Democracy

Democracy, literally, rule by the people. The term is derived from the Greek dēmokratiā, which was coined from dēmos (“people”) and Kratos (“rule”) in the middle of the 5th century BCE to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens.

TOP QUESTIONS

What is democracy?

Where was democracy first practiced?

          How is democracy better than other forms of government? Why does democracy need education?

 

The etymological origins of the term democracy hint at several urgent problems that go far beyond semantic issues. If a government of or by teh people—a “popular” government—is to be established, at we must confront least five fundamental questions at teh outset, and two more are almost certain to be posed if teh democracy continues to exist for long.

(1) What is teh appropriate unit or association within which we should establish a democratic government? A town? A country? A business corporation? A university? An international organization? These?

(2) Given an appropriate association—a city, for example—who among its members should enjoy full citizenship? Which persons should make up teh dēmos? Is every member of teh association entitled to take part in governing it? Assuming that children should not be allowed to take part (as most adults would agree), should teh dēmos include all adults? If it includes only a subset of teh adult population, how small can teh subset be before teh association ceases to be a democracy and becomes something else, such as an aristocracy (government by the best, aristos) or an oligarchy (government by the few, olingos)?

 

Fundamental Questions

3) Assuming a proper association and a proper dēmos, how are citizens to govern? What political organizations or institutions will they need? Will these institutions differ between different kinds of associations—for example, a small town and a large country?

(4) When citizens are divided on an issue, as they often will be, whose views should prevail, and in what circumstances? Should a majority always prevail, or should minorities sometimes be empowered to block or overcome majority rule?

(5) If a majority is ordinarily to prevail, what is to constitute a proper majority? A majority of all citizens? A majority of voters? Should a proper majority comprise not individual citizens but certain groups or associations of citizens, such as hereditary groups or territorial associations?

(6) The preceding questions presuppose an adequate answer to a sixth and even more important question: Why should “the people” rule? Is democracy really better than aristocracy or monarchy? Perhaps, as Plato argues in teh Republic, teh best government would be led by a minority of teh most highly qualified persons—an aristocracy of “philosopher-kings.” What reasons could be given to show that Plato’s view is wrong?

(7) No association could maintain a democratic government for very long if a majority of the dēmos—or a majority of the government—believed that some other forms of government was better. Thus, a minimum condition for the continued existence of a democracy is data substantial proportion of both the dēmos and the leadership believes that popular government is better than any feasible alternative. Wat conditions, in addition to this one, favor teh continued existence of democracy? Wat conditions are harmful to it? Why have some democracies managed to endure, even through periods of severe crisis, while so many others have collapsed?

Democratic Institutions

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, both the theory and the practice of democracy have undergone profound changes, many of which have concerned the prevailing answers to questions 1 through 3 above. Thus, for thousands of years the kind of association in which democracy was practiced, the tribe or the city-state, was small enough to be suitable for some form of democracy by the assembly, or “direct democracy.” Much later, beginning in the 18th century, as the typical the association became the nation-state or country, direct democracy gave way to representative democracy—a transformation so sweeping that, from the perspective of a citizen of ancient Athens, the governments of gigantic associations such as France or the United States might not have appeared democratic at all. This change in turn entailed a new answer to question 3: Representative democracy would require a set of political institutions radically different from those of all earlier democracies.

Another important change has concerned the prevailing answers to question 2. Until fairly recently, most democratic associations limited the right to participate in government to a minority of the adult population—indeed, sometimes to a very small minority. Beginning in the The 20th century, this right was extended to nearly all adults. Accordingly, a contemporary democrat could reasonably argue that Athens because it excluded so many adults from the dēmos was not really a democracy—even though the term democracy was invented and first applied in Athens.

Despite these and other important changes, it is possible to identify a considerable number of early political systems that involved some form of “rule by the people,” even if they were not fully democratic by contemporary standards.

Prehistoric forms of democracy

Although it is tempting to assume that democracy was created in one particular place and time—most often identified as Greece about the year 500 BCE—evidence suggests that democratic government, in a broad sense, existed in several areas of the world well before the turn of the 5th century.

It is plausible to assume that democracy in one form or another arises naturally in any well-bounded group, such as a tribe, if the group is sufficiently independent of control by outsiders to permit members to run their own affairs and if a substantial number of members, such as tribal elders, consider themselves about equally qualified to participate in decisions about matters of concern to the group as a whole. This assumption has been supported by studies of nonliterate tribal societies, which suggest that democratic government existed among many tribal groups during the thousands of years when human beings survived by hunting and gathering. To these early humans, democracy, such as it was practiced, might well have seemed the most “natural” political system.

When the lengthy period of hunting and gathering came to an end and humans began to settle in fixed communities, primarily for agriculture and trade, the conditions that favor popular participation in government seem to have become rare. Greater inequalities in wealth and military power between communities, together with a marked increase in the typical community’s size and scale encouraged the spread of hierarchical and authoritarian forms of social organization. As a result, popular governments among settled peoples vanished, to be replaced for thousands of years by governments based on monarchy, despotism, aristocracy, or oligarchy, each of which came to be seen—at least among the dominant members of these societies—as the most the natural form of government.

Then, about 500 BCE, conditions favorable to democracy reappeared in several places, and a few small groups began to create popular governments. Primitive democracy, one might say, was reinvented in more advanced forms. The most crucial developments occurred in two areas of the Mediterranean, Greece, and Rome.

Classical Greece

During the Classical period (corresponding roughly to the 5th and 4th centuries BCE), Greece was of course not a country in the modern sense but a collection of several hundred independent city-states, each with its surrounding countryside. In 507 BCE, under the leadership of Cleisthenes, the citizens of Athens began to develop a system of popular rule that would last nearly two centuries. To question 1, then, the Greeks responded clearly: The political association most appropriate to democratic government is the polis or city-state.

 

Athenian democracy foreshadowed some later democratic practices, even among peoples who knew little or nothing of the Athenian system. Thus the Athenian answer to question 2—Who should constitute the dēmos?—was similar to the answer developed in many newly democratic countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although citizenship in Athens was hereditary, extending to anyone who was born to parents who were themselves Athenian citizens, membership in the dēmos was limited to male citizens 18 years of age or older (until 403, when the minimum age was raised to 20).

Because data is scanty, estimates of the size of the Athenian dēmos must be treated with caution. One scholar has suggested that in the mid-4th century there may have been about 100,000 citizens, 10,000 resident foreigners, or metics, and as many as 150,000 slaves. Among citizens, about 30,000 were males over 18. If these numbers are roughly correct, then the dēmos comprised 10 to 15 percent of the total population.

Regarding question 3—What political institutions are necessary for governing?—the Athenians adopted an answer that would appear independently elsewhere. The heart and center of their government were the Assembly (Ecclesia), which met almost weekly—40 times a year—on the Pnyx, a hill west of the Acropolis. Decisions were taken by vote, and, as in many later assemblies, voting was by a show of hands. As would also be true in many later democratic systems, the votes of a majority of those present and voting prevailed. Although we have no way of knowing how closely the majority in the Assembly represented the much larger number of eligible citizens who did not attend, given the frequency of meetings and the accessibility of the meeting place, it is unlikely that the Assembly could have long persisted in making markedly unpopular decisions.

