equality;

2) equality of citizens - means equality of all before the law, equal responsibility for a committed offense, the right to equal protection before a court. Observance of equality is guaranteed: there can be no privileges or restrictions based on race, skin color, political, religious and other beliefs, sex, ethnic and social origin, property status, place of residence, linguistic and other grounds. The most important aspect of equality is the equality of the rights and freedoms of men and women, who have the same opportunities for their realization;

3) the election of state bodies and constant contact of the population with them - presupposes the formation of bodies of power and local self-government through the expression of the popular will, ensures their turnover, accountability and mutual control, an equal opportunity for everyone to exercise their electoral rights. In a democratic state, the same people should not continuously occupy positions in government bodies for a long time: this causes distrust of citizens, leads to the loss of the legitimacy of these bodies;

4) separation of powers - means interdependence and mutual restriction of different branches of power: legislative, executive, judicial, which serves as an obstacle to turning power into a means of suppressing freedom and equality;

5) making decisions at the will of the majority with the obligatory observance of the rights of the minority - means a combination of the will of the majority with guarantees of the rights of an individual who is in a minority - ethnic, religious, political; the absence of discrimination, suppression of the rights of the individual, who is not in the majority when making decisions;

6) pluralism - means a variety of social phenomena, expands the range of political choice, presupposes not only pluralism of opinions, but also political pluralism - a plurality of parties, public associations, etc. with various programs and statutes operating within the framework of the constitution. Democracy is possible when it is based on the principle of pluralism, but not all pluralism is necessarily democratic. Only in conjunction with other principles does pluralism gain universal significance for modern democracy.

Forms and institutions of democracy

The functions of democracy are realized through its forms and institutions.

The form of democracy is its outward expression.

There are many forms of democracy, but the main ones are as follows:

1. Participation of the people in the management of state and public affairs (democracy) is carried out in two forms - direct and indirect:

Direct - representative democracy is a form of democracy, in which power is exercised through the manifestation of the will of the representatives of the people in elected bodies (parliaments, local governments).

Indirect - direct democracy - a form of democracy, in which power is exercised through the direct manifestation of the will of the people or certain social groups (referendum, elections).

2. Formation and functioning of the system of state bodies on the basis of democratic principles of legality, publicity, electivity, changeability, division of competence, which prevent abuse of office and public authority;

3. Legal (primarily constitutional) consolidation of the system of rights, freedoms and duties of man and citizen, their protection and protection in accordance with international standards.

The types of democracy are classified according to the spheres of public life: economic; social; political; cultural and spiritual, etc.

The forms of democracy are manifested in its institutions (referendum, public opinion, commissions, etc.).

The institutions of democracy are legitimate and legal elements of the political system of society, directly creating a democratic regime in the state through the embodiment of the principles of democracy in them.

The precondition for the legitimacy of the institution of democracy is its organizational design for public recognition; a prerequisite for legality is its legal registration, legalization.

According to the initial purpose in solving problems of politics, power and government, the institutions of democracy are distinguished:

1) Structural - sessions of parliaments, deputy commissions, people's controllers, etc.

2) Functional - parliamentary inquiries, voter orders, public opinion, etc.

According to the legal significance of the decisions made, the institutions of democracy are distinguished:

1) Imperative - have a final generally binding significance for state bodies, officials, citizens: a constitutional and legislative referendum; elections; voter orders, etc.

2) Consultative - have an advisory, consultative value for state bodies, officials, citizens: consultative referendum; nationwide discussion of bills; rallies; questioning, etc.

In the system of institutions of direct democracy, elections play an important role.

Elections are a form of direct participation of citizens in governing the state through the formation of higher representative bodies, local government bodies, and their personal composition.

Citizens of a democratic state have the right to freely elect and be elected to state and local government bodies. A citizen can express his will freely while respecting equality. Freedom of the voter is realized through secret ballot and requires the establishment of guarantees against pressure on him.

A special institution of democracy is a referendum as one of the ways of democratic governance of state affairs.

A referendum (lat - what must be communicated) is a way of solving cardinal problems of national and local importance by voting (adoption of a constitution, other important laws or amendments to them, as well as other decisions on important issues). The referendum is one of the important institutions of direct democracy, it is conducted with the aim of ensuring democracy by the people - the direct participation of citizens in the management of the state and local affairs.

Referendums on the subject are divided into:

Consultative - is conducted with the aim of identifying public opinion on the fundamental issue of public life.

In Switzerland, in addition to the referendum, the institutions of direct democracy are the people's veche, the people's legislative initiative. In the United States, a referendum is used along with a legislative initiative. In France, three years after the first referendum was held in 1789, plebiscites began to be practiced - popular polls that are considered synonymous with referendums.

Democracy and self-government

Self-government of the people is a type of social management that is based on self-organization, self-regulation and initiative of participants in public relations.

Self-organization is the independent implementation of organizational actions.

Self-regulation is the independent establishment of norms and rules of behavior.

Amateur activity is an independent activity for making decisions and their implementation. In self-government, the object and the subject of management coincide, that is, people manage their own affairs, make joint decisions and act together to implement the decisions made. In conditions of self-government, its participants recognize the power of only their own association over themselves.

So, the signs of self-government:

1) this is a kind of social management;

2) power belongs to the entire team;

3) power is exercised by the collective directly or through elected bodies;

4) the subject and object of management are one, coincide;

5) self-regulation occurs through collectively accepted social norms;

6) common affairs are conducted jointly, decisions are made together;

7) the interests of the community are defended and defended on the basis of initiative.

Self-government as one of the forms of organizing human community is based on the principles of freedom, equality and direct participation

(direct expression of will) in management.

The term "self-government" is commonly used to refer to several levels of human association:

1. to the whole society: public self-government;

2. to separate territories: regional and local self-government;

3.to production management: production self-government

(for example, self-government of educational institutions);

4. to the management of public associations, etc. What is the ratio of democracy and self-government? Can they be identified?

It is impossible to equate democracy and self-government, since self-government is a more voluminous concept and a more durable phenomenon than democracy: it precedes it and survives it.

Self-government developed during the tribal system. In the conditions of a primitive clan, public power was exercised by the population itself through a general meeting of members of the clan. Here, management and self-government actually coincided, since all members of the clan took part in the management of its affairs.

With the emergence of the state, self-government was replaced by management: the state apparatus concentrated power in its hands, using it to manage the affairs of society. Self-government has not disappeared. It has acquired a local character. It "went" into certain structures and spheres of life (far from the center) - peasant communities, workers' artels. In the Middle Ages, it manifested itself in the self-government of cities (Magdeburg law), in Cossack associations (for example, in Ukraine), in modern times - in zemstvo self-government, and the autonomy of universities (for example, in pre-revolutionary Russia).

But it is impossible to oppose democracy and self-government, since democracy presupposes self-government, while self-government can exist without democracy as a form of political power of the people.

In the early stages of social development, self-government systems often came into conflict with a non-democratic form of state (for example, the Zaporozhye Sich in Ukraine with a monarchical form of government in Russia). As democracy develops - since the emergence of bourgeois states, which proclaimed the people as the source of power - self-government finds in democracy a guarantor of its effectiveness.

Considering self-government and democracy, one can distinguish common features:

Are built on the same principles of freedom, equality, publicity;

Are forms of exercise of power;

Implemented directly and through elected bodies;

Can be carried out using a common regulatory framework.

Public administration and self-government are not alternatives. Within the framework of democracy, they operate in parallel on the basis of interaction and mutual complementarity. Democracy is a prerequisite for the development of self-government.

Self-government is the core of democracy. Elements of self-government are used in the exercise of political power. In the moments of participation in the decision of state affairs, self-government systems acquire a political character, which is determined by the specific measure of this participation.

Self-government in the sphere of production is manifested in the economies of many countries where there is a self-government sector, which includes enterprises bought out and managed by labor collectives. Here, industrial democracy is expressed in the complicity of workers in the management of enterprises together with the administration. Cooperatives, individual and family enterprises operate on the basis of self-government.

Local self-government is a special kind of self-government.

Democracy as a universal human value

Despite the fact that at all times, democracy was understood and interpreted in different ways, one thing is certain: as a political and legal value, it has become an integral part of the consciousness of people around the world. But there is practically no final stage of democracy that would satisfy everyone. Experiencing limitations, a person comes into conflict with the state, when he does not find in the laws that justice "which he put in the basis of his existence, when the inequality of natural abilities and merit is not taken into account, when there is no recognition depending on political maturity, skill, experience etc. The will to justice (and its significance is great for democracy) is never fully satisfied, and democracy (not formal) in any state can not be achieved completely and completely. You must constantly join democracy, awaken your will, to express views, to be politically active, i.e. to become more mature for democratic action.

Democracy is a blessing only when it corresponds to the culture and mentality of the people.

Let's consider the basic values \u200b\u200bof democracy as a socio-political phenomenon.

1) Intrinsic value is revealed through its social purpose - to serve the benefit of the individual, society, the state:

1. to establish a correspondence between the formally proclaimed and actually operating principles of freedom, equality, justice, to really translate them into personal public and state life;

2. combine state and social principles in the system of democracy as a form of state;

3. to create an atmosphere of harmony of interests of the individual and the state, consensus and compromise between all subjects of democracy.

In a democracy, society realizes the benefits of social partnership and solidarity, civil peace and harmony.

2) Instrumental value - through its functional purpose - to serve as a tool in the hands of a person for solving public and state affairs:

1. take part in the formation of state and local government bodies;

2. self-organize in parties, trade unions, movements, etc .;

3. to protect society and the state from illegal actions, wherever they come from;

4. to exercise control over the activities of the elected authorities and other subjects of the political system of society.

The instrumental value of democracy is realized through its functions and functional institutions.

3) Personal value - is revealed through the recognition of individual rights:

1. their formalization;

2. real provision by creating general social (material, political, spiritual and cultural) and special social (legal) guarantees;

3. action of an effective mechanism for their protection;

4. establishing responsibility for failure to fulfill obligations, since democracy is not a means to achieve ambitious personal goals by diminishing the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of another person or any subject of democracy

For those peoples who are ready to recognize the autonomy of the individual and his responsibility, democracy creates the best opportunities for the realization of humanistic values: freedom, equality, justice, social creativity.

Democracy: hopes and disappointments

Since the time of the famous French historian, sociologist and politician Alexis de Tocqueville, the idea has been repeatedly expressed in political literature that the development of state forms will inevitably and naturally lead human society to democracy. Later, a number of influential political scientists, like Tocqueville, contributed to the affirmation of this idea in the public consciousness. The opinions of many of them seemed all the more significant because they did not follow from the fact of ardent admiration for the democratic idea. Democracy seemed to them to be a natural and inevitable state, which would immediately come, regardless of the assistance or opposition of individual individuals or groups of people. English thought cautiously tried to shake this point of view as one of those "amateurish" generalizations emanating from France. Nevertheless, this “French” opinion also made its way into England, finding itself there a number of firm followers.

