What is democracy?

Once upon a time there was an island. One day, just off the island, a cargo ship collided with a luxurious cruise liner. Everyone onboard managed to swim ashore, before the boats sank. The passengers were stuck on the island. What to do now?

At first people on the island did whatever they wanted. And that was nice. ... but eventually people started arguing. The problem was, they'd only brought one knife with them to the island. And this knife was needed for pretty much everything: hunting, shaving, chopping wood...

Who was to decide about the knife? The passengers from the luxurious cruise ship were of the opinion that since they brought the knife, they should have it. While the passengers from the cargo ship claimed that since they came ashore first, they should have the knife. Then Alice had an idea. If everyone wanted to decide, then why not let them?

They could let the people... govern themselves. With a government "of the people", everyone would make the decisions, together. The people on the island formed a democracy -- a government of the people. Everyone thought it was pretty nifty being allowed to vote on everything.

Bob, who wanted to use the knife as much as possible, suggested that only men should be allowed to have the knife, and no women. The women laughed at this, obviously such a law wouldn't pass! Oh... But in fact, there were fewer women on the island than men. Hmmm.

Following the will of the majority, isn't necessarily always the most fair, it turned out. Alice suggested a law to protect minorities. Some fundamental rights should be available to everyone, and not even a majority should be able to take them from anyone. Hmm. That was probably wise.

Because who knows? Sometime or other, it might be you who's in the minority. Life on the island moved on, and every time a decision was to be made, the entire population gathered to vote. Every issue was directly decided by a referendum. This is called direct democracy.

But gradually people grew bored of having to vote on every single issue. Was there no easier way to do this? Could they perhaps just vote for someone who could make decisions on each issue on behalf of them, during some period of time -- someone to represent them? Sure thing. Now they had a Representative Democracy.

Since the islanders thought that Alice seemed wise, she was chosen to be Prime Minister. But after a while Bob got tired of having Alice as his representative. So when it was time for election again, Bob started making all kinds of promises to the people on the island. And Bob won the election. But...

now we've found out, Bob had no intention to do what he promised. Okay then, we can just wait until the next election. Oh. I guess not. This isn't going very well...

Maybe we need some laws that we can't vote away very easily, laws that constitute our democracy. We can call these fundamental laws our Constitution. What should these laws say then? Well, in them we write down the fundamental rights that all humans have. And here is where we limit what the elected representatives can do, so they can't make a decision to abolish our democracy.

That sounds pretty good. Let's vote on that. But first we need to make sure that Bob isn't Prime Minister anymore. That's better! So, democracy isn't simply that we get to vote: A democratic society also needs to protect everyone's rights, including those who don't have any power.

Yup, even Bob's.