Top-Down or Bottom-Up Democracy?

Democracy can be either Direct or Indirect. Direct democracy is suitable to deciding matters which are of direct relevance to a small community. But still experts have to be chosen to carry out projects, and someone or some committee has to be chosen to see to the implementation and execution of these projects. But there are also matters which concern inter-communal matters, and here some form of delegation or representation is needed — hence a need for indirect democracy.

Indirect democracy can be either in a bottom-up manner, by electing delegates from a small community of about 150; or in a top-down manner, by masses of people (of thousands or millions) electing representatives. [I call this Mass Democracy]

Most of the world practices [Mass] Representative Democracy, giving executive power to a single individual — be it a mayor, a governor, a monarch, a president, or a prime-minister (except for Switzerland, which places executive power in the hands of a council of seven individuals).

Below are two videos. The first explains some of the detrimental features of [Mass] Representative Democracy. [See also Peter Kropotkin’s “Representative Government” (1885)] The second is about the benefits of a bottom-up democracy.