Tale of two Democracies- Chile and Poland
* Salvador Allende was a member of the Socialist Party in Chile and was democratically elected President in 1970.
* His people- friendly policies upset big businesses and also the United States.
* The United States financed a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet against Allende.
* General Pinochet installed himself as the country’s President and ruled it brutally for 17 years.
* Democracy returned to Chile in 1988 after a referendum and the ousting of general Pinochet.
* In 1980, Poland was ruled by the Communist Party under the Soviet Union.
* Under the communist regime, all factories and big property were owned by the government.
* Strikes and trade Union were illegal.
* Poland’s transition to democracy came with the formation of the workers union known as solidarity under the leadership of Lech Walesa.
Expansion of Democracy-The Beginning, End of Clonialism (Ghana) and the Recent Phase (Myanmar)
* Democracy was attained in different stages through which it developed into its current form.
* Only in the twentieth century, the struggle for democracy included the right to vote to be granted universally to all adults, men or women, rich or poor, white or black.
* This is termed as universal Adults Franchise or Universal Suffrage.
* Prior to the twentieth century, government were elected mostly by men, and in the case of the United States, mostly white men.
* The process of world democratisation was accelerated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which controlled much of Eastern Europe.
* Democracy in Myanmar came right after its independence, but did not last very long, as the country was taken over in a military coup by General Ne Win in 1962.
Changing Map of Democracy
* A major restructuring of the political systems of the world happened during the 20th century.
* Notable among the countries that gained independence in the 1950s and subsequently formed democratic governments of their own were Indian, Japan and the Philippines.
* By 2000, African countries started their transition towards democracy.
* North Korea, Myanmar and china in Asia, Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, peru in South America and Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Libya in Africa are still nondemocratic.
Global Democracy and international Organisations
* There are some institutions in the world that perform the functions of a world government to some extent.
* The main organisation that plays this role is the United National.
* The United Nations is a global association of nations of the world that co-operate with each other to maintain international law, security, economic development and social equity.
* Other organisation that are global in nature are the international Monetary Fund an the world Bank.
* Most global institutions will fail the simple test of democracy.
* The United States actively interferes in the internal affairs of sovereign nations in the name of democracy.
