Author: Haroon Khalil
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Democratic Centralism
Indirect form of democratic selection and nomination of leadership and public officials is mainly identified with Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism. It involves election and nomination of party and public officials from below in a pyramidal structure of party formation, i.e., democratic election and nomination of officials and leadership. However, decisions, orders and policies flow…
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Classical Democracy
This is characterised by the democratic tradition, which considers ‘rule of the people’ as the basis of democratic participation. ‘Rule of the people’ may obtain through direct or indirect participation. This includes direct democracy of Athenian type and indirect democracy of liberal variety as they obtain in Anglo-American and many developing countries.
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Bourgeois or Capitalist Democracy
Marx, Engels and Lenin and subsequently, Gramsci, Miliband, Poulantzas and Althusser apply this terminology to designate the operation of democracy in the context of liberal and capitalist economy. Democracy as a form of government is treated as class government dominated by the capitalist or the bourgeoisie. It is an arm of exploitation of the workers…
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Forms of Democracy
Before we discuss the various theories of democracy, let us see how has the term democracy been characterised by different adjectives. A variety of names, adjectives and ornamentations are associated with term democracy. This is due to classification and grouping of democracy differently either due to different theoretical perspective or self-styled leadership and elite donning…
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Meaning and Definition of Democracy
cIn classic sense, democracy means the rule of the people, either directly or through elected representatives. Cleon, the Athenian politician and general who was killed during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) defined democracy as ‘that shall be democratic which shall be of the people, by the people, for the people.’4 This was the definition, which Lincoln used in…
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Introduction
For many, democracy is a guarantee of freedom, equality and popular rule. But for some, it is the rule of the ignorant and the average person in which number counts, not merit.1 Democracy is understood in a variety of ways. The Athenians in ancient Greece led by Pericles celebrated democracy, Plato rejected it as the…
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Economic Justice
Economic justice relates to both just distribution of economic benefits, resources and opportunities as well as to a just economic structure. On the one hand, the liberal and the welfare perspectives see economic justice in terms of fair and adequate chances to earn livelihood and economic benefits in society. The Anarchists, Socialists and Marxian perspectives…
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Social Justice
Social justice in a broader sense, includes distributive principle relating to social opportunities in all its aspects—economic, political, cultural and intellectual. Social justice amounts to presence of equal social opportunities for all to seek the best of their personality and moral and intellectual development. As such, social justice aims at securing those conditions and opportunities,…
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Political Justice
While legal justice is more a function of formal provisions such as the Constitution, legislative acts and laws and judicial decisions and pronouncements than the actual political process. Justice in a political aspect relates to what relations the citizens bear with the political set-up, distribution of power and how the state power is organized. It…
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Legal Justice
In legal dimension, justice relates to law of the state and positive law becomes the basis of justice. Social contractualist Thomas Hobbes, Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and Analytical jurist John Austin have supported law issued by the sovereign as the sole source of justice. This implies that whatever the sovereign formulates or enacts, or whatever is positive law,…