Ever since democracy (even “relative” democracy) has become a practical reality in most countries, at the same time it has become the subject of fierce criticism. And if before the most characteristic generalization of political science was the idea of \u200b\u200bthe coming triumph of democracy, now many consider the statement about, paradoxically, the uncertainty of its future, about possible ways of its development and improvement. While they waited for democracy, they said about it that it will certainly come, but when it did, they say about it that it might disappear. Previously, it was often considered the highest and final form, ensuring a confident and prosperous existence. Now they clearly feel that, by no means creating a solid foundation for a balanced life, it more than any other form arouses the spirit of quest. In countries that have experienced this form in practice, it has long ceased to be an object of fear, but it has ceased to be an object of worship. Her opponents understand that it is still possible to exist with her, her supporters agree that she has too many shortcomings in order to extol her immensely.

Democracy has become today almost the most used word in the political lexicon in Russia.

For those who start from the inner form of the word, its etymology, the essence of democracy may seem self-evident - democracy or rule of the people. This self-evidence can be shattered by thinking about some questions. What kind of authority do you mean? What is meant by the people? Who controls whom under democracy? Is the whole nation able to act as a ruler? The questions are not easy. It is clear that the concepts of people, power and government require clarification before we can meaningfully talk about democracy.

So, isn't democracy a democracy? Indeed, democracy. However, people and power were as ambiguous for the ancient Hellenes as for us. In Greek, "demos" - people, crowd, rabble, people (in the era of the heyday of the polis - an assembly of full citizens, and in Attica - the main division of citizens, or dem), and "kratos" - strength, power, might, government and even a victory. It is not surprising that already the ancient Greeks and their outstanding politicians, rhetoricians and philosophers differed in the interpretation of the meaning of the word "democracy" no less, perhaps, than our contemporaries. This word could mean the triumph of the rebellious rabble, and the domination of the lower strata of the population, and the participation of all citizens in the affairs of the polis, i.e. in politics, and the decisive role of the people's assembly, and the system of government by persons authorized to do so through formal procedures for the presentation of demos.

Oddly enough, the term “democracy” is one of the most controversial and vague concepts in modern political theory.

As the well-known Austrian state scholar Hans Kelsen argued, criticizing Bolshevism, in the 19th and 20th centuries the word “democracy” became the dominant slogan everywhere, and it is not surprising if, like any such slogan, it lost its definite and solid content. Following the requirements of fashion, they began to consider it necessary to use it for all possible occasions and for all possible purposes, so that it began to cover the most diverse and often completely contradictory concepts.

Ideal and real democracy

The earliest heralds of the democratic idea based their sermons on purely religious enthusiasm. For many of them, democracy was a kind of religion. Traces of such political idolatry are often found in our days: due to the inability or unwillingness to make responsible political decisions, all hopes are pinned on democracy as an “omnipotent and all-healing” force, they devote all their strength and enthusiasm to it. And what are the claims about democracy as the highest and final form in which political development reaches its extreme ?!

Modern political theory subjects such views, as naive and superficial, to doubt and opposes them with a number of observations and conclusions that remove the aura of the miraculous, the supernatural from democracy and introduce it into the number of natural political phenomena, representing it as an element "equal" to all other political forms ... The extraordinary difficulty of implementing the democratic idea and the greatest ease of its distortion are especially emphasized. Many great thinkers have found that democracy can only be realized under special, specific conditions. Moreover, the majority definitely believed that if you understand democracy in all the severity of this phenomenon, then true democracy never existed and never will.

Such judgments of such authoritative scholars as Rousseau, Bryce, Prevo-Paradol, Scherer, Girnshaw and others fully confirm and vividly emphasize the conclusions about democracy that both historical experience and political science lead to. The naive assumptions that one has only to "overthrow" the old order and proclaim "universal freedom", universal suffrage, people's self-government and democracy will be realized by themselves do not stand up to criticism. In fact, the idea that with the destruction of the old foundations, true freedom immediately sets in, belongs not to the democratic, but to the anarchist theory. In essence, democracy is self-government of the people, but in order for this self-government not to be an empty fiction, the people must develop their own forms of organization. “The people should be ripe to govern themselves, understanding their rights and respecting others, aware of their responsibilities and capable of self-restraint. Such a height of political consciousness is never given at once; it is acquired by a long and harsh life experience. And the more difficult and higher the tasks that are set before the state, the more required for this is the political maturity of the people, the promotion of the best sides of human nature and the exertion of all moral forces. "

Kelsen, like many other prominent scientists, while agreeing with the observation that in a democracy, as in all other political systems, it is not the masses, but the leaders that are decisive, at the same time defending the superiority of democracy from the point of view of what is happening here. the highest quality selection of leaders. Perhaps in many cases this is true, i.e. democratism practically admits a combination with aristocracy, but all this, by definition, is in contradiction with the purity of the democratic idea. Recognition of the need for an aristocratic core for viable democracies is identical with Rousseau's assertion that "true democracy is more suitable for gods than for people."

It should be admitted that this conclusion is easily disputed by the remark about the fundamental impossibility of realizing in its pure form any of the known political systems. Analyzing the weaknesses of democracy, it can be noted that the same or some other shortcomings, to one degree or another, are characteristic of other forms. Human nature, flaws in mind and character, weakness of will remain the same in all systems. However, it is precisely this conclusion that introduces democracy into a number of other forms, freeing it from the halo of perfection and completeness, which its first heralds sought to give it.

Democracy has advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses.

In contrast to the reckless political optimism, which was especially clearly manifested, for example, in the USSR in the second half of the 80s, when it seemed that democracy was something higher and final, that once it was achieved and everything else followed, it should be admitted that democracy is not a path, but a “crossroads”, not an achieved goal, but only an “intermediate point”. This is “the edge of a forest with paths that diverge to nowhere”. “We hope that the straight path is not yet lost; but at the same time we see that the cross paths that lead aside are fraught with great temptations. "

With its vast possibilities and prospects, democracy seemed to have raised expectations that it is unable to satisfy. And with its spirit of tolerance and acceptance of all opinions, it opened up space, including for areas seeking to destroy it. It cannot be different, for this is its nature, its advantage. But with this she could satisfy only a few, but not all. People always have a need to continue improving to the infinity of the ghostly absolute ideal and no political system can satisfy them. Therefore, the question of whether democracy can be replaced by other forms has a clear answer: this has happened before, is happening now and, in principle, may happen in the future.

Democracy is always a “crossroads”, since it is a system of freedom, a system of relativism, for which nothing is absolute. Democracy is an empty space ("edge") in which a wide variety of political aspirations ("paths") can develop. The manifested dissatisfaction with democracy, in principle, can be interpreted as people's fatigue from uncertainty, a desire to choose a specific alluring path, a "path" of development. However, it is difficult to give an unambiguous answer to the question “will we eventually return to the edge of the forest?”. At the moment, we are most inclined to agree with Churchill's famous statement: “democracy is a bad form of government, but humanity has not yet come up with anything better”.

Modern democracy

The gradual rooting of modern democracy and the increase in its influence on various aspects of life have led to the fact that in our time the concept of democracy has expanded and began to include not only characteristics of the form of political government (from its nationwide to the parameters of citizen participation in self-government), but also ideological and, more broadly , ideological approaches to relations between people, as well as moral and even philosophical premises of human existence in modern conditions. This prompted political science to distinguish democracy in a broad or ideal sense from its own political, predominantly institutional framework. The most consistent, perhaps, such a distinction is made by R. Dahl, who uses the word democracy in the first sense and who proposed to use the word polyarchy It literally translates as "polyarchy, the rule of many" and for the ancient Hellenes it rather had a negative connotation associated with confusion and inconsistency of government. In the context of modernity, this word, on the contrary, emphasizes political pluralism and the ability of the institutions of modern democracy to ensure interaction and coordination of interests without losing their independence and fundamental equality.

It turns out that the fundamental problem of democracy, like any other political and ideological system, is how it is combined with human nature, whether it comes from the real, sometimes painful contradictions of the modern personality, the limited resources of it, from our prejudices and painful complexes , or is guided by some utopian ideal of man. Until now, it is often argued that democracy in general, including modern democracy, is not only normative, but also based on the uncompromising demands of the goodness and perfection of people.

"At the heart of democracy is an optimistic premise about the natural goodness and goodness of human nature. The spiritual father of democracy was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and his optimistic ideas about human nature were passed on to democratic ideologists. Democracy does not want to know the radical evil of human nature. It seems to be not stipulates that the will of the people can be directed towards evil, that the majority can stand for untruth and lies, and truth and truth can remain the property of a small minority.In a democracy there are no guarantees that the will of the people will be directed towards good, that the will of the people will desire freedom and will not want to destroy all freedom without a trace. "

N. A. Berdyaev, "New Middle Ages"

"The philosophers of the school of J.-J. Rousseau have done a lot of harm to mankind. This philosophy has taken possession of the minds, and yet it is all built on one false idea of \u200b\u200bthe perfection of human nature, and the complete ability of everyone and everyone to comprehend and implement those principles of social order that This philosophy preached. On the same false basis stands the dominant doctrine of the perfections of democracy and democratic government. These perfections presuppose - the perfect ability of the masses to comprehend the subtle features of political doctrine, clearly and separately inherent in the consciousness of its preachers. This clarity is accessible only to a few minds that make up the aristocracy of the intelligentsia, and the masses, as always and everywhere, consisted and still consists of a crowd of "vulgus", and their ideas will necessarily be "vulgar."

K.P. Pobedonostsev, "The Great Lies of Our Time"

There is only a grain of truth in such statements. The democratic worldview really excludes the idea of \u200b\u200bunconditional sinfulness and evil of human nature, because in this case the justification of authoritarian coercion and discipline of defective, evil and unreasonable people is inevitable. This compulsion, as the same KP Pobedonostsev logically concluded, cannot be subject to human discussion, let alone condemnation, for - "there is no power, if not from God." It is quite understandable that the search for a source of power in the People or in the Demos as a corps of citizens requires a different, generally positive attitude towards their capabilities. However, only extreme and dogmatic versions of the original democracy could imply the unconditional goodness of popular rule ("the people are always right") or the rationality of self-government of virtuous citizens ("do to everyone what you would like for yourself"). Modern democracy is based on ideas about uncertain and evolving, and thus diverse human nature. Because of this, everyone can, firstly, find and use what will be useful to him (caregiving, and then legalistic democracy according to D. Held), and secondly, use the potential of democracy to acquire new abilities, develop his personality and this measure - the improvement of human nature in general (developing, and then pluralistic democracy).

