Compare and Contrast the Democratic Successes and Failures of Andrew Jackson and Nelson Mandela

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Skyler Korgel                                                                                                                       Mr. Abbott

IB History of the Americas                                                                                                       Period 1

Compare and Contrast the Democratic Successes and Failures of Andrew Jackson and Nelson Mandela

     Separated by nearly two centuries of history and thousands of miles in nations with a unique political and cultural background, President Andrew Jackson of the United States and Nelson Mandela of South Africa each served to expand the democratic process in their respective nations to include a greatly wider range of eligible citizens that revolutionized the definition of democracy not only within their borders but also within their regions.  However, along with these democratic successes also came some relative political failures that impeded their effectiveness as leaders and legacies as influential heads of government.

     As the champion of the Jacksonian democracy political movement in the United States, President Andrew Jackson sought to improve upon the existing system of democracy in America during his presidency by expanding voting rights to include all white men and drastically increasing the power of the executive branch over the federal government.  Seeking revenge upon the broken democratic system which had denied him his rightful election against John Quincy Adams in 1824 due to the voting restrictions against suffrage for the common man, President Jackson and the newly formed Democratic Party quickly appealed to state governments to repeal the voting laws setting voting eligibility to only white men with property in order to include all white men in the democratic process.  In this respect, Jackson began a political era which embraced the concerns of the common man, instead of solely the aristocracy, and progressed the United States one step further toward a truer form of democracy in which a greater population could represent their voices in government.  Viewing his election as a mandate from the entire nation in favor of his leadership over government in contrast to the locally elected Congress, President Jackson strengthened the position of the presidency mostly through his stubbornness in applying his veto power to the renewal of the National Bank of the United States, demanding his removal of Native Americans east of the Mississippi River, and his stern handling of the Nullification Crisis.

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     Also viewed as the symbolic embodiment of greater democracy in South Africa, President Nelson Mandela, the first black leader of South Africa following the first multi-racial elections of 1994, aided greatly in the transition of South Africa from an incredibly discriminatory apartheid state into an integrated democracy.  Having struggled for the rights of the black majority in South Africa for several decades and imprisoned for his intent to seek justice for this portion of the population, Mandela helped to further integrate the long-segregated black masses into the now-equal society by implementing many progressive social reforms to bring the ...

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