Democracy and its developments

Appropriately the word ‘Democracy’ is of Greek origin .the Greek word Democratic is a combination of the words demos (meaning the people) and kratos (meaning power or rule).so democracy in both the ancient and modern worlds is the idea of rule by the people, whether directly-through personal participation or indirectly, through elected representative. Democracy was achieved through struggle and against considerable odds. Indeed, the struggle for democracy everywhere and throughout history, has simultaneously a struggle against political inequality based on, and justified by, inequalities of birth and wealth. A democracy is in few forms like as historically, theoretically, and geographically. Even as it has become the most dominant principle of modern political system, democracy is still fraught with many new and contemporary challenges. The history of democracy tends to begin with an invocation to its origins in ancient Greece. Democracy in the modern world bears any similarity with democracy in ancient Greece. It has been, and continues to remain, one of the most contested concepts in the political vocabulary of the modern world. It means many different things to different people, but the fact that all manner of political regimes have sought to appropriate the label ‘democracy’ to legitimize them, clearly shows that it carries a positive normative connotation. Rather like justice and freedom then democracy is widely perceived to be a good thing, and a desirable attribute for a polity to process. Task of determining which democracies are truly worthy of the name, or of distinguishing between polities in terms of the extent of democracy they have achieved, is a difficult if not impossible one. But judging contemporary democracies is so fraught with difficulty; the task of describing the evaluation of democracy in the modern world is no less contentious. Historians disagree about the origins of modern democratic ideas, as also about the emergence of democratic institutions. The French declaration of the rights of man was an early statement of democratic principles, while for others it was a manifesto of the bourgeois class which. Though opposed to hierarchy based on nobility, was neither egalitarian nor democratic. By jean-Jacques Rousseau democracy is that, with his faith in the direct participation of the citizens in the making of laws, who is the premier philosopher of democracy. John Locke is for some the first significant theorist of liberal-democratic ideas, for others he is at best a theorist of constitutional government. But the 2500 years of (1992) democracies were enthusiastically celebrated all over the world. This anniversaries statesman, founding of nations are quite commonly celebrated. Democracy in modern world is quite different from democracy as it was practiced in ancient Greece 2500 years ago. The practice of democracy is in the modern world having varied greatly. Each of the nation-states that today claims to be democratic has arrived at its own distinctive form of democracy by a quite distinctive route. History, society and economy are powerful influences shaping democracy, as are democratic ideas and ideal. It is a mix of material and the ideological that must explain democracy anywhere. Finally we can say that, the struggle for democracy is never concluded; it just constantly assumes new forms.