The ideas inherent in modern democracy about the diversity and variability of human nature, about the need for constant critical discussion and revision not only of political courses, but also of the criteria for their determination, set a very high level of requirements both for Demos as a whole and for each of its constituent citizens. In antiquated or only partially modernized systems, a person was guaranteed the opportunity to rely on stable, familiar and often uncomplicated roles and patterns of political behavior. Democratization gave birth to what Erich Fromm aptly called "the escape from freedom." Its essence lies in the fact that, breaking traditional, including corporate structures, sharply increasing the rate of horizontal and vertical movements, "atomizing" society, democratization deprives people of their habitual orientation system, psychological and organizational "supports" and "framework" of behavior the individual. The removal of all kinds of class and other restrictions that firmly guided a person's life in the previous conditions made a person free - in the modern sense. At the same time, the burden of responsibility fell on him for decisions concerning his own destiny, as well as the entire polity. The combined action of these factors led to the fact that a lonely, confused and disoriented person was unable to endure the "burden of freedom." It seems to him that one can regain the old self-confidence and a sense of stability only by sacrificing freedom in exchange for the feeling of certainty that arises in a rigid totalitarian system, shifting the entire responsibility for making decisions to the leader or the regime. The destruction of traditional myths, their replacement with a rationalistic worldview, an orientation towards personal benefit sharply raise the question of the meaning of human existence. Under these conditions, a significant part of the masses, predisposed to authoritarian submission or simply too weak to take responsibility for their own destiny, seeks a way out in the "harsh comfort of a totalitarian dictatorship", seeks to associate themselves with authoritarian-totalitarian ideologies and movements. They convey to the confused individual an illusory sense of his own significance, and the adoration of the leader, the "dissolution" of the fugitive from freedom in the mythical fusion of the Leader and the People turns into a kind of symbolic attachment to power.

Democracy, therefore, is not a static state, but a process that constantly develops and expands the principles of a democratic structure, the breadth of coverage of problems and spaces. And yet, what is the role and prospects of democratic statehood today, on the threshold of the new millennium? Is this an experiment of unprecedented scale or is it the norm? These issues continue to generate heated debate. There seem to be two main approaches to this problem today.

From the point of view of the first group of specialists, although we seem to be observing today a triumphant march of democracy around the world, it is still primarily a product of the Western type of development and culture. And this calls into question its stability for a fairly long term in other parts of the world.

Another point of view views democracy as the goal of history and calls the transition to a democratic type of government a true world revolution. Using historical and anthropological argumentation, the supporters of this approach argue that democracy is the only form of human society that is peculiar to a person. Therefore, the evolutionary development of the human race ultimately leads to the triumph of democracy as another stage of the "breakthrough" into civilization.

In any case, the principle of democratic legitimation has now become almost universally recognized, virtually removing all other types of legitimacy from the agenda. But this does not mean the simultaneous disappearance of other forms of domination. In particular, it seems that the growing influence of another principle in recent decades, namely, the principle of legitimacy of Islamic theocracy, deserves attention. Islam is the only religion that has succeeded in establishing theocratic domination. Of course, today Islam has not yet acquired universal significance, but its passionarity, aggressiveness, combined with demographic and social factors, opens up a very impressive potential.

However, it seems that in modern conditions the very principle of democratic legitimation acquires an almost magical power. Why does he still manage to maintain his position, despite the socio-cultural, traditionalist, religious and innovative "challenges"? The fact is that the democratic principle of legitimation in a functional sense easily responds to rapid social changes inherent in the modern type of civilizational development. No other principle of legitimation creates such opportunities.

Sources

A Brief Philosophical Dictionary - "Democracy" - pp. 130-132 - V. Viktorov.

Skakun O. F. - Theory of State and Law: Textbook. Kharkov: Consum; University of Internal Affairs, 2000 .-- 704 p.

Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. M., "Progress - Litera", 1994.

P.I. Novgorodtsev On the social ideal. M., "Science", 1991.

P.I. Novgorodtsev Compositions. M., "Rarity", 1995.

Bryce D. Modern democracies. M., "Progress", 1992.

Kelsen H. On the essence and meaning of democracy. M., "Prospect", 1996.

Under the editorship of G. Yu. Semigin "Political Encyclopedia" I volume Moscow 1999. ed. "Think".

V. P. Pugachev, A. I. Soloviev “Introduction to Political Science Moscow 1996. ed. "Aspect press".

KS Gadzhiev "Introduction to political theory" Moscow 2000. ed. "Logos".

R. Dahl “On Democracy” Moscow 2000. ed. "Aspect press".

A. I. Soloviev "Political Science" Moscow 2000. ed. “Aspect press”.

V. A. Melnik "Political Science" Minsk 1996. ed. "High school".

Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. M., "Progress - Litera", 1994.

P.I. Novgorodtsev On the social ideal. M., "Science", 1991.

P.I. Novgorodtsev Compositions. M., "Rarity", 1995.

Bryce D. Modern democracies. M., "Progress", 1992.

Kelsen H. On the essence and meaning of democracy. M., “Prospect”, 1996.

Ilyin M., Melville L., Fedorov Y. Democracy and democratization \\\\ Polis. 1996. # 5.

Alekseeva T. Democracy as an idea and process \\\\ Questions of philosophy. 1996..No.6.

Tsygankov A. Political regime \\\\ SJ. 1996.№1.

(from wikipedia):

Democracy (ancient Greek δημοκρατία - "power of the people", from δῆμος - "people" and κράτος - "power") is a political regime, which is based on the method of collective decision-making with equal influence of participants on the outcome of the process or on its significant stages. Although this method is applicable to any social structure, today its most important application is the state, since it has a lot of power.

You can give different definitions, the essence of this will change little.

The term "Democracy", as the name implies, traces its history back to the times of Ancient Greece; then the same mega-construction was used in the equally enlightened Ancient Rome. It is customary in Western culture to sigh with emotion about these times, but let me remind myself that "that" democracy had an important feature - it was not universal; only citizens had the right to vote (and, accordingly, the authorities), and only the male sex. Slaves and women had no rights.

In principle, I am not against the fact that responsible decisions are made not by everyone, but only by certain categories of citizens - on this topic. But nevertheless, the transfer of the right to power by inheritance (and citizens of both Greece and Rome could only be born citizens of Greece and Rome, respectively) is a little different from what we mean by the concept of democracy. And nevertheless, no one cares about such a scattering of the principles of democracy in its very origins; it's not without reason, as Winnie the Pooh said.

Nevertheless, now the most democratic and freedom-loving country rushes around the world and punishes all those who disagree with its definition democracy. Although, it would seem, it is much easier to bomb Wikipedia than Libya or Syria.

For example, everyone squeals that the president of the country should not be in power for more than two terms. Although if you delve into the relative recent history, it is easy to find a passenger by the name of Roosevelt, who "purely by chance" is one of the winners of fascism, and who spent time on Capitol Hill from 1933 to 1945 - constantly and continuously. That is, they can - but no one else can? Cleverly thought up. Or do we want to debate whether there was democracy in the United States in the 1930s-1940s, and maybe those times should be damned and the Americans should? .. There is a typical violation of common sense.

Let's go further. As I wrote earlier in the post, I do not think that presidents and even governors should be elected by direct vote of all citizens; firstly, this is stupid, and secondly, it provides fantastic opportunities for profit and deception during elections - without giving anything in return. The money spent on the electoral process is wasted, without any improvement in people's lives; especially now, in the context of the global financial crisis, it is high time to think about optimizing this process.

The very concept of the turnover of power has not only a positive side, which the "liberals" insist on, but also a pronounced corruption component, and also introduces increased instability during the election period. Some of the classics have come across a story about the times when everyone knew the date of their death. And the old people abandoned their farm, because why watch him, die anyway. God, when he saw this, canceled the predictions, and as a result, willy-nilly, the houses and gardens had to be put in order - because now no one knows when his time will come. But for some reason it is possible in the family economy, but not in politics?

At the end of the first term of presidency, at least there is an incentive for re-election, and at the end of the second term, you can already grab the bags, the ferry leaves! Under such conditions, who will think about the state - which still leaves hands - and not about his own pocket? In a world where the only value? But we are talking about the first figure in the country. The system itself pushes those in power on the curve of theft.

The second negative aspect of the constant change of power is the regular imbalance in the political life of the country, which is steadily reflected in the economic life as well. The larger the business, the closer it is to politics, and the more it depends on political leadership. Small shopkeepers practically do not care who they do business with, but large companies do not even care; and it is logical that they interfere in political processes by all means, which additionally gives a bonus to the corruption component, as already mentioned above - but also forces large corporations to constantly maneuver depending on the conjuncture. And this is not only good, but actually harm. Because it significantly complicates the strategic planning of anything.

The actual electoral system of the modern type is useful only for a society in which ... nothing changes. If you are sure that nothing will change from the change of the first person of the state, you can safely promote the system of democracy; but is this our method? In half-asleep Europe or suspended America, the system of "democracy" has been working for more than one hundred years - despite the fact that nothing really changes there, President N + 1 is practically the same as President N, and the system "does not storm" - because the candidates there are essentially dummies, completely controlled by big business, which in fact rules everything. And in our country, where even one branch of government regularly starts a uniform war, the electoral system is tantamount to direct sabotage. In its completeness, this "democratic" system was formed in Ukraine - when the central government is actually paralyzed due to contradictions between various political movements. But democracy!

One of the central ideas of modern "democracy" is "the choice of two or more candidates." But if you look closely, then all these candidates, such an impression, either threw themselves out of prison, or from the madhouse, or from Western corporations. The choice between these "options" is the choice between hanging and drowning. As a result, in our parliaments, either people are weak-willed, or vice versa - violent, who cannot agree on anything; anyone, but not professionals in their field.

Honestly, I do not understand very much why moneybags around the world are so persistently promoting the obviously poor political construction of "democracy" - yes, it reflects their interests, but it drives the whole world into a cesspool! As they correctly suggest, the Western vision of the future is for some reason almost always apocalyptic, there is almost no science fiction about how humanity is developing peacefully - all the time there are some kind of wars, destruction, crises - people develop an understanding that the future will only get worse, than now. A striking difference from the bright future of the Soviet model. This is not because Soviet society was progressively developing, but the current system is driving people and entire countries into debt holes, no-no-no.

Perhaps democracy is a completely normal working political system, but somewhere out there, in a spherical vacuum and outside the sphere of gravity. Now the so-called. democracy in essence \u003d\u003d legitimization of the power of moneybags, so that people have the impression that they are supposedly deciding something, but in essence - manipulation of the masses with their own consent.

