What's the difference between democracy and dictatorship?

Democracy


Definition:

  • (n.) Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people.
  • (n.) Government by popular representation; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but is indirectly exercised through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed; a constitutional representative government; a republic.
  • (n.) Collectively, the people, regarded as the source of government.
  • (n.) The principles and policy of the Democratic party, so called.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) On his blog, Grillo called the referendum results a victory for democracy.
  • (2) We are deeply saddened," said Nyan Win, a spokesman of National League for Democracy.
  • (3) Despite Facebook's size and reach, and its much-vaunted role in the short-lived Arab spring , there are reasons for thinking that Twitter may be the more important service for the future of the public sphere – that is, the space in which democracies conduct public discussion.
  • (4) UPDATE II [Tues.] Two other items that may be of interest: first, Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger was the guest for the full hour yesterday on Democracy Now, discussing the paper's role in reporting the NSA stories, and the video and transcript of the interview are here ; second, marking our collaboration on a series of articles about spying on Indians, the Hindu has a long interview with me on a variety of related topics, here .
  • (5) Can somebody who is not a billionaire, who stands for working families, actually win an election into which billionaires are pouring millions of dollars?” Naming prominent and controversial rightwing donors, he said: “It is not just Hillary, it is the Koch brothers, it is Sheldon Adelson.” Stephanopoulos seized the moment, asking: “Are you lumping her in with them?” Choosing to refer to the 2010 supreme court decision that removed limits on corporate political donations, rather than address the question directly, Sanders replied: “What I am saying is that I get very frightened about the future of American democracy when this becomes a battle between billionaires.
  • (6) Historical reality suggests the concept of socially necessary risk determined through the dialectic process in democracy.
  • (7) Spain’s constitutional court responded by unanimously ruling that the legislation had ignored and infringed the rules of the 1978 constitution , adding that the “principle of democracy cannot be considered to be separate from the unconditional primacy of the constitution”.
  • (8) These are basic principles of democracy and Israeli law.
  • (9) The values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and the respect for human rights are absolutely fundamental to the European Union.
  • (10) And it means the Foreign Office dealing with those in the Middle East and North Africa who are on the side of democracy and human rights, not sitting down to tea with torturers.
  • (11) The referendum shows that democracy really sucks – that democracy does not deliver stability, prosperity [or] responsible government,” Tsang said.
  • (12) This thoughtful intervention brought new hope to us and others, for the rebuilding of public trust in surveillance conducted with respect for privacy, democracy and the law.
  • (13) "For tax evaders, she should turn to Pasok and New Democracy to explain to her why they haven't touched the big money and have been chasing the simple worker for two years."
  • (14) Secularism is the only way to stop collapse and chaos and to foster bonds of citizenship in our complex democracy.
  • (15) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (16) The writer John Lanchester concedes that democracies will always need spies, but reading the Snowden documents persuaded him that piecing together habits of thought from internet searches takes things far beyond conventional spying: “Google doesn’t just know you’re gay before you tell your mum; it knows you’re gay before you do.
  • (17) In the wake of her win, Aung San Suu Kyi has written to Min Aung Hlaing, the president, Thein Sein, and the parliamentary Speaker, Shwe Mann, requesting a meeting to discuss the election and “national reconciliation”, according to the National League for Democracy Facebook page.
  • (18) Our later measures – parliament's power to declare peace and war, MPs to be subject to a right to recall, an end to the royal prerogative, an elected Lords – were about a 21st-century democracy, with citizenship to be founded on a new bill of rights and responsibilities and, in time, a written constitution.
  • (19) It won’t happen suddenly, but the most likely outcome for European social democracy is the one being secretly contemplated on the Labour backbenches: a fusion with liberalised conservatism.
  • (20) The genius of a democracy governed by the rule of law, our democracy, is that it both empowers the majority through the ballot box, and constrains the majority, its government, so that it is bound by law.” Turnbull added: “Why does Daesh [another term for Islamic State] hate us?

Dictatorship


Definition:

  • (n.) The office, or the term of office, of a dictator; hence, absolute power.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) How can the CHOGM leaders condemn the dictatorship of Musharraf but happily wine and dine with Museveni?
  • (2) My rule of thumb is that if you see a commentator or politician praising a dictatorship, plutocrat or corporation, the best course is to assume that they have been got at unless they can prove otherwise.
  • (3) What goes on in The Handmaid’s Tale [the overthrow of the US government by a theocratic dictatorship that suppresses the rights of women] is actually confined to what used to be the United States.
  • (4) Resisting dictatorships is more worthwhile than accepting them and thinking things will change by themselves.” Asked if the suffering for a majority of South Sudanese citizens could be stopped if Machar and his colleagues gave up the fight, the rebel leader says “giving up would be irresponsible” and that “history would not forgive him” for it.
  • (5) As a result of the restrictive reproductive health policies enforced under the 25-year Ceausescu dictatorship, Romania ended the 1980s with the highest recorded maternal mortality of any country in Europe--159 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1989.
  • (6) They "have joined the long list of Americans and others used by the Kim family dictatorship for political advantage", Bolton wrote in the New York Daily News.
  • (7) 'Azerbaijan is turning into a dictatorship – we shouldn't fall for its caviar diplomacy' Read more The crowded courtroom was growing increasing stifling as the air-conditioner could not cope with mid-August heat.
  • (8) They accused the decree of attempting to topple the legal state, make Morsi a God whose decisions cannot be reviewed and build a dictatorship unlike any other Egypt has ever witnessed.
  • (9) Pervitin allowed the individual to function in the dictatorship.
  • (10) The only real black spot was that a cowardly Britain stood by in the 1930s and allowed Hitler and Mussolini to help General Franco win the Spanish civil war , pushing it into dictatorship and encouraging Nazi Germany to launch the second world war.
  • (11) The fact that it failed is related to the atomised society left behind by 40 years of the most brutal and erratic of dictatorships.
  • (12) Iranians finally rose up and proclaimed a constitution, but Russian forces bombed parliament and re-imposed royal dictatorship.
  • (13) Polls opened at 4am across the country, which suffered decades of army-led dictatorship followed by a stumbling reform process.
  • (14) Of the Iraqi people, groaning under years of dictatorship.
  • (15) He admired the demagogic black separatist Louis Farrakhan for his insistence that blacks and whites could never live together, and the dictatorships of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and Ayatollah Khomeini for their hatred of Jews.
  • (16) He said his father had been born at a difficult time – a reference to the dictatorship in Portugal – and had moved to France to provide a better life for his family.
  • (17) Belarus – often referred to as "the last dictatorship in the heart of Europe" – has been run for 16 years by Lukashenko, the 56-year-old strongman who has routinely crushed political dissent.
  • (18) While the US is dominated by big oil and big money, China is run by big hydro and big brother – a dictatorship of engineers.
  • (19) Data released this morning showed the jobless rate has hit 24.6% – the highest level since records began in the mid-1970s (following the end of the Franco dictatorship).
  • (20) Maathai was clubbed unconscious by police in 1992 while pressing for the release of political prisoners, the scrapping of a planned sixty-storey building in Nairobi's Uhuru Park and the abolition of single-party dictatorship in Kenya.