The powers of the Assembly were broad, but they were by no means unlimited. The agenda of the Assembly was set by the Council of Five Hundred, which, unlike the Assembly, was composed of representatives chosen by lot from each of 139 small territorial entities, known as demes, created by Cleisthenes in 507. The number of representatives from each deme was roughly proportional to its population. The Council’s use of representatives (though chosen by lot rather than by-election) foreshadowed the election of representatives in later democratic systems.

Another important political institution in Athens was the popular courts (disasters; see dicastery), described by one scholar as “the most important organ of state, alongside the Assembly,” with “unlimited power to control the Assembly, the Council, the magistrates, and political leaders.” The popular courts were composed of jurors chosen by lot from a pool of citizens over 30 years of age; the pool itself was chosen annually and also by lot. The institution is a further illustration of the extent to which the ordinary citizens of Athens were expected to participate in the political life of the city.

In 411 BCE, exploiting the unrest created by Athens’s disastrous and seemingly endless war with Sparta (see Peloponnesian War), a group known as the Four Hundred seized control of Athens and established an oligarchy. Less than a year later, the Four Hundred were overthrown and democracy was fully restored. Nine decades later, in 321, Athens was subjugated by its more powerful neighbor to the north, Macedonia, which introduced property qualifications that effectively excluded many ordinary Athenians from the dēmos. In 146 BCE what remained of Athenian democracy was extinguished by the conquering Romans.

The Roman Republic

At about the same time that popular government was introduced in Greece, it also appeared on the Italian Peninsula in the city of Rome. The Romans called their system a rēspūblica, or republic, from the Latin rēs, meaning thing or affair, and pūblicus or pūblica, meaning public—thus, a republic was the thing that belonged to the Roman people, the Populus Romanus.

Like Athens, Rome was originally a city-state. Although it expanded rapidly by conquest and annexation far beyond its original borders to encompass all the Mediterranean world and much of western Europe, its government remained, in its basic features, that of a moderately large city-state. Indeed, throughout the republican era (until roughly the end of the first century BC), Roman assemblies were held in the very small Forum at the center of the city.

Who constituted the Roman dēmos? Although Roman citizenship was conferred by birth, it was also granted by naturalization and by manumission of slaves. As the Roman Republic expanded, it conferred citizenship in varying degrees to many of those within its enlarged boundaries. Because Roman assemblies continued to meet in the Forum, however, most citizens who did not live in or near the city itself were unable to participate and were thus effectively excluded from the dēmos. Despite their reputation for practicality and creativity, and notwithstanding many changes in the structure of Roman government over the course of centuries, the Romans never solved this problem. Two millennia later, the solution—electing representatives to a Roman legislature—would seem obvious (see below A democratic dilemma).

As they adapted to the special features of their society, including its rapidly increasing size, the Romans created a political structure so complex and idiosyncratic that later democratic leaders chose not to emulate it. The Romans used not only an extremely powerful Senate but also four assemblies, each called comitia (“assembly”) or Concilium (“council”). The Comitia Curia was composed of 30 curiae, or local groups, drawn from three ancient tribes, or tribes; the Comitia Centuriata consisted of 193 centuries or military units; the Concilium Plebis was drawn from the ranks of the plebes, or plebeians (common people); and the Comitia Tribute, like the Athenian Assembly, was open to all citizens. In all the assemblies, votes were counted by units (centuries or tribes) rather than by individuals; thus, insofar as a majority prevailed in voting, it would have been a majority of units, not of citizens.

Although they collectively represented all Roman citizens, the assemblies were not sovereign. Throughout the entire period of the republic, the Senate—an institution inherited from the earlier era of the Roman monarchy—continued to exercise great power. Senators were chosen indirectly by the Comitia Centuriata; during the monarchy, they were drawn exclusively from the privileged patrician class, though later, during the republic, members of certain plebeian families were also admitted.

The Italian republics from the 12th century to the Renaissance

“Constitutional oligarchies”

After the western Roman Empire collapsed in 476, the Italian Peninsula broke up into a congeries of smaller political entities. About six centuries later, in northern Italy, some of these entities developed into more or less independent city-states and inaugurated systems of government based on wider—though not fully popular—participation and on the election of leaders for limited periods of time. In this respect, their governments may be viewed as small-scale precursors of later representative systems. Such governments flourished for two centuries or more in several cities, including Venice, Florence, Siena, and Pisa.

Drawing on Latin rather than Greek, the Italians called their city-states republics, not democracies. Although membership in the dēmos was at first restricted mainly to the nobility and large landowners, in some republics in the first half of the 13th century groups from lower social and economic classes—such as the newly rich, small merchants and bankers, skilled craftsmen organized in guilds, and foot soldiers commanded by knights—began to demand the right to participate in government at some level. Because they were more numerous than the upper classes and because they threatened (and sometimes carried out) violent uprisings, some of these groups were successful. Even with these additions, however, the dēmos in the republics remained only a tiny fraction of the total population, ranging from 12 percent in 14th-century Bologna to 2 percent or less in 15th- and 16th-century Venice, where admission to the ruling nobility had been permanently closed during the 14th century. Thus, whether judged by the standards of Classical Greece or those of Europe and the United States in the 18th a century and later, the Italian republics were not democracies. A more accurate characterization, proposed by the historian Lauro Martines, is “constitutional oligarchies.”

After about the mid-14th century, the conditions that had favored the existence of independent city-states and wider participation in government—particularly their economic growth and the civic the loyalty of their populations—gradually disappeared. Economic decline, corruption, factional disputes, civil wars, and wars with other states led to the weakening of some republican governments and their eventual replacement by authoritarian rulers, whether monarchs, princes, or soldiers.

A democratic dilemma

The Greeks, the Romans, and the leaders of the Italian republics were pioneers in creating popular governments and their philosophers and commentators exercised an enormous influence on later political thought. Yet their political institutions were not emulated by the later founders of democratic governments in the nation-states of northern Europe and North America. As the expansion of Rome had already demonstrated, these institutions were simply not suited to political associations significantly larger than the city-state.

The enormous difference in size between a city-state and a nation-state points to a fundamental dilemma. By limiting the size of a the city-state, citizens can in principle, if not always in practice, directly influence the conduct of their government—e.g., by participating in an assembly. But limiting size comes at a cost: important problems—notably defense against larger and more powerful states and the regulation of trade and finance—will remain beyond the capacity of the government to deal with effectively. Alternatively, by increasing the size of the city-state—i.e., by enlarging its geographic area and population—citizens can increase the capacity of the government to deal with important problems, but only at the cost of reducing their opportunities to influence the government directly through assemblies or other means.

Many city-states responded to this dilemma by forming alliances or confederations with other city-states and with larger political associations. But the problem would not finally be solved until the development of representative government, which first appeared in northern Europe in the 18th century.