The sooner people - from bottom to top - will understand all the wretchedness of the modern "democratic" laundering of power, coupled with

Quite a long time ago the idea has been repeatedly expressed in the literature that democracy will naturally and inevitably become a consequence of the development of statehood. The concept was interpreted as a natural state that will occur immediately at a certain stage, regardless of the assistance or resistance of individual individuals or their associations. The very first to use the term were ancient Greek thinkers. Consider further in detail, (basic concepts).

Terminology

Democracy is a concept introduced into practice by the ancient Greeks. Literally it means It is a form of government, which implies the participation of citizens in it, their equality before the norms of the law, the provision of certain political freedoms and rights to the individual. In the classification proposed by Aristotle, this state of society expressed the "power of all", which differed from the aristocracy and monarchy.

Democracy: concept, types and forms

This state of society is considered in several ways. So, democracy is a concept that expresses the way of organizing and working of government agencies and non-governmental organizations. It is also called the established and type of state. When they say they mean the presence of all these meanings. At the same time, the state has a number of distinctive features. These include:

1. Recognition of the people as the highest source of power.
2. Election of key government agencies.
3. Equality of citizens, first of all, in the process of exercising their electoral rights.
4. Submission of the minority to the majority in the course of decision-making.

Democracy (concept, types and forms of this institution) have been studied by various scientists. As a result of the analysis of theoretical positions and practical experience, thinkers came to the conclusion that this state of society cannot exist without the state. In the literature, the concept of direct democracy is distinguished. It involves the exercise of the will by the people through elected bodies. They are, in particular, local power structures, parliaments, etc. The concept of direct democracy presupposes the realization of the will of the population or specific social associations through elections, referendums, meetings. In this case, citizens independently decide certain issues. However, these are far from all the external manifestations that characterize democracy. The concept and types of an institution can be considered in the context of certain spheres of life: social, economic, cultural, and so on.

State character

Many authors, explaining what democracy is, the concept, signs of this institution are characterized by a certain system. First of all, they indicate belonging to the state regime. This is manifested in the delegation by the population of their powers to government agencies. Citizens participate in the management of affairs directly or through elected structures. The population cannot independently exercise all the power that belongs to it. Therefore, it transfers part of its powers to government agencies. The election of authorized structures is another manifestation of the state character of democracy. In addition, it is expressed in the ability of the authorities to influence the activities and behavior of citizens, to subordinate them to control the social sphere.

Political democracy concept

This institution, like the market economy, cannot exist without competition. In this case, we are talking about a pluralistic system and opposition. This is manifested in the fact that democracy, the concept and forms of the institution, in particular, form the basis of the programs of parties in their struggle for state power. In such a state of society, the diversity of existing opinions, ideological approaches to solving pressing issues is taken into account. In a democracy, state censorship and dictatorship are excluded. The legislation contains provisions to guarantee pluralism. These include the right to choose, secret ballot, etc. The concept and principles of democracy are based, first of all, on the equality of citizens. It makes it possible to choose between different options, directions of development.

Guarantee of realization of rights

The concept of democracy in society is associated with the legal capabilities of each citizen in different spheres of life, enshrined at the legislative level. In particular, we are talking about economic, social, civil, cultural and other rights. Along with this, responsibilities for citizens are also established. Legality acts as a regime of social and political life. It manifests itself in the establishment of requirements for all subjects, first of all, for government agencies. The latter should be created and act on the basis of the unswerving and strict implementation of existing norms. Each state body, official should have only the necessary amount of authority. Democracy is a concept that is associated with the mutual responsibility of citizens and the state. It involves the establishment of a requirement to refrain from actions that violate freedoms and rights, create obstacles for the performance of duties by the participants in the system.

Functions

Explaining the concept of democracy, it is necessary to say separately about the tasks that this institution implements. The functions are the key areas of influence on social relations. Their goal is to increase the activity of the population in the management of state affairs. The concept of democracy is associated not with a static, but with a dynamic state of society. In this regard, the functions of the institution have undergone certain changes in certain periods of historical development. Researchers currently divide them into two groups. The first reveal the connection with social relations, the second - express the internal tasks of the state. Among the most significant functions of the institute, one should highlight:

Social relationships

The relationship with them reflects the first three functions mentioned above. Political power in the state is organized on a democratic basis. Within the framework of this activity, self-organization of the population (self-government) is envisaged. It acts as a source of state power and is expressed in the presence of appropriate connections between the subjects. The regulatory and compromise function is to ensure the pluralism of the activities of the participants in relations within the framework of cooperation, consolidation and concentration of different forces around the interests of the population and the state. The regulation of legal statuses of the subjects acts as a legal means of ensuring this function. In the process of developing and making decisions, only democracy can have a socially stimulating influence on the state. The concept and forms of this institution ensure the optimal service of the authorities to the population, the consideration and application of public opinion, the activity of citizens. This is manifested, in particular, in the ability of citizens to participate in referendums, send letters, statements, and so on.

State tasks

The concept of "representative democracy" is associated with the ability of the population to form bodies of state power and territorial self-government. This is done by voting. Elections in a democracy are secret, general, equal and direct. Ensuring the work of state bodies within their competence in accordance with the requirements of the legislation is carried out through the implementation of the control function. It also presupposes the accountability of all parts of the administration of the country. The protective function of democracy is considered one of the key ones. It involves the provision of security by state bodies, protection of dignity and honor, freedoms and rights of the individual, forms of ownership, suppression and prevention of violations of the law.

Initial Requirements

They represent the principles on which a democratic regime is based. Their recognition by the international community is conditioned by the desire to strengthen the anti-totalitarian position. The key principles are:

Ways of implementing the will of the population

The functions of democracy are carried out through its institutions and forms. There are many of the latter. The forms of democracy are seen as its external expression. The key ones include:

1. Participation of citizens in the management of social and state affairs. It is realized through representative democracy. In this case, power is exercised by revealing the will of persons authorized by the people in elected bodies. Citizens can participate in government directly (through a referendum, for example).
2. Creation and operation of a system of state bodies based on publicity, legality, changeability, electivity, separation of powers. These principles prevent abuse of social authority and official position.
3. Legal, first of all, constitutional consolidation of the system of freedoms, duties and rights of a citizen and a person, ensuring their protection in accordance with established international standards.

Institutions

They represent the legal and legitimate components of the system that directly shape the democratic regime through the implementation of the initial requirements. As a prerequisite for the legality of any institution is its legal registration. Legitimacy is ensured by public acceptance and organizational structure. Institutions may differ in their original purpose in solving urgent state problems. In particular, there are:

1. Structural institutions. These include deputy commissions, parliamentary sessions, etc.
2. Functional institutions. They are the orders of the voters, public opinion, etc.

Depending on the legal significance, the following institutions are distinguished:

Self management

It is based on the independent regulation, organization and activities of participants in civil relations. The population sets certain rules and norms of behavior, carries out organizational actions. The people have the right to make decisions and implement them. Within the framework of self-government, the subject and the object of activity coincide. This means that members only recognize the authority of their own association. Self-government is based on the principles of equality, freedom, participation in administration. This term is usually used to refer to several levels of human association:

1. To the whole society as a whole. In this case, they speak of public self-government.
2. To separate territories. In this case, local and regional self-government takes place.
3. For specific industries.
4. To public associations.

Power of the people as a social value

Democracy has been understood and interpreted in various ways at all times. However, there is no doubt that as a legal and political value, it has become an integral component of the organization of the world. Meanwhile, there is no such final stage in which all its subjects would be satisfied. A person who is experiencing restrictions enters into a dispute with the state, not finding justice in the legislation. The conflict arises when the inequality of merit and natural abilities is not taken into account, there is no recognition depending on experience, skill, maturity, etc. The desire for justice cannot be fully satisfied. In society, there should be a constant awakening of will, the development of the desire to express one's opinion, views, to be active.

The intrinsic value of democracy is expressed through its social significance. It, in turn, consists in serving for the benefit of the individual, the state, society. Democracy contributes to the establishment of correspondence between the actually operating and formally proclaimed principles of equality, freedom, justice. It ensures their implementation in state and social life. The system of democracy combines social and power principles. It contributes to the formation of an atmosphere of harmony between the interests of the state and the individual, the achievement of a compromise between the subjects. In a democratic regime, the participants in the relationship realize the benefits of partnership and solidarity, harmony and peace. The instrumental value of the institution is manifested through its functional purpose. Democracy is a way of solving state and public affairs. It allows you to participate in the creation of government agencies and local government structures, independently organize movements, trade unions, parties, and provide protection from illegal actions. Democracy presupposes control over the activities of elected institutions and other subjects of the system. The personal value of an institution is expressed through the recognition of individual rights. They are formally enshrined in normative acts, are actually ensured through the formation of material, spiritual, legal and other guarantees.

Within the framework of a democratic regime, liability is provided for failure to fulfill obligations. Democracy does not act as a means of achieving personal ambitious goals by infringing on the freedoms, interests, and rights of others. For the people who are ready to recognize the autonomy of the individual and his responsibility, this institution forms the best opportunities for the implementation of existing humanistic values: social creativity, justice, equality and freedom. At the same time, the participation of the state in the process of ensuring guarantees and protecting the interests of the population is also of undoubted importance. This is its main function in a democratic society.

Not only the assessment of the maturity of society, but also the determination of the directions of its further democratization depends on the criteria (signs, indicators) of democracy. Each new historical epoch made adjustments to the criteria of democracy. As R. Dahrendorf (FRG) rightly noted, democracy cannot be “rule of the people” in the literal sense. Democracy and self-government provide, first of all, the freedom of the people to choose competent leaders, as well as the ability of the people to influence them and, if necessary, replace them with dignity and competent.

The main features of democracy are:

Among the main criteria for a democratic society is the existence of fundamental human rights and freedoms.

Freedom of the media

Equality of all citizens before the law.

The system of checks and balances.

The presence of political and ideological pluralism.

The ability of citizens to openly express and express their protest.

The principles of democracy is an extremely important issue for social progress.

Among them are the rule of the majority, pluralism, equality, separation of powers, electivity, publicity, control.

Majority principle. This principle cannot be absolutized and considered perfectly democratic if the minority's right to opposition is ignored.

The principle of pluralism. The democratic organization of society is impossible without observing it. It makes it possible to manage on the basis of taking into account the multiple nature of public opinion and positions of different subjects of politics.

The principle of equality. This principle of democracy was proclaimed by the Great French Revolution of the late 18th century. In the XX century. was embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first article of this document reads: "All people are born free and equal in their dignity and rights."

The principle of separation of powers. According to them, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government are separate and fairly independent from each other. Together, they constantly interact in the process of forming and implementing public policy.

Election of the main bodies of state power. All citizens under such conditions should have electoral rights and a real opportunity to participate in elections.

