Conceptual Elucidation of the Core Ideal Attributes of Democracy: An Overview

Abstract

Democracy has become a wide system of government worldwide, especially in the twentieth century, where technology has been merged into the democratic ethos, promoting electronic voting and campaigns, thereby increasing public participation in government. However, in the developing world, the practical aspect of democracy is far away from its ideal features. In order to reinvigorate what democracy ought to be, this article searched for the key attributes of democracy on the web of science (WoS) database and Google search engine in order to have a wide range of results for the content analysis. These basic attributes of democracy, such as popular sovereignty, equality, freedom, pluralism, legality, and legitimacy were then discussed and analyzed after obtaining their levels in some selected countries. The information from the appropriate global indices for the randomly chosen countries was displayed in chart models. The results showed that democracy is a well-practiced in industrialized countries, but the opposite is true in developing countries. This shows the need to promote and standardize democratic values more globally.

Keywords

• Democracy
• Sovereignty
• Equality
• Freedom
• Pluralism
• Legalism

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