At bottom, even in a democracy, exercising political power comes down to imposing your will on others, coercing them to accept the policies you favor.
By running for public office, she is asserting her right to speak in public and participate in democracy, exercising the very civil rights that many westerners claim Muslims do not value.
We are part of an economic partnership with 27 other democracies, exercising full rights to determine agreed rules in the world's largest single market.
What would American government look like if it began from the principle that people in a democracy should exercise the levers of power individually and collectively?
Tom Pepinsky, professor of government at Cornell University and an expert in South East Asian politics, says the 2019 Indonesian election is an important opportunity for citizens of the fourth most populous democracy to exercise political power.
In any democracy, the exercise of judicial review can be awkward, but in Israel, where there's still some uncertainty about whether the Basic Laws trump ordinary laws, the Supreme Court and the Knesset have even more reason to be in fierce opposition.
"Sudanese people have stood up for change and against tyranny, yearning for democracy to exercise their basic rights to live in peace.
"Big Philanthropy is definitionally a plutocratic voice in our democracy, an exercise of power by the wealthy that is unaccountable, non-transparent, donor-directed, perpetual, and tax-subsidized," Rob Reich, professor of political science at Stanford, told The Atlantic.
People are begging to assert participatory democracy and exercise people power, using many new technologies and methods of interconnection, as levels of confidence in political leadership are dangerously declining around the world.
And if so many brave men and women could wear our country's uniform and sacrifice their lives for our most fundamental rights…then surely we can do our part as citizens of this great democracy to exercise those rights…surely, we can get to the polls and make our voices heard on Election Day.
