Indirect democracy or representative democracy

(Political regimes around the world (2022)

Republics

• 
   Full presidential republics
• 
   Republics with an executive presidency elected by or nominated by the legislature
• 
   Semi-presidential republics
• 
   Parliamentary republics
• 
   Republics where the constitution grants the right to govern only to a single party or a dominant party

Monarchies

• 
    Parliamentary constitutional monarchies in which the monarch does not personally exercise power (except perhaps reserve powers)
• 
   Dual system constitutional monarchies in which the monarch personally exercises power (often alongside a weak parliament)
• 
   Absolute monarchies

Military government

• 
   Countries in which constitutional provisions for government have been suspended (e.g. military juntas)

Others

• 
   Countries which do not fit any of the above systems (e.g. transitional governments).
• 
   No government)

In a representative democracy, citizens elect representatives who are responsible for making laws or enforcing them. It has become over time, in everyday language and by misuse of language, synonymous with the short term democracy. This is partly due to the fact that it is the most widespread form of democracy in the contemporary world and that electoral candidates such as Andrew Jackson in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century re-appropriated the term. One of the reasons for this reduction in meaning could also be that the elites feel threatened by the economic equality generally associated with direct democracy. For the same reason, representative democracy and plain democracy are also often equated with liberal democracy and parliamentary democracy. Some go further and denounce a semantic reversal of the word democracy which, according to them, in fact designates “its strict opposite”, that is to say the election.

Before the middle of the 19th century, the representative regime most often referred to the idea of ​​a republic (even if this regime also existed in a constitutional monarchy) and was distinguished from the notion of democracy, the latter then designating the system of government of direct democracy. Some specialists clearly distinguished between democracy and representative government: Citizens who call themselves representatives have no particular will to impose. If they dictated wills, it would no longer be this representative state, it would be a democratic state.

In a representative democracy, not all the holders of power are necessarily elected by popular vote. They can be appointed by the Head of State, like the Prime Minister or the prefects in France. Similarly, French judges and magistrates are not elected either.

This type of indirect democracy has several distinct variants.

(Includes texts from Wikipedia translated and adapted by Nicolae Sfetcu)