Talk:Constitutional democracy

message: *  According to the online CIA factbook, there are only 4 constitutional democracies:  Ghana, Panama, Sierra Leone, and Suriname.  However, there appears to be some debate as to the difference between a constitutional democracy, and a federal republic, as the United State and France would be more usually considered.  I urge my fellow wikipedians to be careful when constructing this article, as there is a lot of disputed info out there. Interestingly enough, although the CIA factbook lists these as the only constitiutional democracies, their names are Republic of Panama and Republic of Ghana.  I majored in Political Science, and I'm still confused! PDXblazers 06:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A fair point.  I have looked at the CIA World Factbook, and it in fact defines a constitutional democracy as "a form of government in which the sovereign power of the people is spelled out in a governing constitution."   This could be taken as meaning that the US, for example, is a constitutional democracy as it's constitution refers to the sovereignty of the people.  I suspect that actually what is meant by the definition given is that a the constitution has specific provisions for any decision to be referred to the people so that they could overrule the government (eg by referenda).  I think there needs to be more debate on this, in particular I would be interested in any other definitions from reliable sources.  Captainj 10:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Why is the CIA a credible source for anything? I do NOT think that constitutional democracies should be merged with republican democracy. One demands a constitution, and the other needs a guiding board of individuals. Different concepts, although they may be related closely. Gautam  22:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I was just wondering, if the page is about constitutional democracies, why the article doesn't mention constitutions as part of the definition, or even hardly at all.  I'm not a poly-sci guy or anything, so maybe I'm just missing it, but something seems wrong here.
Billy Shears 20:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: An excellent point.  Part of the problem is (as discussed earlier) that no-one seems certain what the definition of a constitutional democracy is.  Perhaps the definition from the CIA handbook should be used (see above).  However be aware that a constitution may not be the deciding factor.  For example many countries have a constitutional monarchy but don't necessarily have what is considered a fully codified constitution (such as the United Kingdom) the term constitutional monarchy is thus referring to a monarchy that has powers on paper, but not much in reality. Captainj 22:56, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sadly, it seems the general opinion is that the word "constitutional" is a modifier for the word "democracy", or in otherwords, the real system of government is just a democracy - which fact is established by a constitution.  Personally I think this is NOT the correct definition.  Instead a more accurate term (or at least the original definition) for constitutional democracy or constitutional republic is a democratic constitutionality or republican constitutionality.  In otherwords, originally the term "constitutional government" insinuated that the constitution does not divest it's authority in any person or persons, but was in and of itself inviolate and supreme.  The "democracy" part or "republic" part of the terms insinuated that the constitution could be changed by demos ("the people"), or by representatives of the people. That was, at least, the intention of the US Constitution, which is considered by many as the first document to create a constitutionality (a constitution-based government).  Since then it seems that the definition has been bastardized to mean any government that has a literal or symbolic piece of paper that gives power to a person or persons.  The original definition should be re-adopted, as the differences between that definition and the one currently used are vast and siginificant.  By doing so I think you'd find that there are far fewer "constitutional" governments than currently claimed, and justifiably so ... most governments should NOT be considered constitutionalities as all they do is insure that a certain person or persons make the rules. --davea0511 11:30, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

text: (An interesting side note)  I pulled out a Political Science textbook I have on Comparative Politics and it makes no mention in the glossary of Constitutional Democracy however it clearly states Constitutional Monarchy along with a couple dozen other Democracy or Constitutional related terms.  Perhaps it is a more recent term but I would have thought that this would be something covered and well defined a long time ago, apparently not.Aknight 05:56, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is of course perfectly possible that a style of government fits more than one definition.  Regarding the UK, I don't know if it is a constitutional democracy, as I am still not clear on what that is, although you should note that it does not elect its second chamber.  Personally I prefer the term elective dictatorship for the UK, although I doubt that it has any basis in political sceince.  If you can't find the term for constitutional democracy then perhaps this article is not sensible and should be deleted? Captainj 10:57, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Constitution? 

message: This page makes a common mistake in dealing with the issue of a "democracy."  In the first line, it defines a "constitutional democracy" in such a way as to preclude a system such as used by the United Kingdom.  But a "monarchy" and a "democracy" are not inherently mutually exclusive concepts.  "Republic" and "democracy" are not the same thing, and should not be confused (source of authority versus method of decision-making).
If we are going to limit use of the term "democracy" to countries which allow for national referenda, that should be stated in the first line of the article.  If we are talking about "democracy" as meaning a country that allows for elections by the general populace, then one has to include the type of government practiced by the United Kingdom, and others (Canada, e.g.).  In any event, there is absolutely no reason that a "constitutional democracy" requires and American-type "separation of powers."
:But a country could be a democracy and not a constitutional democracy.  For example the UK is a constitutional monarchy which technically is a type of democracy as you pointed.  Does that mean that the UK is a constitutional democracy?  I don't know.  We need more sources as to the definition of a constitutional democracy (see above). Captainj 09:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Democracy 

message: Wikipedia redirects “Constitutional Democracy” to “Liberal Democracy” which counts some parliamentary monarchies as democracies, whereas by inherent definition a [constitutional] democracy cannot be a monarchy, regardless how liberal the latter is. It uses “liberal” too liberally and thus wrongly, which is another reason for merging democracy/republic entries into one “Constitutional-Democracy” entry! --Fritz Fehling (talk) 01:24, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changing Wikipedia’s “Constitutional-Democracy” Redirect 

message: Australia is a Constitutional Monarchy with the HM Queen Elizabeth II being referred to as 'Queen of Australia'. Australia is described in Wikipedia as a Constitutional Monarchy with a parliamentary democracy. It is legislated that the Commonwealth of Australia refer to her head of state as 'The Queen of Australia". Proberton (talk) 14:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Australia

message: Currently Talk:Constitutional Democracy is rated only "high" instead of top on importance scale, despite that it is fundamentally more important than Talk:Politics' top rating, because it deals with the neutral constitutional pre-condition for democratic politics versus authoritarian propaganda...
Furthermore, there should be big hyperlink jumps embedded by Wikipedia within strongly related talk sites to enhance discussion inputs by other competent contributors... --Fritz Fehling (talk) 01:06, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: , Beyond what TheDragonFire has already said above, I wonder if you're clear on the fact that the ratings you see for quality and importance on the Talk pages apply to the article content, not to the Talk page content itself.  That is to say, nobody is currently rating Talk page quality or importance at Wikipedia; only the article content is rated.  The results of such article ratings are kept on their respective Talk pages, because the article page is reserved for actual content directly concerning the article topic, and not for any kind of metadata such as quality ratings.  Hope this helps, Mathglot (talk) 10:44, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes; But sabotage deletion of detailed high-quality contributions cannot result in an appropriate change to "top"importance, esp. when there does not yet exist a Constitutional-Democracy article due to WP's redirection to "Liberal Democracy"!... --Fritz Fehling (talk) 23:11, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: WikiProject Importance Reassessment