Liberté, égalité, fraternité... For French people, democracy is the definition of the French republic. And sometimes it is the definition in itself (Greece, Socrate...). For Americans, democracy is America. OK, it must be normal. Le problème est que les Français, en général, ne partagent pas vraiment cette opinion. America is seen as the country of individualism success etc... But it is far from the definition of democracy. Democracy means "le pouvoir au peuple" in Greek. In America it seems to mean "le pouvoir à ceux qui l'ont". The others don't have the web. For French people, it is "le pouvoir au peuple". The others are not part of the People. I am not trying to tell you that you live in a totalitarian country...

It's interesting to see that 7 MIT students answered "United States" whereas only one INT student answered France and none answered "US"...

As far as I am concerned, the reason why I did not put the word "France" is that in my mind neither France can be the US is THE symbol of democraty itself. Even if they both have been defending democraty for a long time, they also both have helped some totalitarian governments to keep the power in some countries becasue it was their advantages.

En fait, je constate aussi que si beaucoup de Français n'ont pas répondu "France", très nombreux sont ceux qui ont répondu en utilisant les 3 mots de la devise de la France : "liberté" (17 fois), "égalité" (10 fois), "fraternité" (3 fois).

La liberté semble à ce sujet être une valeur commune puisque 11 étudiants du MIT ont répondu dans ce sens. Par contre, aucun n'a répondu égalité ou fraternité (by the way, I do you translate this word into English ??). Ceci montre bien une différence de vision du mot "démocratie" : pour les Américains (ou plutôt les Etats-Uniens), c'est la liberté, pour les Français, c'est bien sûr aussi la liberté, mais également l'égalité.

Il n'y avait pas de rubrique "égalité" pour l'association de mots, c'est dommage. A quoi ce mot vous fait-il penser, aux Etats-Unis ?

Saying that most countries follow a demacratic system can have a certain degree of inaccuracy. In some extent, there is always an inclination for polititians to fulfill personal interests. Therefore, how democratic a country is depends on how able the people are willing to claim for their rights. As a result saying that a country i.e France or the Us is the symbolism of Democracy is probably an unacceptable generalization since there is still a lot of social , political injustice around the world.It is more because of a patriotic feeling that people would associate their country with democracy.

I found it very interesting that the American students when asked to tell the word association with "Democracy" chose to say "USA", or some equivalent of that term... Also, "Freedom" and "Voting" seemed to pop up a lot. But what I was very impressed with was that the majority of the French students chose to mention "liberty", "equality", and "people", whereas it seemed like all we could think about was ourselves. Hmm... No real question here, just commentary. :)

Hi! Upon reflection, I think that, as said (#4) it is indeed irrealistic to think of Democracy within the limits of a particular country. Before further discussion, i would like to precise a few historical points, even if most of you know them. Democracy is as Y Minnot said litteraly "the power to the people" in ancient greece. Immediately you see the difficulty : who is 'the people', for you know that greek women didn't count as people, that greeks had slaves and so on. Usually (in athens particularly, which around 5c BC was the reference) 'the people' were those who paid the taxes and who had done their time in the army. They met in the agora, discussed, voted, etc... But what is less known is that after a time, they had so few people interested in the political life, because it was so boring listenning to hours-long speaches, that they were not able to reach the minimum number of voters, and that they had to drag people there, or to threaten them with punishment (fines, loss of rights, etc..) to get 'em there. That is rather amusing, if you consider the situation of some countries nowadays (the US not being the only one) where people fought and died to have the right to vote, and where

fewer and fewer

actually vote (even if

all

answer the polls....) The point is democracy is a utopia, a model toward political systems tend to reach if they want to. I personnaly think that Democracy is not the power to people, not liberty of freedom, etc... Democracy is a way of thinking, a state of mind, that is a

consequence

of freedom, equality, etc... That is why historically, this is almost always a so-called democracy that takes the decision to grant the right to vote to women, that forbids discrimination, etc.. Those actions are *not* the consequence of democracy, but rather of the maturation of people, their longings for equality, etc. I mean, even in a so-called Democracy (cf ancient greece), if equality, non-discrimination and so on are not wanted, they will not be, and the people who are important in this system willa lways find a way to justify themselves, a way that can be reasonable at a time, and appear to be irrealistic only centuries after... And that brings my conclusion (at last you will say :) : democracy is not a political system, but a maturation of people and a way of thinking.

PS: What if in a democracy, a majority of people voted to renounce their rights and chose a totalitarian system ?