Напиши монолог на английском на тему "What is understood by the word “democracy”? Three types of democracy, weak and strong points of each type." 
опираясь на тексты которые я скинула ниже 
Democracy is a powerful system for social and political organization, which has spread around the world and takes many different forms. 
Actually any democratic state assumes having a system, in which citizens freely make political decisions by majority rule. However, rule by the majority is not democratic: no one would call a system fair if 51 per cent of the population are permitted to oppress the remaining 49 per cent in the name of the majority. In a democratic society majority rule must be together with guarantees of individual or human rights that serve to protect the rights of minorities (ethnic, political, religious). 
Democracy is more than a set of constitutional rules and procedures that determine how a government functions. Democracy includes not only government but also different institutions, political parties, organizations. This diversity is called pluralism, and it means that the many organized groups and institutions in a democratic society do not depend on government for their existence, legitimacy, authority. 
These groups represent the interests of their members in many ways. They support candidates for public office, debate issues, try to influence political decisions. With the help of such groups individuals have an avenue for participation both in government and in their own communities. The examples of such organizations are charitable, environmental groups, churches, business associations and labour unions. 

Democracy is a word used to describe at least three political systems. In one system the government is said to be democratic if its decisions serve the 'true interests ' of the people whether or not those people directly affect the making of those decisions. It is by using this definition of democracy that various authoritarian regimes – China, Cuba, and certain European, Asian, and Latin American dictatorships – have been able to claim that they were “democratic”. Presidents of the now-defunct Soviet Union, for example, used to claim that they operated on the principle of democratic centralism. Democracy consisted in the fact that the highest body of the Party was its congress to which delegates were elected by local organization. In theory at least, therefore, although party members were bound to carry out a policy once it had been adopted, there was room for democratic input in the pre-congress discussion and elections. In practice, criticism of party leaders under any circumstances was considered disloyal and grounds for expulsion. Thus, the true interests of the masses were discovered through discussion within the Communist party and then decisions were made under central leadership to serve those interests. The collapse of the Soviet Union occurred in part because many average Russians doubted that the Communist party knew or would act in support of the people's true interests. 
Second, the term democracy is used to describe those regimes that come as close as possible to Aristotle's definition – the “rule of the many”. A government is democratic if all, or most, of its citizens participate directly in either holding office or making policy. This is often called direct or participatory democracy. In Aristitle's time – Greece in the 4th century B.C. - such a government was possible. The Greek city-state, or polis, was quite small, and within it citizenship was extended to all free adult male property holders. (Slaves, women, minors, and those without property were excluded from participation in government.) in more recent times the New England town meeting approximates the Aristotelian ideal. In such a meeting the adult citizens of a community gather once or twice a year to vote directly on all major issues and expenditures of the town. As towns have become larger and issues more complicated, many town governments have abandoned the pure town meeting (in which a larger number of elected representatives, perhaps two or three hundred, meet to vote on town affairs) or representative government (in which a small number of elected city councillors make decisions). 
The third definition of democracy is the principle of governance of most nations that are called democratic. It was most concisely stated by economist Joseph Schumpeter :” The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individual (that's leaders) acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote.” Sometimes the method is called approvingly representative democracy (Representative democracy is any system of government in which leaders are authorised to make decisions by winning a competitive struggle for the popular vote.); at other times it is referred to, disapprovingly, as the elitist theory of democracy. It is justified to be one or both of two arguments: first, it is impractical, owing to limits of time, information, energy, interest, and expertise, for the people to decide on public policy, but it is not impractical to expect them to make reasonable choices among competing leadership groups. Second, some people believe that direct democracy is likely to lead to bad decisions because people often decide large issues on the basis of fleeting passions and in response to popular demagogues. This fear of direct democracy persists today, as can be seen from the statements of those who do not like what the voters have decided. For example, politicians who favored Proposition 13, the referendum measure that in 1978 sharply cut property taxes in California, spoke approvingly of the “will of the people”. Politicians who disliked Proposition 13 spoke disdainfully of 
“mass hysteria”. 
 
