On Mon, 17 Mar 2003, J. van Baardwijk wrote: > At 18:24 16-03-03 -0600, Ronn Blankenship wrote: > > >>Er, John, I think you need to read up on how a democracy works. In a > >>democracy, decisions are not made by the populace but by the politicians > >>that were elected by the populace. > > > > > >No, that is the definition of a _republic_. > > That's not entirely correct. In The Netherlands, our politicians have been > elected by the populace, and decisions are made by those politicians. > However, The Netherlands is NOT a republic -- it's a democracy (with a > constitutional monarchy).
As I understand them, republic and democracy are not mutually exclusive terms. It sounds to me like the Netherlands is a republic (because it has a constitution and a deliberative lawmaking body - the monarch cannot or does not alter the law at whim) and a democracy (the representatives of in the lawmaking body are elected by a democratic process). The term "republic" implies some degree of democracy, though the democracy itself may vary from being very restrictive (only landowning males of a certain highly qualified degree of citizenship, say, may vote) to very inclusive (every citizen over 18 may vote). These days we probably wouldn't consider a democracy of the first sort a "real" democracy - it wouldn't meet our moral standards of inclusiveness - but it might still be a republic. To have a democracy that was *not* also a republic, there would have to be a lack of established laws (i.e. a constitution) that cannot be overturned by a simple majority vote of the population. The US is often called a "democratic republic" because it meets the criteria for both terms. It sounds as though the Netherlands is about the same. Marvin Long Austin, Texas Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Poindexter & Ashcroft, LLP (Formerly the USA) http://www.breakyourchains.org/john_poindexter.htm _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
