Democracy is one of many types of governmental organizations that are present today, and indeed, democracies can come in many varieties. While in the UK and India, the legislature holds executive power through the prime minister, in presidential republics such as the US, Panama, Nigeria, Kenya, and France, the executive is independent of the legislature (usually through the form of a president, who also serves as head of government.) Typically in a presidential system, decision-making in the government is divided between the president and the legislature, in order to provide “checks and balances” against any one branch gaining too much influence overall.
The established political systems, especially democracy, have not been around in comparison to the history of government. For much of human history, we have been ruled through aristocracies or theocracies, deriving their “power” from a king or a deity. This brings us to the question: how will the future of government look? How will future organizations function?
In the long run, organizations are moving towards three categories : digitalization, personalization, and globalization. A good example of this is a decentralized autonomous organization, run using blockchain technology. With more people than ever participating in these organizations, they are able to vote on different functions that the DAO can perform, lending it a form of democratization- an approach that might make its way into national governments at some point in the future.
How would this affect the economy? My guess is it would lead to a greater proliferation of decentralized phenomena such as cryptocurrency. This would pose a problem for a country’s central bank (for example, the Federal Reserve here in the US.) With a widespread use of these currencies, the Fed, for example, would not be able to control the country’s monetary policy as effectively as if the country solely used the dollar. Would this mean that regulations and laws would be placed upon the cryptocurrency industry? For this, we would have to wait and see.