First, read a news story from the newspaper or the Internet. Answer the following questions regarding your news story: 1) What is the main issue, who are the main actors being discussed; Then, choose one of the assigned articles you read for this week. Answer the following questions regarding the assigned article: 1) What are the basics of this article (who, what, when, how, why, etc.); 2) What is the overall main point the author is trying to convince you of? 3) Do you agree with the author’s argument? Why? Why not? Finally, tie together your news story with what you learned from the assigned article, textbook readings, podcasts, videos, etc. for this week. Type your answers in the box below using your own words, no outline or bullets, complete sentences and paragraphs, single-spaced, full-page.
----------------------- In the news “Will democracy be derailed in Pakistan?”, it is about democratic elections in Pakistan during the horrible economic and social problems. There would be an election in a month but the country faced a very hard time. There were protests, terrorist attacks, and criminal activities. For instance, Supreme Court ordered the arrested of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf related to the power plant corruption. Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri would lead a protest against political corruption in the capital of Islamabad. The most catching story was a terrorist attack in Quetta. There were 87 victims. The family of those victims peacefully protested against the Balochistan government. Under this government, there was not enough support in many public services such as law enforcement and education. There are many problems happening in Pakistan, but an activist judiciary and alarmed military may keep the election from continuing fairly, and people won’t be able to speak for themselves. If there were effectiveness of the government system and quality of leadership there could be social stability. From the assigned article, Export This, the author is Jim Holt. Democracy is a better government system than other systems in the world so far. However, there are some problems occurring in the system when it comes to practical use and that why we have to improve it. In addition, some countries use the term democracy wrong. The author referred to several political scholar’s ideas to compare democracy that we use today is not similar to the original Greek democracy. For example, John Dunn and James Madison claimed that the democratic laws in ancient Greece said to have equal right for all people but there are exceptions in laws for women and slaves. Certain groups of people can be elected on the election. The author referred to Francis Fukuyama who commented on problems of election on Iran that there is a supervision of a priestly caste. In addition, Joseph Schumpeter and Anthony Downs who made comments that is a problem that citizen ignore politics in American democracy. He suggested the idea of James Fishkin and Bruce Ackerman who would like to have