The word democracy comes from the Greek words of “démos” which means “people” and “krátos” which means “power” or “rule”, So democracy basically means “the rule of the people.”
Democracy first started as a direct democracy, in Greek cities, notably Ancient Athens, where people came together to speak about their concerns and opinions, in front of rulers of the city state, and directly voted on new rules and laws. Here is considered as the birthplace of democracy .So, For the very first time, decisions were made by the people instead of rulers... but sadly, the ancient greeks did not see all people equally. Slaves, women, children and the people who did not have a land weren’t allowed to vote. This is what we call a “flawed” democracy today. After the Greeks lost their power and influence in the first century AD, their early forms of democracy were also fading away until the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, which prevented the King of England to do whatever he wanted and said that even the King had to follow the country’s rules and laws which were written in the constitution. Today, most democracies are indirect or representative which means that you can’t vote for a new law yourself, but you can vote for people who then become law makers and present your interests. But democracy isn’t just about voting; it’s about everything to protect the best interests of the people, no matter what is their race, gender, political opinion, or religion. These interests can be human rights, quality of life, infrastructure and many more.Modern democracies divide powers into three different branches : the legislative (the people who make law), the executive (the people who make sure that you obey the law), and the judiciary (who judge you if you commit a crime). These three are independent and work following the process « checks and balances » which means all the work must be clear and fair. And, very important, the people who have power also must follow the law and not exceed their authority.In addition, a democratic government must work in a way that reflects the wish /feeling/desire and values of the society that it governs—this is also known as the « General Will », which is a concept developed by the famous Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. One of the problems of democratic voting is that the biggest groups of people always have the most power and that’s why a good democracy also has laws to protect the rights of its smaller and weaker groups. A democracy where the majority chooses to separate, set apart, expel or injure its minority is not a functioning democracy! So, with those mentioned above, what do you think now about democracy? Winston Churchill once said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Do you agree?


The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index seeks to measure the health of democracy in pretty much all the countries around the world. It breaks this down into five categories: the electoral process, the functioning of government, civil liberties, political participation, and political culture. The scores range from Norway, which we rate as the most democratic country on earth, all the way down to North Korea a hereditary communist monarchy, which is by far the least. Although the world has obviously gotten a lot more democratic over the past century and the past thirty years since the end of the Cold War, since the EIU started measuring it which was in 2006 things appear to have regressed somewhat. Today, roughly half the world's people live in some form of democracy but by our rather strict measurements only about 5% live in what we call a full democracy, and a good third also live in solid authoritarian regimes with a big portion of that in China. One of the less gloomy findings is the political participation seems to be up - this is probably related to a widespread feeling in a lot of countries that democracy is under threat. The threats of fake news subversion by foreign powers such as Russia and the rise of authoritarian leaders from Hungary to Poland to all kinds of places means that people can't take democracy for granted anymore, and so you see a lot more people demonstrating in the streets, getting out to vote and organizing online.

The most improved indicator was to do with women's participation in politics. Partly that reflects a genuine improvement in the status of women and the increased likelihood that voters are prepared to vote for them. Alas it also represents a certain amount of gaming the system - particularly by authoritarian regimes. Rwanda for example has a majority female parliament which sounds great until you realize that the parliament has no power whatsoever and the president is very much male. It might seem like a paradox that even as democracy retreats around the world political participation has gone up but it's not - it's a reaction against the fact that more and more people are aware that they are in danger of losing some of their democratic freedoms and they're not prepared to take that lying down. They're getting out there, they're voting more, they're organizing online, and sometimes they're demonstrating in the streets

The biggest election in 2019 will be in India. As always it will be the biggest election held anywhere, ever. The fact that we don't know who's going to win - maybe the incumbent party, maybe the opposition, give you a sense that it really will represent roughly the will of a billion people. Another big one to watch is Nigeria that will be incredibly corrupt and quite a few people will get killed - but it's worth remembering that only a couple of decades ago in Nigeria was the dictatorship. That's not true anymore and despite the absence of a dictator, Nigeria has held together despite all predictions. It's another fine example in fact of how democracy does have the ability to hold  disparate countries together because it reflects the will of the actual voters.

A final big election to watch is for the European Parliament. Here we don't  even know which countries are going to participate because we don't know whether Britain's going to be part of it or not so all eyes are going to be watching. Will the European Union hold together? Will the rise of the populist and the Nationalists continue? And my guess is that actually they've peaked and this could be the start of their retreat.