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A curious distinction. To me it appears as if the US is a constitutional democratic republic and an indirect democracy. The two terms are not in opposition.
by arjie 13y ago
A curious distinction. To me it appears as if the US is a constitutional democratic republic and an indirect democracy. The two terms are not in opposition.
- rosser 13y agoThe point of making the distinction is to emphasize where the power actually lies.
- alexqgb 13y agoThere is no "the power" in a system of divided government. That's the whole point of a system of divided government. Power is distributed. The people have some, their representatives have some, the judiciary has some, the executive has some, the press has some, etc. Ideally, the distribution is designed in a way that maintains a stable set of checks and balances between the various centers. More to the point, "Democracy" has a fairly broad meaning, and encompasses a range of systems and traditions. You'd have to be exceedingly pedantic to insist that using it to describe any form aside from a pure, direct democracy is a misuse of language.
- baddox 13y agoAnyone can argue all day over the semantics of "where the power actually lies." I would say that it lies in the hands of people who frequently use physical weapons to harm and threaten to harm others, which for the most part is government.
- jetti 13y agoThe CIA World Factbook[1] calls it a "constitution-based federal republic" but also adds that it has "strong democratic tradition". [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...