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→Liberal democracies around the world: these claims might be OK, but need citation, attribution, substantive basis. |
m I have added the eight institutional guarantees in Dahl's Polyarchy to the rights and freedoms, to show the core universal rights in Liberal Democracies (e.g. the right to freedom of expression). I have also edited a paragraph in preconditions, I added a citation from Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser to make a distinction between the loyal opposition and protecting political minorities, but show they are closely associated |
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However, many governments considered to be democratic have restrictions upon expressions , such as [[Holocaust denial]] and hate speech, including prison sentences, ofttimes seen as anomalous for the concept of free speech. Members of political organisations with connections to prior totalitarianism (typically formerly predominant communist, [[Fascism|fascist]] or National Socialists) may be deprived of the vote and the privilege of holding certain jobs. [[Discrimination|Discriminatory]] behaviour may be prohibited, such as refusal by owners of public accommodations to serve persons on grounds of race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. For example, in Canada a printer who refused to print materials for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives was fined $5,000, incurred $100,000 in legal fees and was ordered to pay a further $40,000 of his opponents' legal fees by the Human Rights Tribunal.<ref>{{cite web|title=Christian Business Ordered to Duplicate Homosexual Activist |publisher=Concerned Women for America|url=http://www.cwfa.org/articles/10594/CFI/family/index.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081128171655/http://www.cwfa.org/articles/10594/CFI/family/index.htm|archive-date=28 November 2008}}</ref>
Other rights considered fundamental in one country may be foreign to other governments. For instance, the constitutions of Canada, India, Israel, Mexico and the United States guarantee freedom from [[double jeopardy]], a right not provided in other legal systems. Also, legal systems that use politically elected court jurors, such as [[law of Sweden|Sweden]], view a (partly) politicised court system as a main component of accountable government, distinctly alien to democracies employing [[trial by jury]] designed to shield against the influence of politicians over trials. Similarly, many Americans consider [[Second Amendment to the United States Constitution|the right to keep and bear arms]] to be an essential feature to safeguard the [[right to revolution]] against a potentially abusive government, while other countries do not recognise this as fundamental (the United Kingdom, for example, [[gun politics in the United Kingdom|having strict limitations]] on the gun ownership by individuals). Overall, some rights are dependant on the county but the fundamental rights and freedoms shared by all liberal democracies can be summarised into eight necessary rights (Dahl, 1971)<ref>{{Cite book|last=Dahl, Robert A., 1915-2014.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/49414698|title=Polyarchy : participation and opposition|date=1971|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=0-585-38576-9|location=New Haven|oclc=49414698}}</ref> which are:
# Freedom to form and join organisations.
# Freedom of expression.
# Right to vote.
# Right to run for public office.
# Right of political leaders to compete for support and votes.
# Freedom of alternative sources of information
# Free and fair elections.
# Right to control government policy through votes and other expressions of preference.
== Preconditions ==
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For countries without a strong tradition of democratic majority rule, the introduction of free elections alone has rarely been sufficient to achieve a transition from dictatorship to democracy; a wider shift in the political culture and gradual formation of the institutions of democratic government are needed. There are various examples—for instance, in [[Latin America]]—of countries that were able to sustain democracy only temporarily or in a limited fashion until wider cultural changes established the conditions under which democracy could flourish.{{Citation needed|date=October 2014}}
One of the key aspects of democratic culture is the concept of a "[[loyal opposition]]", where political competitors may disagree, but they must tolerate one another and acknowledge the legitimate and important roles that each play. This is an especially difficult cultural shift to achieve in nations where transitions of power have historically taken place through violence. The term means in essence that all sides in a democracy share a common commitment to its basic values. The ground rules of the society must encourage tolerance and civility in public debate. In such a society, the losers accept the
== Liberal democracies around the world ==
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