Publicity. It is one of the prerequisites for freedom of speech. Provides free access for the press and the public to information on the activities of government bodies, economic, political, public organizations.

Independent control. Lack of public control over the activities of state structures gives rise to bureaucracy, corruption, etc.

For the democratization of society, it is important to develop effective means of combating bureaucracy: the development of real criticism; radical strengthening of law and order, creation of an effective mechanism for timely self-renewal of the political system.

Models and theories of democracy.

The question is very confusing. I approached the polit-gu, he said that there are a lot of theories and models, they merge, practically the same thing. So I highlighted the main thing, taken half from the textbook and the Internet.

The problem of classifying models and theories of democracy is complex and depends on the criteria. For example, depending on who has priority in exercising power (individual, social group or people), the concept of democracy is divided into 3 models:

1) INDIVIDUALISTIC MODEL: the main idea is the idea of \u200b\u200bthe autonomy of the individual, his perversion in relation to the people. This approach distinguishes the individual from society and the state. The main task of such a democracy is to create institutional and legal guarantees for individual freedom. The individual is recognized as the main source of power, her rights are always priority over the rights of the state. (the state is assigned the role of "night watchman") According to political scientist L. Diamond, in this model constitutional guarantees of human rights, independence of the court, free access to information, a developed system of human rights protection, and the possibility of broad expression of interests take on special significance. Real power belongs only to the elected representatives.

This model includes the classic model of liberal democracy: (developed: XIX-early XX)

Founders: J. Locke and Sh.L. Montesquieu formulated such fundamental principles of political liberalism as the priority of individual freedom based on the principles of natural law, the separation of the state from civil society, and the separation of powers. On the basis of these principles, the ideas of democracy (as democracy) were filled with liberal content. The core ideas in theories of liberalism were political equality and representative government. The will of the people, in their opinion, is not expressed directly, but through representatives elected by the people. In this interpretation democracy represents a competition of political forces equal in rights in relation to the authorities with undefined results. As M. Weber emphasized, the masses are given the opportunity to choose between competing elites and to support them. As for the state, its activities; is to protect public order, ensure security and legal protection of citizens' rights. Another main idea of \u200b\u200bthis concept is the separation of powers, the creation of checks and balances as a condition for effective control of citizens over the state, a way to exclude abuse of power. A special place in the liberal democracyassigned to limiting the power of the majority over the minority, which has the right to have their own opinion and to challenge it within the framework of the law.

The models of liberal democracy include: protective (“protecting”) and developing democracy. The first direction is presented by J. Locke, Sh.L. Montesquieu, I. Bentham, James Mill and others, the second - by A. de Tocqueville, J.S. Mill, J. Dewey, L.T. Hobhouse, etc.

"Protective" ("protective") democracy: The creators of this model saw meaning and justification democracy in that it protects citizens from both the arbitrariness of the authorities and the illegal actions of private individuals, and also provides guarantees of governance in the common interest. Although sovereignty belongs to the people, the latter delegates it to its elected representatives and, thus, refuses to directly participate in decision-making. Institutional lines democracy are regular elections, competition between organizational political groups and the separation of powers. The practice of constitutionalism guarantees fundamental political and civic freedoms (speech, association, voting, conscience, etc.), as well as the equality of all before the law. Essentially important for this models of democracy is the idea of \u200b\u200bseparation of the state from civil society, which implies noninterference by the authorities in many spheres of public life, and above all in the economy.
By the terms of "protective" democracy are private ownership of the means of production and the market economy. It is not difficult to see that, in essence, it represents an apology for a real liberal democracy, formed in the XVII-XIX centuries. in Western Europe and the United States.
"Developing" democracy: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
According to Rousseau, the main flaw in all previous political theory was the neglect of the moral aspects of power and its use. Democracy is not only a state mechanism, but also a way to improve people, develop their abilities, because only it can give an individual the freedom he needs. Submitting not to rulers (even if elected), but to the entire community, a person, as Rousseau wrote, does not submit himself to anyone separately, which means that he remains “as free as he was before”. Therefore, the people's sovereignty is inalienable. The participation of all citizens in the legislature excludes decisions that would be detrimental to individuals. Denying representative democracy in favor of direct, Rousseau also advocated the use of other elements of the classical democracy - unanimous adoption of the most important decisions, replacement of some positions by lot. At the same time, he considered the separation of legislative and executive powers to be justified. Rousseau was a supporter of small property, evenly distributed among citizens, and a staunch opponent of factory production. In many ways, his views were utopian; "Developing" democracy never found a real embodiment. However, it served (and still serves) an important intellectual impetus for the search for a better political structure.

In the 20th century, the demarcation between protective and developing models within the framework of liberal concepts of democracy became more pronounced. This led to a revision of a number of ideas and values. Models of social liberalism became a theoretical offshoot from the concepts of developing democracy. In the works of J.M. Keynes, G.J. Lasky, D. Dewey, D. Rawls, L.T. Hobhouse, ideas about the role of the state in ensuring the public good, the need to expand state functions not only in protecting individual human rights and freedoms, but also in the fight against poverty, as well as in ensuring a decent standard of living for the majority of the population, clearly sounded. Armed with the social democratic ideas of justice and solidarity.

2). PLURALISTIC MODEL: The real creator of politics is not a person, not a people, but an interested group, since only in the group are the motives, value orientations of political activity formed. With the help of a group, an individual can express and politically defend his interests. The people cannot be a subject of politics, since they are a contradictory entity with a variety of groups competing in the struggle for power. There are several options for the concept of pluralistic democracy, but all of them, for all their specificity, have the following common features:

1) centerpiece democratic system policy recognizes the interests of the group, which guarantees their implementation, as well as the rights and freedom of the individual. The personality itself is pushed into the background, although its status as the primary subject of power is not denied;

2) social basis democratic power, its dynamics is the rivalry and balance of interests of different groups;

3) a significant expansion of the sphere of activity of the state, considering it as an arbiter, maintaining the balance of competing interests and ensuring the regulation of the whole society;

4) care for the formation democratic the politics of culture, which is viewed as a condition for the civilized nature of the struggle of interests and relatively painless conflict resolution

5) state support of socially disadvantaged groups and individuals in order to increase their life chances and strengthen social justice. Pluralistic democracy is very popular in the world, but it also has a number of shortcomings that prevent it from coming close to the ideal of direct democracy. Say, in Western countries with pluralistic democracy political governance is increasingly dependent on lobbying associations and bureaucracy and less and less on parliaments and parties.

The theory also appeared in the XX century. Its representatives were G. Laski, M. Duverger, R. Dahrendorf, R. Dahl and others.

One of the varieties of the pluralistic democracy model is the concept polyarchydeveloped by R. Dahl. The term "polyarchy" (literally - "the rule of many") itself appeared in England in 1609, but in social science literature it was practically not used until the early 50s. XX century. For the first time it was introduced into scientific circulation as a political science category in 1953 in the book of R. Dahl and G. Lindblom "Politics, Economics and Welfare". Initially, R. Dahl and G. Lindbohm analyzed polyarchy as a process by which ordinary citizens can exercise control over political leaders. On the basis of a thorough analysis of the history and theory of democracy, R. Dahl finally identified seven features of polyarchy:

1) the election of government bodies guaranteed by the constitution; elections are used to control government decisions;

2) regular and periodic holding of free and fair elections, in which the mechanism of coercion is excluded;

3) universal suffrage, when practically the entire adult population is endowed with the right to participate in elections;

4) the right to be elected to government bodies - almost the entire adult population will be endowed with this right, although the age requirement for the right to be elected may be higher than for the right to participate in elections;

5) freedom of expression - citizens have the right to freedom to express their opinion without fear of being punished on a wide range of political issues, including criticism of the authorities, government, regime, socio-economic system and the dominant ideology;

6) alternative information - citizens have the right to seek alternative sources of information, and, moreover, these alternative sources really exist and are protected by laws;

7) autonomy of associations - in order to exercise their diverse rights, including those listed above, citizens also have the right to create relatively independent associations and organizations, including independent political parties and interest groups. The concept of polyarchy is based on the fact that in the theory of democracy there will never be a final consensus on the highest values \u200b\u200band goals of democratic development, be it freedom, socio-economic equality, economic justice, etc. However, in the course of the movement from an abstract ideal to a practical reality, from the point of view of this concept, all of the above substantive problems ultimately run into questions of democratic procedures. Therefore, polyarchy is often viewed as a type of procedural-procedural democracy.

The concept of pluralistic democracy is closely related to the model community democracy, i.e. a model of democratic development in a number of states, distinguished by the multi-component nature of the social structure, where society is divided into many segments. This model, developed by the American political scientist of Dutch origin A. Leiphart, is distinguished by two main features: first, the vertical segmentation of their population into various linguistic, ethnic, racial or ideological communities; secondly, the institutionalization of the process of their interaction, which is carried out at the level of the elites of these communities

3) COLLECTIVIST MODEL.

Ideas: denial of the autonomy of the individual, the primacy of the people in the exercise of power, the absoluteness of the power of the majority. Usually, these ideas underlie radical democratic views. Democracy in this case is direct.

The withering away model: Karl Marx
Marx associated freedom with the cessation of economic exploitation, one of the main agents of which, in his opinion, is the state. Therefore, already in his early works, he called "genuine democracy " a stateless system in which management is giving way to self-regulation. This system can be achieved through the communist revolution, which destroys private property. However, immediately after such a revolution, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” will persist for some time, the main task of which is to create conditions for the self-abolition of the state. In his manifesto "The Civil War in France," Marx describes the institutional features of a dying state. These are feasts and elected bodies, which are based on popular assemblies (i.e., direct democracy). All officials are not only elected, but also recalled at any time. No separation of powers, no professional bureaucracy, no army or police.
It must be said that even the Marxists did not accept the Marxian model of the “withering away of the state”. Soviet power, designed by V.I. Lenin, with an eye on the "classic", in its real functioning acquired markedly deviating characteristics. This in itself, however, does not in any way testify against Marx as a theoretician. democracy.

The most characteristic expression of the collective democracy the theory of "socialist democracy ", the realization of which was not crowned with the success of the reality "socialist democracy" by its political institutions turned out to be a screen for covering the totalitarian structures of society, the emergence of a new ruling class - the nomenclature. The absolutization of the common will of the people and the resulting pressure of individual wills is a direct path to the "tyranny" of the majority, to the dictatorship of the political, which practically usurp the common will and replace it with their own bureaucratic. All famous dictators of the twentieth century. spoke on behalf of the people and, as it were, on their behalf. And yet, despite the failure of its practical attempts, the socialist concept took a step forward, linking the political democracy with social. We are talking about the popular in the 90s. idea democratic social state.

