Suffrage

Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). The right to run for office is sometimes called candidate eligibility, and the combination of both rights is sometimes called full suffrage. In many languages, the right to vote is called the active right to vote and the right to run for office is called the passive right to vote. In English, these are sometimes called active suffrage and passive suffrage.

Suffrage is often conceived in terms of elections for representatives. However, suffrage applies equally to referenda and initiatives. Suffrage describes not only the legal right to vote, but also the practical question of whether a question will be put to a vote. The utility of suffrage is reduced when important questions are decided unilaterally by elected or non-elected representatives.

In most democracies, eligible voters can vote in elections of representatives. Voting on issues by referendum may also be available. For example, in Switzerland this is permitted at all levels of government. In the United States, some states such as California and Washington have exercised their shared sovereignty to offer citizens the opportunity to write, propose, and vote on referendums and initiatives; other states have not. The United States federal government does not offer any initiatives at all.

Right-wing politics

Right-wing politics are political positions or activities that view some forms of social stratification or social inequality as either inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically defending this position on the basis of natural law, economics or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be viewed as natural results of traditional social differences and/or from competition in market economies.

The political terms Right and Left were first used during the French Revolution (1789–99), and referred to where politicians sat in the French parliament; those who sat to the right of the chair of the parliamentary president were broadly supportive of the institutions of the monarchist Ancien Régime. The original Right in France was formed as a reaction against the Left, and comprised those politicians supporting hierarchy, tradition, and clericalism. The use of the expression la droite (the right) became prominent in France after the restoration of the monarchy in 1815, when le droit was applied to describe the Ultra-royalists. In English-speaking countries it was not until the 20th century that people applied the terms "right" and "left" to their own politics.

Right (disambiguation)

A right is a legal or moral entitlement or permission.

Right or Rights may also refer to:

See also

The Right (France)

The Right (La Droite) is a political party in France, founded in 1998 by Charles Millon following his expulsion from the Union for French Democracy due to alliances he formed with the National Front, which allowed him to get elected as president of the Rhône-Alpes regional council. The most conservative French right-wingers such as Michel Junot, Claude Reichman, Jean-François Touzé, Alain Griotteray and Michel Poniatowski were present at the creation of the movement.

After the failure of Millon's project to merge La Droite into Charles Pasqua's Rassemblement pour la France (RPF) and the Centre national des indépendants et paysans (CNI), Millon founded the Liberal Christian Right (Droite libérale chrétienne) in October 1999. However, most members of La Droite refused to join the new party. Only three deputies, including Charles Millon, joined it. The first two of these deputies were beaten at the 2002 legislative election while the last one didn't run himself. In September 2002, Charles Millon was then named ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, while the Millonist group at the Rhône-Alpes regional council (Oui à Rhône-Alpes, ORA) fusionned itself with the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) conservative party, led by Nicolas Sarkozy. The DLC was therefore put in stand-by although it officially continues to exist.