Category: Good government
Democratic government means that people decide who they want as their representatives, and hopefully how those representatives govern the country, but how do we guarantee that?
- 1.Good government
- Democratic government means that people decide who they want as their representatives, and hopefully how those representatives govern the country.
- 2.The law
- The law is many things, depending upon the level you look at it.
- 3.Laws
- Laws are rules that regulate our behaviour by placing limits on what we can do.
- 4.Countries and land
- Countries are a human construct for the management of people and their interactions. They only exist because of a consensus of their inhabitants and the governments of other countries.
- 5.Problems within democracies
- Before defining a democratic structure, the problems with current implementations need to be identified.
- 6.Principles for a democracy
- Before laying down a constitutional structure, some basic guiding principles need to be enumerated.
- 7.The Constitution
- The constitution defines the basic premises upon which a society is based. It needs to be general enough to allow society to evolve without unnecessarilly constraining it.
- 8.Federal government
- The federal government looks after the country as a whole. It aims to provide consistency of government to all citizens, and a consistent face to other countries.
- 9.Local government
- Local government determines the logistics of how federal services are delivered to the local community.
- 10.Judiciary and courts
- The judiciary provides the main feedback path in democracies as to whether laws are workable in practice, by using the courts as the venue where the law is applied in an attempt to modify behaviour.
- 11.Bureaucracy
- The bureaucracy carries out the functions of government.
- 12.Fourth estate
- The press has been known as the fourth estate, supposedly charged with holding truth to power, but which we now know is a delusion. However, there is a true fourth estate and that is fact-checkers.
- 13.Armed forces
- The armed forces protect the nation from forces that would seek to prevent operation of the constitution.
- 14.Police
- Police are representatives of the law within the nation.
- 15.Elections
- Elections provide an opportunity for citizens to decide who will represent them. To prevent manipulation and undue influence by influential people and groups, elections need to be carefully regulated.
- 16.Health of citizens
- In a democracy, governments have a duty of care to their citizens, including their health.
- 17.Support from technology
- As technology improves the ability to directly vote securely in real time, many situations that have required voting by representatives could be decided by direct voting.
- 18.A new approach to education
- Most people's education is based around a progressive accumulation of large amounts of knowledge and skills, but is that good enough to keep up with the plethora of knowledge that is presented to us?
- 19.The Conscience Party
- Having seen that parties are basically working against the aims of democracy, how do we get to change democracy when it is governed by parties that don't want to give up their power?