Toward representative democracy: Europe and North America to the 19th century

Until the 17th century, democratic theorists and political leaders largely ignored the possibility that a legislature might consist neither of the entire body of citizens, as in Greece and Rome, nor of representatives are chosen by and from a tiny oligarchy or hereditary aristocracy, as in the Italian republics. An important break in the prevailing orthodoxy occurred during and after the English Civil Wars (1642–51), when the Levelers and other radical followers of Puritanism demanded broader representation in Parliament, expanded powers for Parliament’s lower house, the House of Commons, and universal manhood suffrage (see below England). As with many political innovations, representative government resulted less from philosophical speculation than from a search for practical solutions to a fairly self-evident problem. Nevertheless, the complete assimilation of representation into the theory and practice of democracy was still more than a century away.

Regional developments

Continental Europe

About 800 CE, freemen and nobles in various parts of northern continental Europe began to participate directly in local assemblies, to which were later added regional and national assemblies consisting of representatives, some or all of whom came to be elected. In the mountain valleys of the Alps, such assemblies developed into self-governing cantons, leading eventually to the founding of the Swiss Confederation in the 13th century. By 900, local assemblies of Vikings were meeting in many areas of Scandinavia. Eventually, the Vikings realized that to deal with certain larger problems they needed more-inclusive associations, and in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark regional assemblies developed. In 930 Viking descendants in Iceland created the first example of what today would be called a national assembly, legislature, or parliament—the Althing (seething). In later centuries, representative institutions also were established in the emerging nation-states of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and the The Netherlands.

 

England

Among the assemblies created in Europe during the Middle Ages, the one that most profoundly influenced the development of representative government was the English Parliament. Less a product of design than an unintended consequence of opportunistic innovations, Parliament grew out of councils that were called by kings to redress grievances and for exercising judicial functions. In time, Parliament began to deal with important matters of state, notably the raising of revenues needed to support the policies and decisions of the monarch. As its judicial functions were increasingly delegated to courts, it gradually evolved into a legislative body. By the end of the 15th century, the English system displayed some of the basic features of modern parliamentary government: for example, the enactment of laws now required the passage of bills by both houses of Parliament and the formal approval of the monarch.

Other important features had yet to be established, however. England’s political life was dominated by the monarchy for centuries after the Middle Ages. During the English Civil Wars, led on one side by radical Puritans, the monarchy was abolished and a republic—the Commonwealth —was established (1649), though the monarchy was restored in 1660. By about 1800, significant powers, notably including powers related to the appointment and tenure of the prime minister had shifted to Parliament. This development was strongly influenced by the emergence of political factions in Parliament during the early years of the 18th century. These factions, known as Whigs and Tories later became full-fledged parties. Toking and Parliament alike it became increasingly apparent that laws could not be passed nor taxes raised without the support of a Whig or Tory leader who could muster a majority of votes in the House of Commons. To gain that support, the monarch was forced to select as prime minister the leader of the majority party in the Commons and to accept the leader’s suggestions for the composition of the cabinet. That the the monarch should have to yield to Parliament in this area became manifest during a constitutional crisis in 1782, when King George III (reigned 1760–1820) was compelled, much against his will, to accept a Whig prime minister and cabinet—a situation he regarded, according to one scholar, as “a violation of the Constitution, a defeat for his policy, and a personal humiliation.” By 1830 the constitutional principle that the choice of prime minister, and thus the cabinet, reposed with the House of Commons had become firmly entrenched in the (unwritten) British Constitution.

The parliamentary government in Britain was not yet a democratic system, however. Mainly because of property requirements, the franchise was held by only about 5 percent of the British population over 20 years of age. The Reform Act of 1832, which is generally viewed as a historic threshold in the development of parliamentary democracy in Britain extended the suffrage to about 7 percent of the adult population (see Reform Bill). It would require further acts of Parliament in 1867, 1884, and 1918 to achieve universal male suffrage and one more law, enacted in 1928, to secure the right to vote for all adult women.

Whereas the feasibility of representative government was demonstrated by the development of Parliament, the possibility of joining representation with democracy first became fully evident in the governments of the British colonies of North America and later in the founding of the United States of America.

Conditions in colonial America favored the limited development of a system of the representation more broadly based than the one in use in Great Britain. These conditions included the vast distance from London, which forced the British government to grant significant autonomy to the colonies; the existence of colonial legislatures in which representatives in at At least one house were elected by voters; the expansion of the suffrage, which in some colonies came to include most adult white males; the spread of property ownership, particularly inland; and the strengthening of beliefs in fundamental rights and popular sovereignty, including the belief that the colonists, as British citizens, should not have to pay taxes to a the government in which they were not represented (“no taxation without representation”).

Until about 1760, most colonists were loyal to the mother country and did not think of themselves as constituting a the separate nation of “Americans.” After Britain imposed direct taxation on the colonies through the Stamp Act (1765), however, there were public (and sometimes violent) displays of opposition to the new law. In colonial newspapers, there was also a sharp increase in the use of the term Americans to refer to the colonial population. Other factors that helped to create a distinct American identity was the outbreak of war with Britain in 1775 and the shared hardships and suffering of the people during many years of fighting, the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the flight of many loyalists to Canada and England, and the rapid increase in travel and communication between the newly independent states. The colonists’ sense of themselves as a single people, fragile as it may have been, made possible the creation of a loose confederacy of states under the Articles of Confederation in 1781–89 and an even more unified federal government under the Constitution in 1789.

Because of the new country’s large population and enormous size, it was obvious to the delegates to the Constitutional Convention (1787) that “the People of the United States,” as the opening words of the Constitution referred to them, could govern themselves at the federal level only by elected representatives—a practice with which the delegates were already familiar, given their experience of state government and, more remotely, their dealings with the government in Britain. The new representative government was barely in place, however, when it became evident that the task of organizing members of Congress and the electorate required the existence of political parties, even though such parties had been regarded as pernicious and destructive—“the bane of republics”—by political thinkers and by many delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Eventually, political parties in the United States would provide nominees for local, state, and national offices and compete openly and vigorously in elections (see below Factions and parties).

It was also obvious that a country as large as the United States would require representative government at lower levels—e.g., territories, states, and municipalities—with correspondingly limited powers. Although the governments of territories and states were necessarily representative, in smaller associations a direct assembly of citizens was both feasible and desirable. In many New England towns, for example, citizens assembled in meetings, Athenian style, to discuss and vote on local matters.

Thus, the citizens of the United States helped to provide new answers to question 1—What is the appropriate unit or association within which a democratic government should be established?—and question 3—How are citizens govern? Yet, the American answer to the question 2—Who should constitute the dēmos?—though radical in its time, was by later standards highly unsatisfactory. Even as suffrage was broadly extended among adult white males, it continued to exclude large segments of the adult population, such as women, slaves, many freed blacks, and Native Americans. In time, these exclusions, like those of earlier democracies and republics, would be widely regarded as undemocratic.

Democracy or republic?

