Representative democracy.

The terms “democracy” and “representative democracy” are both used to describe the system of government that President Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) called “government of the people, for the people, and by the people” in his Gettysburg Address of 1863. Most modern democracies are representative democracies in which the people elect representatives to run the government and establish national policies and priorities, as opposed to direct democracies, in which individuals vote directly on changes in law and public policy.