50 Fun Facts About Democracy

Citizens of ancient Athens could banish a politician for ten years by scratching his name on what?

Broken pottery, called ostraka, was the scrap paper of Athens and gave us the word ostracism. The exile kept his property and could come home after a decade without stigma.

Which fundraising snack, sold at Australian polling places, is nicknamed after democracy itself?

A sausage in bread, sold to raise money for the schools and churches that host the polls, is known as the democracy sausage. The Australian National Dictionary Centre made the phrase its Word of the Year for 2016.

Which flowers did soldiers put in their rifle barrels during Portugal's 1974 revolution?

Carnations were in season at Lisbon's flower market when crowds came out to cheer the end of the dictatorship. Almost no shots were fired, and the blooms in gun muzzles named the coup.

Women could not vote in which European country's federal elections until a 1971 ballot of men?

Switzerland's men had turned the idea down in 1959 before approving it in February 1971. One canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, held out on local votes until a federal court ruling in 1990.

A common English word for a voting paper comes from an Italian word for which object, once dropped into a box?

A small ball, or pallotta, was how Venetians cast a secret vote. It gave English the word ballot, and the custom survives in blackballing, for shutting somebody out.

In 1893, which country became the first where all women could vote in parliamentary elections?

New Zealand got there after years of campaigning led by Kate Sheppard, and women voted that November. They could not stand for Parliament themselves until 1919.

Candidate comes from the Latin for which color, worn by Romans who were seeking public office?

White togas, chalked and bleached until they shone, were worn by office seekers at speeches and debates. The garment was the toga candida, from candidus, meaning shining.

In which 1863 speech did Abraham Lincoln describe democracy as government of, by and for the people?

The Gettysburg Address took Lincoln only about two minutes to deliver. The featured speaker, Edward Everett, had talked for two hours before him.

Ancient Athens filled most public offices, including seats on its Council of 500, by which method?

Drawing lots struck most Athenians as more democratic than elections. They built allotment machines, called kleroteria, so that oligarchs could not buy their way into office.

Democracy joins two words, meaning the common people and might, from which ancient language?

Greek supplied demos, the common people, and kratos, force or might. The term appeared in the 5th century BC to describe how city-states such as Athens were run.

Which document did rebel barons force King John of England to seal at Runnymede in 1215?

Magna Carta was annulled by Pope Innocent III within months, and civil war followed. Reissued by John's son Henry III, it endured as a symbol of liberty against arbitrary power.

Which island nation's Althing, first convened around 930, is often called the oldest parliament?

Iceland's assembly met outdoors on the plains of Thingvellir, where the Lawspeaker presided from a rocky outcrop known as the Law Rock.

Whose Republic ranks democracy just above tyranny and calls for philosopher-kings to govern instead?

Plato wrote the dialogue around 375 BC, with Socrates tracing a decline from aristocracy through timocracy and oligarchy to democracy and, last of all, tyranny.

Which country's 2024 general election ran in seven phases spread across 44 days?

India's democracy is the largest in the world, and that 44-day vote was the biggest election ever held. Some 642 million turned out, 312 million of them women.

In which system do citizens vote on laws themselves instead of electing representatives to decide?

Direct democracy is said to have its earliest well-documented example in Athens in the 5th century BC, where a mass assembly of citizens was the highest decision-making body.

Which term describes a nationwide vote on a single question, as Britons held on Brexit in 2016?

A referendum takes its name from the Latin verb referre, to carry back: a proposal is carried back to the voters instead of being settled by their representatives.

Of a democracy's three branches of government, which one interprets laws and applies them to cases?

The judiciary interprets and applies the law but, under the separation of powers, generally neither writes it nor enforces it. Those jobs belong to the legislature and the executive.

Anger at the draft for which war led the 26th Amendment to lower the US voting age from 21 in 1971?

The Vietnam War conscripted young men who had no say in choosing the leaders sending them to fight. The 26th Amendment answered that complaint by setting the voting age at 18.

Which rebel baron's 1265 English parliament was the first to summon townsmen as well as knights?

Simon de Montfort was killed at the Battle of Evesham later that year, but the idea caught on under Edward I, and he is often regarded as the founder of the House of Commons.

The veto, a leader's power to block a new law, takes its name from a Latin word meaning what?

I forbid was the weapon of Rome's tribunes of the plebs, who could block magistrates and Senate decrees to shield commoners from the patricians.

Which Athenian lawgiver canceled debts in reforms remembered as the shaking off of burdens?

Solon then gave up his special powers and went abroad for ten years, so that the Athenians could not talk him into repealing any of his laws.

What term describes a legislature with two chambers, such as a Senate and House of Representatives?

Bicameral parliaments are the minority: as of 2022 roughly 40% of national legislatures had two chambers, while 60% sat as a single house.

Which word for the right to vote comes from a Latin term that first meant a voting tablet?

Suffrage comes from the Latin suffragium, and the word's later history is less noble. By the fifth and sixth centuries it had come to mean a bribe paid to win public office.

By which process can a legislature bring formal charges of misconduct against a president or judge?

Impeachment only begins the charges, and a trial of some kind is usually needed to remove the official. From 1990 to 2020, at least 132 heads of state in 63 countries faced them.

Which term fits states like Japan and Sweden, where a hereditary ruler reigns within legal limits?

Constitutional monarchy leaves a ruler little personal discretion, and these two countries have gone further: their monarchs are no longer even the nominal chief executive.

