When faced with the term “democracy”, many soon point to this type of government as being guided by the will of the people. In this sense, the population would have the right to interfere in the choices and decisions that would directly affect their lives. However, the political space generated by democracy can be organized in the most different ways and must attend to the specificity of each people. It is from there that we recognize the existence of models of direct and indirect democracy.
Direct democracy can already be seen as a type of system where citizens discuss and vote directly on the main issues of interest to them. In Ancient Greece, popular assemblies gathered the population of democratic city-states in the Agora (square), where laws and major decisions were discussed and resolved. It is worth remembering that in the Greek mold, the exercise of political opinion was restricted to a specific portion of the population.
As societies enlarged numerically and social organization became more and more complex, we see that the system of direct democracy proved to be unfeasible. After all, how would it be possible to count the vote of a large population, insofar as the issues to be decided could not be subject to the registration of the vote of each individual? It is at this moment that we have the organization of the so-called indirect democracy.
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Indirect democracy establishes that the population uses the vote to choose the political representatives best suited to their interests. In this way, citizens would have their rights assured by councilors and deputies who would undertake to meet the wishes of their voters. However, looking at the development of indirect democracy, we see that this compromise between politicians and citizens is subject to several challenges.
Aiming to escape the departure from the democratic norm, we observe today the organization of some initiatives interested in reinforcing the power of intervention of the people through the use of the vote. One of these examples can be seen in the organization of the so-called “participatory budget”, a system in which municipal authorities announce the existence of a certain amount and call on the population of a neighborhood or region to discuss and vote on the best allocation of resources.
By Rainer Sousa
Graduated in History