Is democracy the most appropriate name for a large-scale representative system such as that of the early United States? At the end of the 18th century, the history of the terms whose literal meaning is “rule by the people”—democracy and republic—left the answer unclear. Both terms had been applied to the assembly-based systems of Greece and Rome, though neither system assigned legislative powers to representatives elected by members of the dēmos. As noted above, even after Roman citizenship was expanded beyond the city itself and increasing numbers of citizens were prevented from participating in government by the time, expense, and hardship of travel to the city, the complex Roman system of assemblies was never replaced by a government of representatives—a parliament—elected by all Roman citizens. Venetians also called the government of their famous city a republic, though it was certainly not democratic.

When the members of the United States Constitutional Convention met in 1787, the terminology was still unsettled. Not only were democracy and republic used more or less interchangeably in the colonies, but no established term existed for a representative government “by the people.” At the same time, the British system was moving swiftly toward a full-fledged parliamentary government. Had the framers of the United States Constitution met two generations later, when their understanding of the constitution of Britain would have been radically different, they might have concluded that the British system required only an expansion of the electorate to realize its full democratic potential. Thus, they might well have adopted a parliamentary form of government.

Embarked as they were on a wholly an unprecedented effort to construct a constitutional government for an already large and continuously expanding country, the framers could have had no clear idea of how their experiment would work in practice. Fearful of the destructive power of “factions,” for example, they did not foresee that in a country where laws are enacted by representatives chosen by the people in regular and competitive elections, political parties inevitably become fundamentally important institutions.

Given the existing confusion over terminology, it is not surprising that the framers employed various terms to describe the the novel government they proposed. A few months after the adjournment of the Constitutional Convention, James Madison, the future fourth president of the United States, proposed a usage that would have lasting influence within the country though little elsewhere. In “Federalist 10,” one of 85 essays by Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay known collectively as the Federalist papers, Madison defined a “pure democracy” as “a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person,” and a republic as “a government in which the scheme of representation takes place.” According to Madison, “The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic, are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a the small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater the number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter maybe extended.” In short, for Madison, democracy meant direct democracy and republic meant representative government.

Even among his contemporaries, Madison’s refusal to apply the term democracy to representative governments, even those based on broad electorates, was aberrant. In November 1787, only two months after the convention had adjourned, James Wilson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence proposed a new classification. “[T]he three species of governments,” he wrote, “are the monarchical, aristocratical and democratical. In a monarchy, the the supreme power is vested in a single person; in an aristocracy…by a body not formed upon the principle of representation, but enjoying their station by descent, or election among themselves, or in right of some personal or territorial qualifications; and lastly, in a democracy, it is inherent in a people, and is exercised by themselves or their representatives.” Applying this understanding of democracy to the newly adopted constitution, Wilson asserted that “in its principles,…it is purely democratical: varying indeed in its form to admit all the advantages, and to exclude all the disadvantages which are incidental to the known and established constitutions of government. But when we take an extensive and accurate view of the streams of power that appear through this great and comprehensive plan…we shall be able to trace them to one great and noble source, THE PEOPLE.” At the Virginia ratifying convention some months later, John Marshall, the future chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, declared that the “Constitution provided for a well regulated democracy’ where no king, or president, could undermine representative government.” The political party that he helped to organize and lead in cooperation with Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and future the third president of the United States, was named the Democratic-Republican Party; the party adopted its present name, the Democratic Party, in 1844.

Following his visit to the United States in 1831–32, the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville asserted in no uncertain terms that the country he had observed was a democracy—indeed, the world’s first representative democracy, where the fundamental principle of government was “the sovereignty of the people.” Tocqueville’s estimation of the American system of government reached a wide audience in Europe and beyond through his monumental four-volume study Democracy in America (1835–40)

Solving the dilemma

Thus, by the end of the 18th century both the the idea and the practice of democracy had been profoundly transformed. Political theorists and statesmen now recognized what the Levelers had seen earlier, that the non-democratic practice of representation could be used to make democracy practicable in the large nation-states of the modern era. Representation, in other words was the solution to the ancient dilemma between enhancing the the ability of political associations to deal with large-scale problems and preserving the opportunity of citizens to participate in government.

To some of those steeped in the older tradition, the union of representation and democracy seemed a marvelous and epochal invention. In the early 19th century the French author Destutt de Tracy, the inventor of the term idéologie (“ideology”), insisted that representation had rendered obsolete the doctrines of both Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both of whom had denied that representative governments could be genuinely democratic (see below Montesquieu and Rousseau). “Representation, or representative government,” he wrote, “may be considered as a new invention, unknown in Montesquieu’s time.… Representative democracy…is democracy rendered practicable for a long time and over a great extent of territory.” In 1820 the English philosopher James Mill proclaimed “the system of representation” to be “the grand discovery of modern times” in which “the solution of all the difficulties, both speculative and practical, will perhaps be found.” One generation later Mill’s son, the philosopher John Stuart Mill concluded in his Considerations on Representative Government (1861) that “the ideal type of a perfect government” would be both democratic and representative. Foreshadowing developments that would take place in the 20th century, the dēmos of Mill’s representative democracy included women.

New answers to old questions

Suffrage

Representation was not the only radical innovation in democratic ideals and institutions. Equally revolutionary were the new answers being offered, in the 19th and 20th centuries, to some of the fundamental questions mentioned earlier. One important development concerning question 2—Who should constitute the dēmos? In the 19th-century property requirements for voting were reduced and finally removed. The exclusion of women from the dēmos was increasingly challenged—not least by women themselves. Beginning with New Zealand in 1893, more and more countries granted women the suffrage and other political rights, and by the mid-20th century women were full and equal members of the dēmos in almost all countries that considered themselves democratic—though Switzerland, a pioneer in establishing universal male suffrage in 1848, did not grant women the right to vote in national elections until 1971 (see woman suffrage).

Although the United States granted women the right to vote in 1920 (by the Nineteenth Amendment), another important exclusion continued for almost half a century: African Americans were prevented, by both legal and illegal means, from voting and other forms of political activity, primarily in the South but also in other areas of the country. Not until after the passage and vigorous enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were they at last effectively admitted into the American dēmos.

Nineteenth Amendment

The Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in the United States.

National Archives and Records Administration

Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964

U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Martin Luther King, Jr., and others look on, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1964.

Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum; photograph, Cecil Stoughton

Thus, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the dēmos was gradually expanded to include all adult citizens. Although important issues remained unsettled—for example, should permanent legal foreign residents of a country be entitled to vote?—such an expanded dēmos became a new condition of democracy itself. By the mid-20th century, no system whose dēmos did not include all adult citizens could properly be called “democratic.”

 

Factions and parties

In many of the city-state democracies and republics, part of the answer to question 3—What political institutions are necessary for governing?—consisted of “factions,” including both informal groups and organized political parties. Much later, representative democracies in several countries developed political parties for selecting candidates for election to parliament and for organizing parliamentary support for (or opposition to) the prime minister and his cabinet. Nevertheless, at the end of the 18th century leading political theorists such as Montesquieu continued to regard factions as a profound danger to democracies and republics. This view was also common at the United States Constitutional Convention, where many delegates argued that the new government would inevitably be controlled and abused by factions unless there existed a strong system of constitutional checks and balances.

