when asked to define democracy most people respond with a statement such as "democracy means government by the people "while this is a simplistic definition, it is useful as long as it is not taken too literally or considered to be complete.popular government is indeed the essence of democratic system.
early democratic thinkers like John Locke understood this principle, and they saw the policy-making process as the most important democratic procedure.consequently they regarded the legislative process as the core of democracy.the executive and judicial functions were thought of as service agencies that carried out the laws made by the people.Accordingly,the democratic process was equated with the policy-making or legislative process, and the relation between the people and the legislative process became the most important criterion for distinguishing among the various systems.
there are three major democratic systems based on the relationship of the people to the legislative or policy-making process.in the simplest form, called direct democracy or pure democracy, the people act as their own legislature. you can recall that jean Jacques Rousseau favored this kind of government system.he argued that no one could truly represent another person's will.
this form of democracy has been used by several societies.ancient Athens practiced direct democracy, and even today one can find that in some Swiss cantons and in some new England town meetings, before the advent of modern technology, direct democracy was not possible in an area larger than a"a city-state" therefore, it has not been very popular.today,however,it is possible for a society,using computers, television, and the telephone,to govern itself in much more direct way than was possible in the past.