The Origins Of Democracy In The 20th Century

How would people be expressing themselves effectively if it were not for the linguistic empowerment from the Greeks? Sometimes, one would think even the word ‘word’ itself was derived from a Greek root. However, researching on the origin of words would take years because more words keep on popping-up every day. But for the basis of this paper, it is important to understand where the word Democracy originated. Democracy is derived from of course two Greek words, Demo, which means ‘people’ and Kratia, which means ‘to rule’. Therefore, the combination Demokratia would mean to rule by the people. Democracy is a way of governance through which the citizens are involved in the ruling of the state in one way or another, either directly or indirectly. It can therefore be

At the beginning of the 21st century, more than one third of the world's countries were full-fledged democracies, and another one sixth had at least some democratic institutions. Together, these democratic and near-democratic countries contained nearly half the world's democracy ("Democracy", 2004). Democracy in the 20th century aimed mainly at reducing corruption amid the progressive developments of cities through industrialization. The world wars, both 1 and 2, the subsequent decolonization together with other economic circumstances led to the development of the 20th century democracy. Decolonization led to the increase in the number of independent states, most of which embraced democracy. The main challenge that democracy faced during this period was the need to eradicate corruption. Corruption became rampant even to young economies like in Africa. Direct democracy did surprisingly exist even in the early 20th century. But the growth of population with even the smallest states having millions of citizens made it necessary for an indirect system to be employed in almost all the states of the