MORE (ALREADY SEPARATELY): theories of democracy differ depending on which form democracy prevails, - direct (plebiscite) or representative (representative).

Direct, or direct, democracy - This is a form of organization and management of social life in which the people are directly involved in the implementation of state-power functions (veche, referendums, elections based on universal suffrage). Representative bodies are reduced to a minimum and are completely controlled by citizens. Such were the Athenian democracyand people's self-government in ancient Novgorod and Polotsk.

Dignity of immediate democracy lies mainly in the fact that it ensures the fullest participation of the members of this community in the management of their social life; minimizes the alienation of the people from the institutions of power, strengthens the laziness of the latter, and finally blocks the path for the bureaucratization of government. However, significant disadvantages of direct democracy. This is its low efficiency and insufficient competence, since the most important decisions are made by a wide circle of non-professionals who are not controlled by anyone and the responsibility of non-professionals has not subsided; an increase in the danger of totalitarianism or populist authoritarianism due to the susceptibility of the masses to ideological influence and their tendency to equalization, infringement of freedom at the expense of equality; the inability to lie down for the majority of citizens to systematically participate in government without coercion, violation of personal freedom, since the bulk of the population does not want to voluntarily engage in politics.

Representative (representative) democracy presupposes representative government competent and responsible to the people and is the most common form. Representation, powers, formation of intermediate power structures, constitutionality, political parties, elections - these are the elements modern representative dem-tii.

Today the word "democracy" has gained unprecedented popularity. We are told about it from blue screens, on the radio, and, perhaps, it is impossible to find a single issue of a print publication where this word has not been encountered at least once. And in an extremely positive sense. One gets the impression that democracy is the same indisputable and universally recognized good as oxygen, water and world peace.

For example, the American Republican politician John McCain promises to forcefully introduce democracy in Russia, China and other countries. And our prominent Russian politicians, imitating their Western colleagues, promise to use democracy to build a bright future in our country, ensuring the prosperity of everyone and everything.

Okay McCain, but how do people, having a sufficiently high intellectual and educational level, and in other matters quite sane, succumb to general insanity and also begin to talk about some kind of democracy? How can you talk about what, in principle, does not exist and has never been?

Translated from Greek, democracy is the rule of the people (demos - "people", cratos - "power"). On the Internet, in particular on the Wikipedia website, a more expanded meaning of this concept is given, namely, “democracy is a political regime, which is based on the method of collective decision-making with equal influence of participants on the outcome of the process or at its essential stages ... governance requires the provision of a number of rights for each member of society. A number of values \u200b\u200bare associated with democracy: legality, equality, freedom, the right to self-determination, human rights, etc. "

But is this how everything happens in life? Is it possible that the country can really be governed by the people, making collective decisions having equal influence of the participants on the outcome of the process?

Myths about democracy

There is a fairly widespread belief that democracy was in Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece. But we can safely say that not only in these ancient states, but throughout its entire course, human history has not known a single state where the principle of democracy and democracy would be realized in practice. Citing such examples, one should not forget that the right to vote in these "democratic" states was not the people, but the so-called "citizens" - an elite stratum that constituted an insignificant percentage of the bulk of the entire population, and the same slaves, like women, did not have the right to participate in elections.

In this regard, the question arises, "What kind of democracy are we talking about?" Where is the ideal to which the Americans and others like them urge us? Where is this democracy?

Political technologies or who do the people "choose"?

The political basis of democracy is universal direct suffrage - an immoral and destructive phenomenon, because it develops political cynicism to incredible proportions, makes the people the object of dishonorable manipulations, which, with the modern development of technologies, are truly rampant.

The manipulation of mass consciousness, as well as the work of all kinds of political strategists, is carried out according to certain scenarios, using the developments of social psychology, which, if desired, is easy to read about on the same Internet. These technologies have long been thoroughly studied. But, unfortunately, the common man often has no time to read such literature, although for some reason he still finds time to watch "informative" shows like "House 2".

The voter is manipulated with the help of modern political technologies, and the voter does not know for whom he is casting his vote.

And it is no secret for a long time that not a single candidate has ever passed the elections "penniless." It is clear to everyone that behind each chosen candidate, be it a presidential or parliamentary candidate, there are certain structures that generously sponsor the election campaign, thereby ensuring the loyalty of the candidate in the future.

In other words, sponsors provide financial support for the election campaign of the candidate they are interested in, from which, with the help of the media, using a certain technology, they create a beautiful image-picture. And it is for her that the electorate subsequently votes.

It turns out that the so-called "democracy" is used by quite certain people, structures, business - communities, political associations, world structures, but certainly not by the people. The same people, by the way, are the main “PR-managers” of democracy, with the help of which they do their business, solve their political issues and satisfy their power ambitions. For these people, democracy is a brand that they impose on others in order to be able to receive various kinds of dividends.

And how can we talk about democratic elections while there are all sorts of political technologies comparable to the promotion of low-quality goods on the market through aggressive advertising and the creation of false brands?

What kind of democracy can we talk about at all, if the existence of organizations "conducting" candidates in elections for money, as well as the existence of political strategists, copywriters, image-makers who "make" a candidate is recognized as legal? Those. The aforementioned specialists on absolutely legal grounds are preparing grandiose manipulations of public consciousness. Moreover, the effectiveness of this team (or a group of teams) is determined by the number of candidates "conducted".

By the way, similar techniques are also used for the "promotion" of voiceless singers in show business. So it turns out that, in fact, you can make a president out of anyone, if you use political strategists competently and finance well.

In the history of modern Russia, one can give quite vivid examples of such stories where candidates successfully won elections thanks to well-run companies in which political strategists successfully managed to manipulate the electorate. Let's take, for example, the first president of the Russian Federation - Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin. If he could still win the first elections "on the crest of a wave" of people's hatred of the communists, then victory in the second remains a big question. By 1996, its rating among the population was several percent, and after a few months of massive promotion it was already about 40%. Or, for example, as a result of a "competent" pre-election campaign in Ukraine, a well-known banker was elected mayor of Kiev, whom the people of Kiev did not call otherwise than Lenya-Kosmos (in order to understand the scale of this personality, it is enough just to look for his annealing on YouTube). And there are a lot of such examples.

But what does the power of the people have to do with it? Where is democracy here ?! This is the most commonplace deception!

It is known that demand creates supply. This is the law of the market. In other words, as long as there are people who are ready to get to power in any way, there will be organizations ready to help them.

So it turns out that the "people's choice" wins, in which they invested more money, with whom the best "specialists" have worked, but democracy has nothing to do with it.

"Democracy" is just a SHOW

A prime example of these shows is the US presidential election. It was pretty funny to see

americans literally sobbing with happiness, learning about the victory of "their" black boyfriend Barack. In general, the American model of elections, which supposedly shows an example of democracy, can rather be imagined as a sweepstake game at the hippodrome, where all spectators cheer for their "horse" and sob with happiness when he comes to the finish line first. One cannot fail to note the spectacularity of American campaigns in which a lot of money is invested. But alas, this is just a show and a farce.

Indeed, by and large, not many participants in this production think about the seemingly simple questions "who sponsored his company?", "What is his election program?", "Who is behind him, in the end, is it?"

Here one cannot but recall the "transparency" of elections in "democratic" America. Suffice it to recall the "incidents" in the election of Bush Jr., where at first some results were officially announced, and two hours later they were completely different. There is little doubt that these were outright manipulations and manipulations.

Democracy is absurd

I would like to give a few simple analogies that clearly illustrate the absurdity of "democratic" elections: tell me, who would like to go on a sea cruise on a ship, where the captain was elected from the sailors by passengers by voting on the basis of personal sympathy or good looks? It is clear that no one would ever board such a ship.

Or, let's say, who will listen to an orchestra with a democratically chosen conductor who may not even know musical notation?

Who wants to fly a plane operated by a democratically elected pilot? Or maybe it is worth giving children the right to choose a homeroom teacher or headmaster? It is scary to imagine who the students will choose. Or is it better for patients to choose their own local doctor?

Alas, but realizing this, people easily believe that democracy is the best thing invented to govern nations. And they believe in this because they are too lazy to think and analyze what is happening around

On the viciousness of the system or how TNCs rule the world

Why do we need elections in principle? The answer is simple - to legitimize the elite. That is actually their whole task. It is known that a handful of people are trying to rule the world and countries. These people can exercise control through transnational corporations (TNCs). At the same time, the world elite is trying to keep the rest of the people under its control, but at the same time it promotes democracy, which supposedly reflects the interests of the population.

But let's see, if this is so, why is there not a single TNC, large holding or enterprise run by the people?

Note, for some reason, transnational corporations do not offer to choose their leadership democratically. And if there should be democracy everywhere, then why don't they extend it to themselves?

It's just that such champions of democracy disguise their manipulations under the false brand of democracy, which give them legitimacy and power. In fact, for them, democracy is nothing more than an attempt to hide their responsibility by pushing it onto the people, but remaining at the helm of the processes that they want to lead.

Are revolutions democratic?

The so-called "democratic achievements" are especially clearly manifested in the "color" revolutions, the technologies of which, by the way, are described in all textbooks of political technologies in great detail. An example is the “orange” revolution that took place in Ukraine, or the “rose revolution” in Georgia.

And it has long been noticed that as soon as the top management groups do not like the people's choice, the "democrats" immediately try to do everything possible to denigrate and remove the unpleasant candidate from the path, using all possible levers of pressure, for example, recognizing the elections as "non-transparent" , and absolutely do not care about the opinion of the people themselves on this issue. All color revolutions were carried out in this way. And it was not the majority who did them, but a pitiful handful of specially trained specialists who in a special way prepared themselves the support of a small but active part of the population. And if such "democratic" scenarios did not work, then the troops of "democratic" countries, together with private military companies (PMCs), virtually unhindered invaded the territory of a foreign sovereign country to establish the "most just form of government."

Well, where can you see the power of the people?

History

In fact, Democrats do not like to show their real "face", hiding behind lies and idle talk. At the same time, the gap between their words and deeds is simply staggering. You can recall one of the most impudent examples. This is a complete disregard of the results of the referendum by the "democrats", which was held throughout the USSR in 1991. The referendum clearly showed that the entire Soviet people wants to live as a single country. But, as we already know from modern history, this fact in no way prevented the three parties to the Belovezhskaya agreement from successfully destroying the country, spitting on the opinion of the people. At the same time, the "democrats" themselves recognized this violation of the will of the peoples of the USSR as legitimate and are not very worried about it to this day. Well, one more example of the triumph of "democracy" is the shooting of the parliament legally elected by the people in 1993. It was such a blatant democratic act that anyone can learn more about it. In short, without ANY legal basis, Yeltsin, allegedly a champion of "popular interests", simply dispersed the Supreme Soviet legally elected by the people, while flooding Moscow with the blood of its defenders. After that, a team that was very far from the interests of the people came to power, which in several years practically destroyed the country, barbarously privatizing it.

