Is Denmark even a Democracy?
October 12, 2006When I moan about something here in Denmark, people tell me it’s a democracy so shut up. An interesting point in Michael Witte’s Critique of the Danish Constitution (in Danish) is that the constitution does not say straight out anywhere that we in fact are a democracy.
His point is that according to § 2 of the constitution Denmark is a constitutional monarchy or as he puts it a limited dictatorship, where one group of people has special treatment:
The form of government shall be that of a constitutional monarchy. Royal authority shall be inherited by men and women in accordance with the provisions of the Act of Succession to the Throne of March 27, 1953.
On paper he is right, but Denmark is a de-facto democracy. By tradition (but tradition only) the Royal family has no real power today. The last time a King went in and kicked out a government was during the Easter crisis of 1920. The negative reaction to this might actually be what caused the current passive role of the King/Queen.
Comments:
Neither is the U.S. or any other supposed modern Democracy. Ancient Athens was a democracy. What the U.S. is is a democratically elected federal republic. It is representative government, but not a democratic government. To be a democracy, all those considered citizens would get to vote on each and every law and policy enacted. Clearly none of the modern so called 'democracies' meet this simple criterion. Similarly, Denmark has some democratic activities, but is, nonetheless, not a democracy.
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