Liberal Democracy Essay

What are the successes and failures in liberal democracy? Liberal Democracy is a form of government. It follows the following principles; protecting the rights of an individual, having frequent and fair elections which provides the people in society with a voice and how they want the government to run. Elections are held often and the electors should not feel under pressure to vote for a particular party and should express their free will at a ballot box. A separation of powers which is separating the leadership of government into 3 different powers; The executive, legislature and judiciary, this is used to avoid power from resting in one place. Another feature is that the citizens have a high degree of civil liberties such as: Freedom of speech, assembly, movement, property and conscience and these liberties must not be abused by the government. These powers each play a role on the leadership of government. Liberal Democracy has become the most predominate political system in the world; Australia, UK and U.S all follow liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is not all good and can certainly have it failures but also its successors like other forms of government.

The UKs Liberal democratic system is set up a lot like Australia’s. Their electoral system is free and fair. There is Freedom of speech which means the media and press can cover whatever story they want and they can publish just about anything they want and give their opinion on something. People in society can criticize and give their voice on a political issue or political leader. The UKs liberal democratic system also includes equal opportunities and social freedoms like abortion. A failure in UK liberal democracy is that in the UK, referendums are very rare. In a referendum the government asks the public to help decide on an important issue. Everyone of voting age has the right to take part in a referendum. So far there has only been one UK referendum held in 1975 which was to decide whether they wanted to remain members of the European Union. The UK should hold more referendums because it gives the public an opportunity to make their opinions known to the government. Although the UK has introduced equal opportunity laws, there is still evidence that there is discrimination. There is evidence showing that there is a higher rate of unemployment between different ethnic groups. Ethnic minorities also receive poor education and housing. Women also still usually earn only 80% of male earnings of the same job. This also applies for the USA and Australian liberal democracy
Less than a quarter than a century ago in North America, Liberal democracy started to appear. This led North America to advanced industrial economies, sizeable middle classes and high literacy rate-factors. All of these benefited America in different ways. Slowly this shaped the way American liberal democracy like it is today. Many people would argue that the American liberal democracy system does not respect the will of the people, except they are only really recognised when asked to vote for their representatives. Another negative in the U.S system is that the government is denying citizens the right to cast votes on all issues. E.g. issues such as going to war. Americas liberal democracy has a government that is really only controlled by a few powerful people or rests with a small number of people. This is called an Oligarchy.

Australian liberal democracy originates and reflects the British and American traditions. Combining these two together creates Australia’s own liberal democracy. Australia holds very much the same values as the UK and US system; Freedom of election and being elected, freedom of speech, rule of law and other basic human rights. Lying beneath the features of Australian democracy is many of Australian democracy’s successes. Australia has 3 distinct parts that form its parliamentary: The house of representative, the senate and the Queen (represented in Australia by the

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