This is real democracy!

Whom do the people choose?

Now they are trying not to remember the elections imposed at the enterprises at the dawn of perestroika. Although at that time, when electing directors of small and large factories, factories, directors of institutes, heads of state farms with a wonderful slogan - more Leninism, they said that this was the crown of democracy and socialism. By the way, this was the first wave of destruction of the country, which began during the reign of Gorbachev, disguised as democracy, which the people, as we know, never received.

But why, then, it was not possible to put things right with the help of the elections? The answer is simple - the people chose not the best leaders. Indeed, in order to understand which leader is better to choose, one must have a broad strategic view, understand the complexity of the enterprise's functioning. The highest leader can always appoint the lower one, because the higher sees everything more globally, and the lower ones can never appoint a higher one - they will not make the right choice anyway. They simply do not represent globally what functions and how their protégé should perform.

As for the election of enterprise managers at the dawn of perestroika, it was the populists who chose the leaders as the leaders, those who promised more, possessing a certain charisma, and were less demanding. Thus, worthy professional leaders were replaced by incompetent ones, because they were easier to manipulate. In fact, this was a false-democratic revolution. By the way, the same thing happened after the 1917 revolution, when the populist six came to power on the wave of the revolution. Incompetent managers ran factories, schools, etc. And although Soviet propaganda insisted on all corners that they did it well, in fact, until the 1930s, everything was generally bad. Only by the 1930s new specialists “grew up” who could already solve the problems of industrialization and raise the country ...

Democracy is a utopia

The very idea of \u200b\u200bcollective democratic rule of the people is fundamentally wrong, not only because the people cannot choose the right leader for themselves, as we talked about above. An even bigger problem is that the people, in principle, cannot rule collectively. After all, even if ten housewives cannot cook the same dish together, because everyone will see the final product in their own way, try to realize their ambitions. They can simply quarrel and not really do anything. Can you imagine millions of people? How can they manage? Only a competent leader can save the day. And again there will be no talk about the power of the people.

Democracy is not a viable political system. Moreover, she was originally stillborn. But this corpse was treated cosmetically, tinted with grease and promoted as the healthiest and smartest. And everyone believes that this greased corpse is the standard of health. The trick of the method is that the organizer (organizers) of this game for suckers set the rules, carry out manipulations, as a result, supposedly with popular and wise support, a candidate appears, who in most cases then, to the sincere surprise of those who chose him, begins to care not about their interests, but about the interests of the organizer who invested money, resources, forces and influence in fooling the electorate.

"Choice" of the people

Perhaps, now it is difficult to say that in "democratic" countries something is decided by the people. Otherwise, in this case, how to explain the increase in the retirement age in the same Europe (we are talking about France and Germany)? Is it really the people who decided to work for the good of the Fatherland, postponing the retirement period for themselves? Alas, this was not decided by the people, who were against it, as loudly protested in the streets. In Russia, you can also give many examples of very "democratic decisions", for example, the transfer of part of the territory of Russia together with several Dagestan villages to Azerbaijan (naturally, this was not advertised anywhere). And one cannot fail to mention the stronghold of modern democracy - the United States, where in fact the people do not decide anything: it is unlikely that a poll was conducted there on the topic "Bomb Libya or not."

In connection with all this, the question arises - who, under this “power of the people”, determines what the people will decide and what not?

After all, if we are talking about democracy, then it turns out that it is the people who should dispose of resources, oil, gas, etc. Does he manage them? Do people raise prices for housing and communal services? Setting up intermediary firms to launder public money? Is it people who make food and gasoline rise in price? It is he who gives his territories to China, Azerbaijan, Iceland? People poison their fields with GMO plants? The people start wars? The people scoff at themselves, organizing extortions in schools and universities? Are these people selling land and mineral resources for a pittance? For some reason, people are not asked how much money should be allocated for health care, and how much for education. As a result, it turns out that it is the people who are to blame for the decline of industry and agriculture, for the collapse of the education and health care systems. Why are all of the above issues not being resolved in a democratic way? Because the people are required to go to the polling station every 4 years and put a piece of paper with their own tick in the ballot box.

According to the logic of things - if the people elect their president, they have the right to decide these issues too, right?

Or maybe you should include questions about the above in your voting ballot and publish the results? Then it will be democratic, not in false words, but in deeds.

But no one will do such democratic things, referring, as usual, to the lack of money. At the same time, money was found for absolutely unnecessary things in the form of the last census.

The psychology of a temporary ruler

How long does it take to practice for the pilot to be entrusted with the helm on a passenger plane? At least 10 years. It takes even longer to become a captain on a cruise ship. They study for a doctor for 7-9 years, and for a zootechnician and food technologist - 5.

But to become the president of a country, you do not need to study and have any experience. Paradox? Alas. But in our country, every 4 years some person is elected who becomes the president of a superpower. During these 4 years, he must learn everything, but first of all - to rule the country. Rave? Not at all. It takes at least 2 years to assemble just one team of professionals. And here, like in a war - there is no time, because you will not have time to look back - new elections are already on the way. This means that the system of democratic elections itself is already flawed.

Metaphorically speaking, how can you, for example, go on a bus, where passengers will choose a new driver every 20 minutes? Moreover, each driver chooses the road himself. Nobody thinks about it. But managing a country is much more difficult than a ship, plane or bus. The president has a lot to learn, and his team takes a lot of time to figure out what's going on and start acting wisely. But how can they learn anything as temporary rulers? So it turns out that we choose "Kalifa for an hour."

And at this time we are being told from all sides that democracy is the best thing that mankind has invented. Nonsense! That is why the president and his team cannot concentrate on training due to lack of time, they cannot do anything worthwhile, even simply because a person cannot be realized as a professional in such a short term of office. If, for example, the same official, while building a cottage, changes the foreman every 3 days, he will never be able to finish building his “house of his dreams”. And in our state, every 4 years a leader changes, who does not have time, and does not try to do something for the country. And all this is considered absolutely normal.

Therefore, all that remains for an official is to steal. This is the psychology of a temporary ruler, i.e. take as much as possible to have time for everything. This irrepressible desire to plunder, by the way, is another derivative of the democratic system.

Unfortunately, later it will even be difficult to determine who destroyed what, because everyone will nod at their predecessor.

conclusions

Who is making decisions now? Dont clear. By and large, the people do not even know who makes what decisions. Even during the non-democratic USSR, decisions were made collectively by the Politburo. But everyone knew the members of the Politburo. And now it is not at all clear who decides the most important issues for the country. The president subscribes to everything, but who participates in these discussions? Or does it turn out that the democratically elected president, it turns out, has monarchical power? Is this called democracy? What kind of democracy can we talk about if we, in the so-called democratic way, give such absolute power not to the monarch, but to a certain image that political strategists have made. Indeed, it really turns out that we vote for a certain image, a picture created for us. But we do not even understand and do not imagine what kind of person he really is. And if earlier in Greece and Athens, although there was no democracy, everyone knew personally who they were voting for. And now we are voting simply for the virtual image, endowing it with the absolute power of the head of a superpower.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, most of the people are passive, i.e. does not like to read political reviews, and generally has little interest in politics, thus becoming an easy prey for political strategists. And people sometimes even go to the polls, thinking that something depends on their choice.

And the inevitable consequence of the practical application of the principles of democracy in Russia was the weakening of the foundations of a strong, traditional social structure, the destruction of its spiritual and religious supports, and the disintegration of the national state.

Democracy is nothing more than a myth, a beautiful invention, a lie that can be used to govern entire states. Call it whatever you like: the power of world Freemasonry or international capital, multinational corporations or the cosmopolitan elite ...

But this is not the rule of the people. This is not a democracy

It's nice to see the young people are not indifferent to this topic. What we are witnessing now is actually the development of civilization. in a spiral, to a higher level. ahead, autocracy is possible, of course, of the 21st century, without any "shadows of the past." I will not develop ideas on the topic yet, I will say that the ideas of autocracy and patriotism can develop together complementing each other.

jinn, age: 61/10/02/2016

What the author writes about is clear and quite logical. Another thing remains unclear - what in return? Here Igor is absolutely right - Aristotle offers a kind of comparison of regimes, being a realist of his time - the author talks about the dangers of democracy. Alas, our planet is not ideal, which means that there are no ideal recipes and cannot be. Ideal, truth - this is to the absolute, to God, for example. Yes, it is deplorable that our people are not interested in politics, it is deplorable that our society is far from civil, it is deplorable that we are used to enduring to the last, and then rebelling so that blood flows like a stream (although in this, of course, we are not alone). Yes, democracy in its purest form is a utopia, and therefore does not exist. But nothing exists in its pure form. No need to give strange examples about a bus driver - let him be driven by a professional, but let this professional be chosen by a passenger at least for formal reasons - driving experience, trouble-free driving, etc. etc. By the way, the entire legal system is based on this (thievish, bad, but it exists) - no one chooses to pay him a fine or not if he violated traffic rules. As for TNCs, Masons and others - no one said that a miracle would happen if the dictator Mason, but if people begin to feel a sharp drop in the standard of living - this, whatever one may say, will affect the ratings - even if the elections are fictitious, the authorities - Anyone will monitor the situation, if it is not an enemy to itself, and therefore draw conclusions, because the water will find a hole. And besides, the author extremely underestimates people, believing that everyone buys with the noodles that are more than distributed to the people. Democracy makes it possible to manage certain processes with the help of public opinion, provided that the society is civil - I hope that someday our society will also become such. About presidents, etc. - do not underestimate people who independently have the right and strength to choose a candidate who is able to lead their country according to the course they have proposed, or later choose another if expectations are not met

Sniper, age: 35/04/2015

I liked the article. It would be great to see "reviews" of other political regimes. And then choose the best one. Thank you.

Igor, age: 26 / 28.05.2013

In general, this is a good article, readable, but in general, there is a feeling of some kind of understatement or something. the very concept of "democracy" has been expanded correctly, with one amendment. demo cratia is really the rule of the people. only WHAT people - is somehow modestly silent. Mikhail Igorevich, are you of the opinion that Orthodoxy is good? then what about the fact that the church in Russia was the largest feudal lord, and the serfs were frightened by selling them to the monastery? what about today's money-grubbing priests?