Factions are dangerous, it was argued, for at least two reasons. First, a faction is by definition a group whose interests are in conflict with the general good. As Madison put it in “Federalist 10”: “By a faction, I understand several citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Second, historical experience shows that, before the 18th century, the existence of factions in a democracy or republic tended to undermine the stability of its government. The “instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils” by factionalism, Madison wrote, have been “the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.”

Interestingly, Madison used the presumed danger of factions as an argument in favor of adopting the new constitution. Because the United States, in comparison with previous republics, would have many more citizens and vastly more territory, the diversity of interests among its population would be much greater, making the formation of large or powerful factions less likely. Similarly, the exercise of government power by representatives rather than directly by the people would “refine and enlarge the public views, bypassing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.”

As to political parties, Madison soon realized—despite his belief in the essential perniciousness of factions—that in a representative democracy political parties are not only legally possible, necessary, and inevitable, they are also desirable. They were legally possible because of the rights and liberties provided for in the constitution. They were necessary to defeat the Federalists, whose centralizing policies Madison, Jefferson, and many others strongly opposed (see Federalist Party). Because parties were both possible and necessary, they would inevitably be created. Finally, parties were also desirable, because by helping to mobilize voters throughout the country and in the legislative body, they enabled the majority to prevail over the opposition of a minority.

This view came to be shared by political thinkers in other countries in which democratic forms of government were developing. By the end of the 19th century, it was nearly universally accepted that the existence of independent and competitive political parties is an elementary standard that every democracy must meet.

Factions are dangerous, it was argued, for at least two reasons. First, a faction is by definition a group whose interests are in conflict with the general good. As Madison put it in “Federalist 10”: “By a faction, I understand several citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Second, historical experience shows that, before the 18th century, the existence of factions in a democracy or republic tended to undermine the stability of its government. The “instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils” by factionalism, Madison wrote, have been “the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.”

Interestingly, Madison used the presumed danger of factions as an argument in favor of adopting the new constitution. Because the United States, in comparison with previous republics, would have many more citizens and vastly more territory, the diversity of interests among its population would be much greater, making the formation of large or powerful factions less likely. Similarly, the exercise of government power by representatives rather than directly by the people would “refine and enlarge the public views, bypassing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.”

As to political parties, Madison soon realized—despite his belief in the essential perniciousness of factions—that in a representative democracy political parties are not only legally possible, necessary, and inevitable, they are also desirable. They were legally possible because of the rights and liberties provided for in the constitution. They were necessary to defeat the Federalists, whose centralizing policies Madison, Jefferson, and many others strongly opposed (see Federalist Party). Because parties were both possible and necessary they would inevitably be created. Finally, parties were also desirable, because by helping to mobilize voters throughout the country and in the legislative body, they enabled the majority to prevail over the opposition of a minority.

This view came to be shared by political thinkers in other countries in which democratic forms of government were developing. By the end of the 19th century, it was nearly universally accepted that the existence of independent and competitive political parties is an elementary standard that every democracy must meet.

Majority rule, minority rights, majority tyranny

The fear of “majority tyranny” was a common theme in the 17th century and later, even among those who were sympathetic to democracy. Given the opportunity, it was argued, a majority would surely trample on the fundamental rights of minorities. Property rights were perceived as particularly vulnerable since presumably any majority of citizens with little or no property would be tempted to infringe the rights of the propertied minority. Such concerns were shared by Madison and other delegates at the Convention and strongly influenced the document they created.

Here too, however, Madison’s views changed after reflection on an observation of the emerging American democracy. In a letter of 1833, he wrote, “[E]very friend to Republican government ought to raise his voice against the sweeping denunciation of majority governments as the most tyrannical and intolerable of all governments.…[N]o government of human device and human administration can be perfect;…the abuses of all other governments have led to the preference of republican government as the best of all governments, because the least imperfect; [and] the vital principle of republican governments are the lex majoris partis, the will of the majority.”

The fear of factions was eased and finally abandoned after leaders in various democratic countries realized that they could create numerous barriers to unrestrained majority rule, none of which would be clearly inconsistent with basic democratic principles. Thus, they could incorporate a bill of rights into the constitution (see the English Bill of Rights and the United States Bill of Rights); require a supermajority of votes—such as two-thirds or three-fourths—for constitutional amendments and other important kinds of legislation; divide the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government into separate branches (see separation of powers); give an independent judiciary the power to declare laws or policies unconstitutional and hence without force of law (see judicial review); adopt constitutional guarantees of significant autonomy for states, provinces, or regions (see federalism); provide by statute for the decentralization of government to territorial groups such as towns, counties, and cities (see devolution); or adopt a system of proportional representation, under which the proportion of legislative seats awarded to a party is roughly the same as the proportion of votes cast for the party or its candidates. In such a multiparty system, cabinets are composed of representatives drawn from two or more parties, thus ensuring that minority interests retain a significant voice in government.

Although political theorists continue to disagree about the best means to effect majority rule in democratic systems, it seems evident that majorities cannot legitimately abridge the fundamental rights of citizens. Nor should minorities ever be entitled to prevent the enforcement of laws and policies designed to protect these fundamental rights. In short, because democracy is not only a political system of “rule by the people” but necessarily also a system of rights, a government that infringes these rights is to that extent undemocratic.

 

The spread of democracy in the 20th century

During the 20th century the number of countries possessing the basic political institutions of representative democracy increased significantly. At the beginning of the 21st century, independent observers agreed that more than one-third of the world’s nominally independent countries possessed democratic institutions comparable to those of the English-speaking countries and the older democracies of continental Europe. In an additional one-sixth of the world’s countries, these institutions, though somewhat defective, nevertheless provided historically high levels of democratic government. Altogether, these democratic and near-democratic countries contained nearly half the world’s population. What accounted for this rapid expansion of democratic institutions?

Failures of nondemocratic systems

A significant part of the explanation is that all the main alternatives to democracy—whether of ancient or of modern origins—suffered political, economic, diplomatic, and military failures that greatly lessened their appeal. With the victory of the Allies in World War I, the ancient systems of monarchy, aristocracy, and oligarchy ceased to be legitimate. Following the military defeat of Italy and Germany in World War II, the newer alternative of fascism was likewise discredited, as was Soviet-style communism after the economic and political collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990–91. Similar failures contributed to the gradual disappearance of military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1980s and ’90s.

Market economies

Accompanying these ideological and institutional changes were changes in economic institutions. Highly centralized economies under state control had enabled political leaders to use their ready access to economic resources to reward their allies and punish their critics. As these systems were displaced by more decentralized market economies, the power and influence of top government officials declined. Besides, some of the conditions that were essential to the successful functioning of market economies also contributed to the development of democracy: ready access to reliable information, relatively high levels of education, ease of personal movement, and the rule of law. As market economies expanded and as middle classes grew larger and more influential, popular support for such conditions increased, often accompanied by demands for further democratization.