Which Baltic country was the first to let voters cast ballots online in a parliamentary election?

Estonia had tried internet voting in local elections in 2005, two years before the national vote. By its 2023 parliamentary election, more than half of all votes were being cast online.

Which principle holds that presidents and kings are bound by the same legal limits as everyone else?

Rule of law found an early champion in Samuel Rutherford, whose 1644 book Lex, Rex turned the old motto that the king is law into its opposite: the law is king.

In 1994, millions queued to vote in which country's first election open to citizens of all races?

South Africa's voting ran over four days, and in rural areas some waited for days. The new National Assembly's first act was to elect Nelson Mandela president.

Student protesters built a 33-foot Goddess of Democracy statue during 1989 protests in which city?

Beijing's Tiananmen Square held the foam and papier-mâché figure for only five days. Soldiers destroyed it on June 4 as they cleared the demonstrators away.

Which English philosopher's Two Treatises of Government said rulers need consent from the governed?

John Locke published the work anonymously in 1689. Thomas Jefferson later carried one of its phrases, about a long train of abuses, word for word into the Declaration of Independence.

Whose 1748 book The Spirit of Law argued for splitting government power among separate branches?

Montesquieu warned that liberty cannot be secure where powers are not separated, even in a republic. His theory was later written into constitutions around the world.

Whose 1762 book The Social Contract argued that only the general will has the right to make laws?

Rousseau saw the book banned in Paris and placed on the Church's index of prohibited works. He held that citizens are free only when they obey laws they have made for themselves.

Which French aristocrat, sent to study American prisons in 1831, wrote Democracy in America?

Tocqueville and his friend Gustave de Beaumont spent nine months crossing the United States. Prisons were the official errand, but they took notes on American religion, politics and money too.

Whose impossibility theorem shows that no ranked voting system can eliminate the spoiler effect?

Kenneth Arrow proved the theorem in 1950 and with it launched the modern field of social choice theory. He shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1972.

Which political scientist argued in a 1989 essay that liberal democracy marked the end of history?

Francis Fukuyama grew the essay into a 1992 book calling liberal democracy the final form of government. He later said he was less idealistic than he had been in the heady days of 1989.

Which British workers' movement of the 1830s and 1840s petitioned Parliament for votes for all men?

The Chartists saw MPs refuse even to hear a petition signed by 1.3 million working people in 1839. After the movement died out, Britain adopted five of its six demands.

Which 1688 upheaval replaced James II with William and Mary and led to England's Bill of Rights?

The Glorious Revolution produced a Bill of Rights that barred the Crown from suspending laws, levying taxes or keeping a peacetime army without Parliament's consent.

Which veteran of the American Revolution drafted France's 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man?

Lafayette echoed parts of the American declaration in a draft written with his close friend Thomas Jefferson, then a diplomat in Paris. Most of the final text came from Abbé Sieyès.

After which dictator's death in 1975 did Spain return to democracy under King Juan Carlos?

Francisco Franco had named the prince as his successor in 1969. Instead of preserving the regime, the new king oversaw free elections in June 1977 and a new constitution the next year.

Which reformer, called the father of Athenian democracy, regrouped the citizens into ten tribes?

Cleisthenes scrapped four old tribes built on family ties to end the clan feuds that had led to tyranny. His own grandfather had been a tyrant.

Which Athenian statesman praised his city's democracy in a funeral oration recorded by Thucydides?

Pericles also gave generous wages to citizens who served as jurymen. Thucydides set the speech down as if word for word, though there is little doubt he edited it.

What term describes winning more votes than any rival in an election without winning more than half?

A plurality is the North American term, while British English calls the same result a relative majority.

What is the minimum number of members who must be present for a legislature to do business called?

A quorum can be denied on purpose: in 2003 Democrats in the Texas House slipped away to Oklahoma so that the chamber could not meet to pass a redistricting bill.

Which voting system hands each seat to whichever candidate gets the most votes?

First past the post borrows from a wager in which bettors picked the single horse they thought would reach the finishing line ahead of the field. A winner needs no majority.

Which country has the oldest compulsory voting system still in use, introduced for men in 1893?

Belgium waited until 1948 to bring women under the same obligation. Australia backs the duty with fines, while Mexico's constitution calls voting an obligation but sets no penalty.

Which British weekly's research arm compiles the Democracy Index, with its four types of regime?

The Economist Intelligence Unit has scored countries since 2006, from full democracies down to authoritarian regimes. In 2016 it downgraded the United States to a flawed democracy.

Which playwright and former political prisoner became president of Czechoslovakia in December 1989?

Václav Havel had spent nearly four years behind bars for his dissident work, from 1979 to 1983. The Federal Assembly made him president by a unanimous vote.

Whose 1859 essay On Liberty warned that democracy could become a tyranny of the majority?

John Stuart Mill put only his own name on the essay, but his wife Harriet Taylor Mill is now regarded as a co-author. She died suddenly in 1858 with the final draft nearly complete.

On which rocky Athens hill, under a kilometer west of the Acropolis, did the citizen assembly meet?

The Pnyx had a bare rock floor where about 6,000 men could stand facing the speakers' platform. Athenians gathered there from as early as 507 BC.

Which president's four election wins prompted the 22nd Amendment's two-term limit on US presidents?

Franklin D. Roosevelt broke a two-term tradition set by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The amendment came into force in February 1951, almost six years after he died in office.