Snake, age: 40 / 03/31/2013

Vyacheslav, age: 54 / 01/25/2013

Hello. From a legal point of view, not to undermine any government of any "developed" country. Everything is legal and everything is legitimate. It cannot be argued that there is some kind of world community that controls us 100%, because their names, and their capital, and leverage, and where is the proof? Nothing really can be found. But the tendencies of the development of the world cannot be hidden. And for example, an obvious unnaturalness like homosexuality, which no one supports except for a handful of people, for some reason the US President declared the right trend. This says a lot already. All the same, I think that the most important quality of a ruler is not some of his technical skills, like a pilot or an admiral, but loyalty. Loyalty to your people and loyalty to your country. Love for your people and your country. And here democratic elections turn into absurdity. Because how can you choose the right person from all this heap of candidates. After all, the candidates go to power definitely not from the feeling of such a higher burden of their fate to rule the people. It is clear that they go to power precisely for the sake of power, well, why deceive yourself, because this is how it is, everyone knows this. So this is how you can give power to someone who compromises his loyalty to the country in advance. This is a huge disadvantage of democracy. Further, if power really belongs to all the people of the country, then laws will be written on the basis of the whims of these people. And the citizens will not deceive ourselves, well, what is the overwhelming majority of the people guided by, well, of course, ordinary people want "bread and circuses". And what will happen if this is done legally. Such a society will be mired in debauchery the very next day and will die by itself from rot. This was clearly seen in the example of Ancient Rome. So it turns out in a democracy two options: Either the country is governed by a government that came there in advance in order to gain power, which means that they are initially selfish and will gladly sell the country to anyone who can afford it, thereby killing the sovereignty and, as a rule, the people of this country, which we see from examples of third world democracies. Or, in a democracy, power really belongs to the people, which is partly in the countries of Europe and the United States, and where we see permitted prostitution, terribly low fertility, migrants who will replace the indigenous population, propaganda of homosexuality and other things that are killing the nations of these countries. The bottom line is that democracy is suicide. My opinion and not necessarily correct

Andrey Yusupov, age: 49 / 16.12.2012

One cannot but agree with the opinion of the author. The articles are truthful and real. But it really is not clear how to change this regime of government. Our Russian people are scattered and the existing structures of power have tried to achieve this. It turns out that we still need a human leader who was not afraid of change and had an inner conviction about utopia and democracy. It is a pity for our long-suffering people, but even with the information in mind about the falsity of the existing democracy, changes will not take place soon. Probably this process is long and articles like yours lead to reflections and I really want to believe that the truth and truth will triumph.

Sly Hedgehog, age: 32 / 07.28.2012

Democracy, even with a superficial analysis, always leaves a bunch of dots ... Moreover, in diverse directions. This is skillfully used by those in power (grandmothers). It's sad.

Alexey Babkov, age: 45 / 13.07.2012

Undoubtedly, the author demonstrated a deep understanding of the essence of what is happening. Now let's say that the one who read this article thought about it and decided for himself that he wants to change the situation for the better, wants to do something for the common good. Next, he is faced with the question of where to get a guide that he could follow and be sure of the correctness of this guide? That is, leadership is needed specifically on this issue (state structure), true leadership (not contradicting logic at least) and having historical examples of implementation in practice (to strengthen the conviction of the truth, among other things). Here I have a question for the distinguished author of this article - where do you see such a guide, according to which initiative people could start their way to improve society and were ready to endure difficulties along the way? Thank you in advance for your response. p.s .: The ability to read and think over what has been read is an amazing gift that we, unfortunately, very often neglect.

Mansur, age: 20/07/2012

Yes, the United States is a super-presidential republic, in which the head of state has much more powers. than his foreign colleagues. But the USA is a democratic country. In this country, a judge can prosecute anyone, including the president.

galatea, age: 03/12/2012

Noctua, would you rather not talk about the US electoral system, which you represent by ordinary banal propaganda, but read books? to at least understand a little about what you write. If you google a little, you can immediately find and read this page http://www.usinfo.ru/izbirat.htm If you understand what is written there, then questions about American democracy will disappear by themselves. This is what my article is about, which I advise you to reread carefully and objectively again. Or at least reread the article carefully.

Mikhail Khasminsky, age: 41 / 01.22.2012

How can you talk about democracy on the example of Russia? Even I understand that our country has an authoritarian regime (I'm 14 years old). The author writes that the elections in the United States are just a show, although any event so important for the country always attracts attention. In the United States, every vote is important for the victory of the president, the voting order is carefully monitored, in Russia people do not go to vote, knowing that their vote will not change anything. In civilized democratic countries, no one manipulates the people, because the people know their rights from childhood. Does the author really believe that only the appearance of the ruler is important for people?

Noctua, age: 01/14/2012

Natalia N.Yu, I do not quite understand what the quotes you quoted have to do with the content of the article, which says that democracy is a well-publicized invention. But since you are citing quotes that any (!) Power (including bastards) is from God, then let me cite some other quotes in which the holy fathers talk about the very deceitful essence of "democracy". And of course they don't consider it from God. Here are these quotes from St. Righteous. John of Kronstadt: "The rule of many is pernicious:" Let the Tsar be one "- says the ancient sage ... Democracy supporters cherish the lust for constitutional or republican government in Russia, but they do not understand the history and character of the Russian people ... Shut up, you dreamy constitutionalists and parliamentarians! from me, Satan ... ”“ Perhaps it is not superfluous to test this new wisdom on the apostle's touchstone? Is she clean? - No. She does not speak at all about reverence for God ... Is she peaceful? - No. She lives and breathes strife not only between her followers and non-followers, but also among her followers. Are you meek? - No. Arrogant and daring. Are you benevolent? - No. Rebellious. Filled with mercy and good fruit? - No: cruel and bloodthirsty. Is it unclear? - On the contrary, it did nothing except doubt, suspicion, criticism and unreliability. Is it unhypocritical? - She changes disguise after disguise, depending on which, when it is better to deceive. Therefore, what kind of wisdom is this? - Obvious is not the one from above. What is it? I won't take it upon myself to give her a name. For your insight and impartiality, I provide a choice from the names suggested by the Apostle: earthly, soulful, demonic (James 3:15) ... They do not like the ancient state building based on the blessing and law of God; they think it is much better to erect the edifice of human society in a new taste, on the sand of popular opinions, and to support it with storms of endless strife ... They ascribe tsarist and autocratic power to the people, that is, hands or feet are given the position of head; their people reign by rebellions, sedition, robberies, robberies, burnings ... Democracy is in hell, and in heaven is the Kingdom ”. Saint Philaret of Moscow: "To favor democracy is consequently to be unfavorable to Russia, which is the main obstacle to democracy ..." system, one or another order of life can facilitate or hinder the work of salvation. Such work is needed to organize the entire Russian people into a single family, firmly and consciously standing for its holy, national, historical heritage - the Christian faith and the autocratic Tsar. It is necessary to stubbornly and diligently get rid of all parties, and preserve the people precisely as a people alien to partisanship ... There is division, there is disagreement, there is struggle, there is no order there, and the whole must disintegrate. And as soon as there are parties among the people, so will the decay of the people ... It is necessary to discard any constitutional and party delirium that only weakens us as a state and leads us to division, and through this, to the rule of enemies. Our native primordial Tsarist Autocracy must be restored, resting firmly on the closest spiritual connection between the Tsar and the people ... It's not a struggle between two regimes of government, but a struggle between faith and unbelief, between Christianity and anti-Christianity. " Metropolitan Pitirim of Petrograd: “Democracy (ie, democracy - AT) is always fatal ... A pastor is responsible before God, but democracy is always irresponsible and is a sin, a rebellion against Divine institutions.” Saint Vladimir of Kiev: “The monarch is dedicated to power by God - the president receives power from the pride of the people; the monarch is strong in keeping the commandments of God, the president is in power by pleasing the crowd; The monarch leads the faithful to God, the president removes those who chose him from God. "

Mikhail Khasminsky, age: 42 / 31.12.2011

As a weak person and not very understanding in politics, I find answers to many difficult questions for me on the site "John the Healer of the Spirit". There are no questionable sources, only quotes from the Bible and the holy fathers. And not very long ago I saw the answers that I want to write specifically for this article. "Let every soul be submissive to the highest authorities, for there is no power not from God." (Rom. 13: 1). "1) What do they do wrong, what to you? Do your own thing and act according to your office. For their unrighteousness, they will answer the righteous God, who examines their deeds and tests their intentions. For they, being servants of His kingdom, did not judge justly, did not kept the law and did not act according to the will of God, etc. (Wis. 6: 3-4 et seq.) 2) What is not contrary to the law of God they command, listen and obey, but otherwise do not listen, since you must obey God more, than men (Acts 5:29). So did the saints martyrs. The wicked authorities commanded them to dig the earth, they dug, carry stones, carried them; go to prison and exile, go; bow their heads under the sword, bow them; they took away their property, gave it away , - and so on, it is not contrary to the law of God, they ordered to do, they did. They commanded to renounce Christ and other godly things to do, they did not listen. So you do. Your master tells you to do all the work, do; orders you to do untruths, offend, steal, lie and so on - do not listen. about execution, do not be afraid, for it is more fitting to fear God, who has the power to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna, than a man who kills only the body, but cannot kill the soul (Matt. 10, 28). Deprives of life - do not resist, for he who sacrifices his life for the truth in the coming century will find it. "(Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk (1724-1783))" There is no power not from God. During his tenure at the see, Saint Nonnus experienced two changes of power. He met both the pagan ruler and the Orthodox ruler alike with a cross and a greeting word. But he greeted the pagan as a scourge in the hand of God, and the Orthodox as the mercy and blessing of God. Don't forget this. The world at all times is ruled by the Providence of God, and will we pronounce judgment on it? "Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) (1910-2006)

Natalia N.Yu. , age: 34 / 05.12.2011

Lumen, age: 99 / 11/10/2011

Basically - I agree. "But how can they learn something, being interim rulers? So it turns out that we choose 'Caliph for an hour'." Nowhere have we seen such a picture: the head (of a city, village, district ...) CHANGES constantly, and his deputy WORKS in this position constantly. Well, someone still needs to know how to manage! And someone needs to steal (steal and share with their superiors) from the demos multiple.

furygide, age: 51/01/2011

Thanks to the author for this article! And why do many people in our country fail to notice SO obvious things !? Why are they allowed to plunder our country? To kill our medicine, education, the institution of the family ... Yes, because they imposed on us that this is OUR choice, that this is OUR president, that this is OUR country. It seems to me that this is not the main illusion imposed by someone on us. And maybe our life has not belonged to us for a long time ... No, it's better not to think about it ...

Sergey, age: 17 / 31.10.2011

There will always be leaders, and there will always be followers ... The law of nature.

Dimitri, age: 14 / 23.10.2011

See also on this topic:

Religious roots of liberalism ( Israel Shamir)
Why did Biden thank the Jews for being good at brainwashing Americans ( Elena Svitneva)