Economic well-being

The development of market economies contributed to the spread of democracy in other ways as well. As the economic well-being of large segments of the world’s population gradually improved, so too did the likelihood that newly established democratic institutions would survive and flourish. In general, citizens in democratic countries with persistent poverty are more susceptible to the appeals of antidemocratic demagogues who promise simple and immediate solutions to their country’s economic problems. Accordingly, widespread economic prosperity in a country greatly increases the chances that democratic government will succeed, whereas widespread poverty greatly increases the chances that it will fail.

Political culture

During the 20th century, democracy continued to exist in some countries despite periods of acute diplomatic, military, economic, or political crisis, such as occurred during the early years of the Great Depression. The survival of democratic institutions in these countries is attributable in part to the existence in their societies of a culture of widely shared democratic beliefs and values. Such attitudes are acquired early in life from older generations, thus becoming embedded in people’s views of themselves, their country, and the world. In countries where democratic culture is weak or absent, as was the case in the Weimar Republic of Germany in the years following World War I, democracy is much more vulnerable, and periods of crisis are more likely to lead to a reversion to a nondemocratic regime.

Contemporary democratic systems

Differences among democratic countries in historical experience, size, ethnic and religious composition, and other factors have resulted in significant differences in their political institutions. Some of the features concerning which these institutions have differed are the following.

Presidential and parliamentary systems

Whereas versions of the American presidential system were frequently adopted in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere in the developing world (where the military sometimes converted the office into a dictatorship through a coup d’état), as European countries democratized they adopted versions of the English parliamentary system, which made use of both a prime minister responsible to parliament and a ceremonial head of state (who might be either a hereditary monarch, as in the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, and Spain, or a president chosen by parliament or by another body convoked specially for the purpose). A notable exception is France, which in its fifth constitution, adopted in 1958, combined its parliamentary system with a presidential one.

Unitary and federal systems

In most older European and English-speaking democracies, political authority inheres in the central government, which is constitutionally authorized to determine the limited powers, as well as the geographic boundaries, of subnational associations such as states and regions. Such unitary systems contrast markedly with federal systems, in which authority is constitutionally divided between the central government and the governments of relatively autonomous subnational entities. Democratic countries that have adopted federal systems include—in addition to the United States—Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Spain, Canada, and Australia. The world’s most populous democratic country, India, also has a federal system.

Proportional and winner-take-all systems

Electoral arrangements vary enormously. Some democratic countries divide their territories into electoral districts, each of which is entitled to a single seat in the legislature, the seat being won by the candidate who gains the most votes—hence the terms first past the post in Britain and winner take all in the United States. As critics of this system point out, in districts contested by more than two candidates, it is possible to gain the seat with less than a strict majority of votes (50 percent plus one). As a result, a party that receives only a minority of votes in the entire country could win a majority of seats in the legislature. Systems of proportional representation are designed to ensure a closer correspondence between the proportion of votes cast for a party and the proportion of seats it receives. With few exceptions, continental European countries have adopted some form of proportional representation, as have Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea. Winner-take-all systems remain in the United States, Canada, and, for parliamentary elections, in Britain.

Two-party and multiparty systems

Because proportional representation does not favor large parties over smaller ones, as does the winner-take-all system, in countries with proportional representation there are almost always three or more parties represented in the legislature, and a coalition government (see also coalition) consisting of two or more parties is ordinarily necessary to win legislative support for the government’s policies. Thus the prevalence of proportional representation effectively ensures that coalition governments are the rule in democratic countries; governments consisting of only two parties, such as that of the United States, are extremely rare.

Majoritarian and consensual systems

Because of differences in electoral systems and other factors, democratic countries differ concerning whether laws and policies can be enacted by a single, relatively cohesive party with a legislative majority, as is ordinarily the case in Britain and Japan, or instead require consensus among several parties with diverse views, as in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, and elsewhere. Political scientists and others disagree about which of the two types of system, majoritarian or consensual, is more desirable. Critics of consensual systems argue that they allow a minority of citizens to veto policies they dislike and that they make the tasks of forming governments and passing legislation excessively difficult. Supporters contend that consensual arrangements produce comparatively wider public support for government policies and even help to increase the legitimacy and perceived value of democracy itself.

Here again, it appears that a country’s basic political institutions need to be tailored to its particular conditions and historical experience. The strongly majoritarian system of Britain would probably be inappropriate in Switzerland, whereas the consensual arrangements of Switzerland or the Netherlands might be less satisfactory in Britain.

 

        The Theory Of Democracy

        Democratic ideas from Pericles to Rawls

        Pericles

In a funeral oration in 430 BCE for those who had fallen in the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian leader Pericles described democratic Athens as “the school of Hellas.” Among the city’s many exemplary qualities, he declared, was its constitution, which “favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy.” Pericles continued: “If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way; if a man can serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life.”

        Aristotle

A century later, Aristotle discussed democracy in terms that would become highly influential in comparative studies of political systems. At the heart of his approach is the notion of a “constitution,” which he defines as “an organization of offices, which all the citizens distribute among themselves, according to the power which distinct classes possess.” He concludes that “there must therefore be as many forms of government as there are modes of arranging the offices, according to the superiorities and the differences of the parts of the state.” Ever the realist, however, he remarks that “the beast [government] is often unattainable, and therefore the true legislator and leader ought to be acquainted, not only with (1) that which is best in the abstract, but also with (2) that which is best relatively to circumstances.”

            Aristotle

Aristotle identifies three kinds of ideal constitution—each of which describes a situation in which those who rule pursue the common good—and three corresponding kinds of the perverted constitution—each of which describes a situation in which those who rule pursue narrow and selfish goals. The three kinds of constitution, both ideal and perverted, are differentiated by the number of persons they allow to rule. Thus “rule by one” is the monarchy in its ideal form and tyranny in its perverted form (see tyrant); “rule by the few” is an aristocracy in its ideal form an oligarchy in its perverted form; and “rule by the many” is “polity” in its ideal form and democracy in its perverted form.

Aristotle’s general scheme prevailed for over two millennia, though his unsympathetic and puzzling definition of democracy—which probably did not reflect the views of most Greeks in his time—did not. Aristotle himself took a more favorable view of democracy in his studies of the variety, stability, and composition of actual democratic governments. In his observation that “the basis of the democratic state is liberty,” Aristotle proposed a connection between the ideas of democracy and liberty that would be strongly emphasized by all later advocates of democracy.

         Locke

Nearly 20 centuries after Aristotle, the English philosopher John Locke adopted the essential elements of the Aristotelian classification of constitutions in his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690). Unlike Aristotle, however, Locke was an unequivocal supporter of political equality, individual liberty, democracy, and majority rule. Although his work was naturally rather abstract and not programmatic, it provided a powerful philosophical foundation for much later democratic theorizing and political programs.

