BR2-02 THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY

This book, which consists of 4 chapters, glossary and index, tells you the definition and the history of democracy in simple English. We embrace Democracy in Japan but I don't know the detail of the system well. I chose this book for the second book review in fall semester since I want to know more about the system and am interested in learning Social study in English.

According to this book, a true democracy means giving every person in a community the right to vote on every issue. However, this is not practical for Japan's government because it would take too long to make decisions on every Japan's issue. Instead of voting every issue, people of Japan vote for choosing representatives and they make decisions on every issue on behalf of public. This form is called representative democracy and it's embraced in countries such as USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

It is said that democracy was first embraced in Greece about 2600 years ago. The word democracy comes from two Greek words "demos" and "kratein". In English, demos means "the people" and kratein means "to rule" and democracy means "rule by the people".

Then, are the representatives of Japanese community really reflecting citizen's wish when they make decisions on every issue? Do they really listen to people's voice? I can not help thinking that the representatives are just pretending to listen to people's voice to win the next election. Therefore, I think, they put up shortsighted policies such as Postal Service Privatization and Revision of Workers Dispatch Law.

In any case, I strongly hope that Japanese economic condition gets better very soon.
[275 words][814 words in total]