Can you have democracy without government? ?

Question

You could also ask, can you have democracy and have government?

Answer 1

1/The exercise of political authority over the actions/affairs of the people.So the answer has got to be no I would say.

2/ In a democracy the government is democratically elected,so the answer has to be yes

Answer 2

In its pure sense, Democracy is government by the people. Democracy therefore is government.

Answer 3

the way it works is that you have to have a government to let you know the different interpretation of democracy chosen for their particular term of office. ye gods.....hasn't eleven years of new labour shown you that democracy is a sham,an illusion...it does not exist. if a government can take away your right to a referendum on giving away your country....that is dictatorship, not democracy.

Answer 4

Democracy is the representation of the people by the government. Without government it's just people, ie anarchy.

Answer 5

I can't think of anyway that would work.

Lets imagine for a second that it was somehow possible for every human being in a country to vote on every decision that was made in a country through a referendum.  Lets say everyone was given a yes no buzzer at the age of 18.   That would be as close to direct democracy as it is possible to get.  There are however 2 major problems.

Who controls the system for voting?  And Who decides what we are going to vote on?

So in answer to your question no I don't think it's possible unless it is a democracy with less than 1000 people and people  can be reasonably confident their voices will be heard.

Answer 6

That would be anarchy.  Democracy requires a body to distil the will of the people (in theory) into policies, laws and such.  Without such a body, a tangible government, it is down to each person and thus anarchy.

It is interesting to consider that there are two camps who seek greater influence of the people over those things traditionally under the purview of the closed entity that is government as we know it.  These groups are the anarchists and the socialists.

Socialists tend to favour a highly structured, hierarchical system in which everyone is entitled to influence local policies, which work their way up to an overall central government.  Anarchists, meanwhile, take a position which, superficially, would be the polar opposite.

Anarchists, as I understand it, tend to prefer a model of innumerable small, independent and self determining groups.  The idea is that if any one of these became dangerous that all those around could overwhelm it and restore a sort of peaceful anarchy.

Both of these systems could be seen as democratic, in that the people are the basis of power.  The difference, of course, is that socialism is a democracy of highly structured representational government while anarchy is a democracy of direct action by the people.