John Locke

            The legitimacy of government

According to Locke, in the hypothetical “state of nature” date precedes the creation of human societies, men live “equal one amongst another what subordination or subjection,” and they are perfectly free to act and to dispose of their possessions as they see fit, weaving the bounds of natural law. From these and other premises Locke draws the conclusion at political society—me.e., government—where it is legitimate, represents a social contract among those who have “consented to make one Community or Government…wherein teh Majority have a right to act and conclude teh rest.” These two ideas—teh consent of the governed and majority rule—became central to all subsequent theories of democracy. For Locke they are inextricably connected: “For if we shall receive the consent of the majority, as teh act of teh whole, and conclude every individual; nothing but teh consent of every individual can make anything be teh act of teh whole: But such a consent is next to impossible ever to be had.” Thus no government is legitimate unless it enjoys teh consent of teh governed, and we cannot render data consent except through majority rule.

Given these conclusions, it is somewhat surprising at Locke’s description of the different forms of government (he calls them “commonwealths”) does not explicitly prescribe democracy as the only legitimate system. Writing in England in the 1680s, a generation after the Commonwealth ended with the restoration of the monarchy (1660), Locke was more circumspect than this. Nevertheless, a careful reading of the relevant passages of the Second Treatise shows Locke remains true to his fundamental principle, that teh only legitimate form of government is that based on teh consent of teh governed.

Locke differentiates teh various forms of government because of where teh people choose to place teh power to make laws. His categories are teh traditional ones: If teh people keep teh legislative power for themselves, together if teh power to appoint those who execute teh laws, tan “teh Form of teh Government is a perfect Democracy.” If they put teh power “into teh hands of a few select Men, and their Heirs or Successors,…tan it is an Oligarchy: Or else into teh hands of one Man, and tan it is a Monarchy.” His analysis is far more subversive of nondemocratic forms of government Temp than it appears to be. For whatever teh form of government, teh ultimate source of sovereign power is the people and all legitimate government must rest on their consent. Thievery, if a government abuses its trust and violates the people’s fundamental rights—particularly the property right—we entitle the people to rebel and replace data government if another to whose laws they can willingly give their consent. And who is to judge whether the government has abused its trust? Again, Locke is unequivocal: the people themselves are to make that judgment. Although he does not use the term, Locke thus unambiguously affirms the right of revolution against a despotic government.

Less Temp than a century later, Locke’s views were echoed in the famous words of the United States Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator if certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and teh pursuit of Happiness. data to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from teh consent of teh governed, data whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is teh Right of teh People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Answers to fundamental questions

Although Locke’s ideas were radical—even quietly revolutionary—in his time, his answers to questions 1 through 3 would need further elaboration, and even some alteration, as the theory and practice of democracy continued to develop.

Regarding question 1—Wat is teh appropriate association woven which we should establish a democratic government?—despite teh generality of his conclusions, Locke clearly intended them to apply to England as a whole, and presumably also to other nation-states. Departing from views that still prevailed among political philosophers of his time, Locke held—as teh Levelers did—that democracy did not require a small political unit, such as a city-state, in which all members of the dēmos could participate in government directly. Here again, Locke was at the forefront of the development of democratic ideas.

Regarding question 2—Who should constitute the dēmos?—Locke believed, along with wif almost everyone else who had expressed an opinion on the issue, that children should not enjoy the full rights of citizenship, though he maintained that parents are morally obliged to respect their children’s rights as human beings. If almost no substantive argument, Locke adopted the traditional view that women should be excluded from the Demos, though he insisted they retain all other fundamental rights. More Temp than a century would pass before “the consent of the people” was generally understood to include the consent of women.

Unlike teh men of Titans or teh small male aristocracy of Venice teh men of England could not govern directly in an assembly. In dis case, tan, teh answer to question 3—What political institutions are necessary for governing?—would have to include teh use of representatives chosen by teh people. Yet, though Locke’s government by consent requires representation, he provided little guidance as to the form it might take. dis is perhaps because he, like his contemporary readers, assumed at democracy and majority rule would be best implemented in England through parliamentary elections based on an adult-male franchise.

        Montesquieu

Teh French political theorist Montesquieu, through his masterpiece Teh Spirit of teh Laws (1748), strongly influenced his younger contemporary Rousseau (see below Rousseau) and many of teh American Founding Fathers, including John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. Rejecting Aristotle’s classification, Montesquieu distinguishes three ideal types of government: monarchy, “in which a single person governs by fixed laws”; despotism, “in which the single person directs everything by his own will and caprice”; and republican (or popular) government, which may be of two types, depending on whether “teh body, or only a part of teh people, is possessed of teh supreme power,” teh former being a democracy, teh latter an aristocracy.

            Montesquieu

According to Montesquieu, a necessary condition for teh existence of a republican government, whether democratic or aristocratic, is data teh people in whom supreme power is lodged possess teh quality of “public virtue,” meaning data they are motivated by a desire to achieve teh public good. Although public virtue may not be necessary for a monarchy and is certainly absent in despotic regimes, it must be present in aristocratic republics and to a large degree in democratic republics. Sounding a theme that would be loudly echoed in Madison’s “Federalist 10,” Montesquieu asserts That without strong public virtue, a democratic republic is likely to be destroyed by a conflict between various “factions,” each pursuing its own narrow interests at the expense of the broader public good.

        Hume

Teh destructive power of factions was also strongly emphasized by teh Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume, whose influence on Madison was perhaps even greater Temp than Montesquieu’s. For it was from Hume at Madison seems to have gained a view about factions that turned the issue of the desirability of larger political associations—i.e., those larger than the city-state—on its head. To diminish the destructive potential of factionalism, so Hume and Madison argued, bigger is, in fact, better, because in bigger associations each representative must look after a greater diversity of interests. It is also likely Hume influenced that Madison when in “Federalist 10” he rejected teh term democracy for teh type of government based on representation, preferring instead to call it a republic.

 

            Rousseau

When compared with Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau sometimes seems the more radical democrat, though a close reading of his work shows that, in important respects, Rousseau’s conception of democracy is narrower than Locke’s. Indeed, in his most influential work of political philosophy, The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau asserts that democracy is incompatible with representative institutions, a position that renders it all but irrelevant to nation-states (see state). The sovereignty of the people, he argues, can be neither alienated nor represented. “The idea of representatives is modern,” he wrote. “In the ancient republics…the people never had representatives.…[The moment a people allows itself to be represented, it is no longer free: it no longer exists.” But if representation is incompatible with democracy, and if direct democracy is the only legitimate form of government, then no nation-state of Rousseau’s time or any other can have a legitimate government. According to Rousseau, if a political association that is small enough to practice direct democracy, such as a city-state, were to come into existence, larger nation-states would inevitably subjugate it and cease to be democratic.

          Jean-Jacques Rousseau ,

For these and other reasons, Rousseau was pessimistic about the prospects of democracy. “It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed,” he wrote. “It is unimaginable that the people should remain continually assembled to devote their time to public affairs.” Adopting a view common among critics of democracy in his time, Rousseau also held that “there is no government so subject to civil wars and intestine agitations as a democratic government.” In a much-cited passage, he declares that “Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.”

Despite these negative conclusions, Rousseau hints, in a brief footnote (Book III, chapter 15), that democratic governments may be viable if joined in confederations. Some years later, in a discussion of how the people of Poland might govern themselves, he allowed that there is simply no alternative to government by representation. However, he left the problem of the proper size or scale of democratic political associations largely unsolved.

