Pericles Funeral Oration Summary

There are many forms of government that the United States could of chose from, but we chose democracy. Democracy is a “form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system”. Democracy has been developing since the late 18th century in the united states and since then we have takin ideas from great historians on how to continue its development. In class, we read different pieces from people like Pericles, Aristotle and Dahl from those we learned what they think makes a democracy work.
Pericles was the leader of Athens from 460–429 B.C. He developed a democracy based on majority rule. In “Pericles Funeral Oration” he describes Athenian
Dahl goes through five key steps to have a well-balanced working democracy. They are: effective participation, equality in voting, gaining enlightening understanding, exercising final control over the agenda and inclusion of adults. Dahls first step “effective participation” talks about having all members of the association having equal opportunities to express their feelings about policies before anything becomes official. The second one is “equality in voting” this talks about when it’s time to make a final decision every member should have an equal voting opportunity; all votes will be counted the same. The third one is “gaining enlightening understanding”, this talks about every person being able to learn about different options before a certain policy goes into effect. The fourth one is “exercising final control over the agenda” this talks about members having the exclusive right to decide what matters are being placed in the agenda. The last one is “inclusion of adults” this means that age isn’t what is being looked at when making decisions. A 22 year olds decision vs a 35 year olds will be taken equally. I feel like if these 5 steps are takin in, deciding democracy will work