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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 3 page paper asks readers to do a "thought experiment" and determine whether the civilization on a distant island is democratic or not. Bibliography lists 8 sources.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVDefDem.rtf
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a fair trial and the idea that the majority decides the way in which various issues will be handled. This paper is a "thought experiment" in which we land
on a deserted island and encounter an unknown culture. Our task is to discover whether or not it is a democracy so we know how to proceed in our
interactions with it. Discussion R.M. MacIver gave a classic definition of a state in his book The Modern State. He says it is "An association which, acting through law
as promulgated by a government endowed to this end with coercive power, maintains within a community territorially demarcated the universal external conditions of social order" (MacIver, 1926). If we
look carefully at the definition, we see that its made of several components, all of which must be present to complete the definition. The country is clearly defined in
terms of its physical territory; the citizens have formed some sort of government or association "to create and preserve social order"; the authority, government or whatever the governing body is
acts according to the laws it has passed with the consent of its people; and that it has "the power to enforce these laws" (State, 2005). Habermas looks
for a third alternative to what he sees as the two ways of looking at democracy, either as a having "negative rights" or "positive rights" (Habermas, 1996). In a
"liberal" governmental structure, the people have "negative rights"; this simply means that as long as they obey the law they will be protected-that is, by not doing anything wrong they
are protected. The "republican" view of government is that it confers "positive rights" on its citizens. They are not asked to refrain from doing things in order to
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