What are the merits and demerits of democracy?

Democracy could be defined as the form of government where rulers or the representatives are elected by the people of the country through votes. The merits of democracy are –

• Democracy allows choosing the representative of our choice.

• Democracy follows a procedure before arriving at a decision so that it could be effective and acceptable to the people.

• As they make decisions based on norms and procedures which allow the citizen to check or examine the ways the decisions had been taken. This process is called Transparency.

• Democracy provides regular, free and fair elections, open public debate on major policies and legislation and citizens’ right to information about the government and its functioning.

The demerits of democracy are –

• Democracy is based on negotiation and discussion on major issues which sometimes might lead to the delaying of the decisions.

• Sometimes democracy fails to provide free and fair election and doesn’t allow its citizens to question every decision.

• Also, sometimes they are not good at sharing information with its citizens and ignores the demands of the majority of the population.

• The democratic government sometimes may be slow, less efficient, not always very responsive or clean.