Polyarchy

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As polyarchy ( old Greek πολυαρχία polyarchía 'multiple rule', from πολύς polýs 'a lot' and ἄρχειν árchein 'rule') is a form of rule in political science in which many centers of political power coexist. Robert Alan Dahl has modified this traditional meaning to the extent that he describes an imperfect approximation to a democratic ideal type , which is characteristic of the constitutional reality in modern representative democracies .

concept

According to Dahl, ideal-typical democracies are characterized by five system features: targeted, effective participation , equal electoral rights and equality of votes, especially at crucial voting levels , enlightened level of knowledge , final control of the political agenda by the people and inclusion of all adult citizens entitled to vote .

In contrast, most of the real democracies turned out to be nothing more than a polyarchy. According to Dahl, the core variables of such polyarchic democracies are, on the one hand, the possibility of all citizens to participate politically and, on the other hand, free competition for political power . These basic principles would be guaranteed by freedom of expression , information and freedom of the press , freedom of organization and association to form political parties and interest groups , the right to vote , the right to stand for public office , the right of political leaders to solicit support, especially in elections , free and fair Elections and institutions that make government policy dependent on voter votes and other expressions of citizen preferences .

The concept of democracy in transition research - that branch of comparative government theory that deals with the system transformation from autocracies to democracies - is largely based on the procedural-institutional concept of democracy from the point of view of Dahl's concept of polyarchy.

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Polyarchy  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Weiß: Polyarchy. In: Dieter Nohlen , Rainer-Olaf Schultze (Hrsg.): Lexicon of political science. Theories, methods, terms. Vol. 2 (N − Z). 3. Edition. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-54117-8 , pp. 778-779.
  2. ↑ Robert A. Dahl: Preliminary stages to the democracy theory. Mohr, Tübingen 1976, ISBN 3-16-536791-4 , pp. 59-84.