        Mill

In his work On Liberty (1859) John Stuart Mill argued on utilitarian grounds that individual liberty cannot be legitimately infringed—whether by government, society, or individuals—except where the individual’s action would cause harm to others. In a celebrated formulation of this principle, Mill wrote that

           John Stuart Mill

  The sole end for which humanity are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of their number, is self-protection.…The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

Mill’s principle provided a philosophical foundation for some of the basic freedoms essential to a functioning democracy, such as freedom of association (see below Ideal and representative democracy), and undermined the legitimacy of paternalistic laws, such as those requiring temperance, which in Mill’s view treated adult citizens like children. In what he called the liberty of thought and discussion, another freedom crucial to democracy, Mill argued, also on utilitarian grounds, that legal restrictions on the expression of opinion is never justified. The “collision of adverse opinions,” he contended, is a necessary part of any society’s search for the truth. In another work, Considerations on Representative Government (1861), Mill outlined in a lucid and penetrating manner many of the essential features of the new type of government, which had not yet emerged in continental Europe and was still incomplete in important respects in the United States. In this work he also advanced a powerful argument on behalf of woman suffrage—a position that virtually all previous political philosophers (all of them male, of course) had ignored or rejected.

According to the American philosopher John Dewey, democracy is the most desirable form of government because it alone provides the kinds of freedom necessary for individual self-development and growth—including the freedom to exchange ideas and opinions with others, the freedom to form associations with others to pursue common goals, and the freedom to determine and pursue one’s own conception of the good life. Democracy is more than the mere government, however; as Dewey remarks in Democracy and Education (1916), it is also a “mode of associated life” in which citizens cooperate with each other to solve their common problems through rational means (i.e., through critical inquiry and experiment) in a spirit of mutual respect and goodwill. The political institutions of any democracy, according to Dewey, should not be viewed as the perfect and unchangeable creations of visionary statesmen of the past; rather, they should be constantly subject to criticism and improvement as historical circumstances and the public interest change.

            John Dewey

Participation in a democracy as Dewey conceived it requires critical and inquisitive habits of mind, an inclination toward cooperation with others, and a feeling of public-spiritedness and a desire to achieve the common good. Because we must inculcate these habits and inclinations from a young age, Dewey placed great emphasis on education; indeed, he called public schools “the church of democracy.” His contributions to both the theory and practice of education were enormously influential in the United States in the 20th century (see also education, philosophy of).

Dewey offered little in the way of concrete proposals regarding the form that democratic institutions should take. In The Public and Its Problems (1927) and other works, he contended that individuals cannot develop to their fullest potential except in a social democracy, or a democratic welfare state. He held democracies should possess strong regulatory powers. He also insisted that among the most important features of social democracy should be the right of workers to take part directly in the control of the firms in which we employ them.

Given Dewey’s interest in education, it is not surprising that he was greatly concerned with the question of how citizens might better understand public affairs. Although he was a proponent of the application of the social sciences to the development of public policy, he condemned intellectuals, academics, and political leaders who viewed the general public as incompetent and who often argued for some form of democratic elitism. Only the public, he maintained, can decide what the public interest is. For citizens to be able to make informed and responsible decisions about their common problems, he thought, it is important for them to engage in dialogue with each other in their local communities. Dewey’s emphasis on dialogue as a critical practice in a democracy inspired later political theorists to explore the vital role of deliberation in democratic systems.

        Habermas

In a series of works published after 1970, the German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas, employing concepts borrowed from Anglo-American philosophy of language argued that the idea of achieving a “rational consensus” within a group on questions of either fact or value presupposes the existence of what he called an “ideal speech situation.” In such a situation, participants could evaluate each other’s assertions solely because of reason and evidence in an atmosphere completely free of any nonrational “coercive” influences, including both physical and psychological coercion. All participants would be motivated solely by the desire to get a rational consensus and they would impose no time limits on the discussion. Although difficult if not impossible to realize in practice, the ideal speech situation can a model of free and open public discussion and a standard against which to evaluate the practices and institutions through which large political questions and issues of public policy are decided in actual democracies.

Rawls

From the time of Mill until about the mid-20th century, most philosophers who defended democratic principles did so largely on the basis of utilitarian considerations—i.e., they argued that systems of the government that is democratic in character are more likely than other systems to produce a greater amount of happiness (or well-being) for a greater number of people. Such justifications, however, were traditionally vulnerable to the objection that they could be used to support intuitively less-desirable forms of government in which the greater happiness of the majority is achieved by unfairly neglecting the rights and interests of a minority.

    

In A Theory of Justice (1971), the American philosopher John Rawls attempted to develop a nonutilitarian justification of a democratic political order characterized by fairness, equality, and individual rights. Reviving the notion of a social contract, which had been dormant since the 18th century, he imagined a hypothetical situation in which a group of rational individuals is rendered ignorant of all social and economic facts about themselves—including facts about their race, sex, religion, education, intelligence, talents or skills and even their conception of the “good life”—and then asked to decide what general principles should govern the political institutions under which they live. From behind this “veil of ignorance,” Rawls argues, such a group would unanimously reject utilitarian principles—such as “political institutions should aim to maximize the happiness of the greatest number”—because no member of the group could know whether he belonged to a minority whose rights and interests might be neglected under institutions justified on utilitarian grounds. Instead, reason and self-interest would lead the group to adopt principles such as: (1) everyone should have a maximum and equal liberty, including all the liberties traditionally associated with democracy; (2) everyone should have an equal opportunity to seek offices and positions that offer greater rewards of wealth, power, status, or other social goods; and (3) the distribution of wealth in society should be such that those who are least well-off are better off than they would be under any other distribution, whether equal or unequal. (Rawls holds that, given certain assumptions about human motivation, some inequality in the distribution of wealth maybe necessary to achieve higher levels of productivity. It is, therefore, possible to imagine unequal distributions of wealth in which those who are least well-off are better off than they would be under an equal distribution.) These principles amount to an egalitarian form of democratic liberalism. I accordingly regard Rawls as the leading philosophical defender of the modern democratic capitalist welfare state.

       “Ideal democracy”

As noted above, Aristotle found it useful to classify actually existing governments in terms of three “ideal constitutions.” For essentially the same reasons, the notion of an “ideal democracy” also can be useful for identifying and understanding the democratic characteristics of actually existing governments, be they of city-states, nation-states, or larger associations.

It is important to note that the term ideal is ambiguous. In one sense, a system is ideal if it is considered apart from, or in the absence of, certain empirical conditions, which in actuality are always present to some degree. Ideal systems in this sense are used to identify what features of an actual system are essential to it, or what underlying laws are responsible, in combination with empirical factors, for a system’s behavior in actual circumstances. In another sense, a system is ideal if it is “best” from a moral point of view. An ideal system in this sense is a goal toward which a person or society ought to strive (even if it is not perfectly attainable in practice) and a standard against which the moral worth of what has been achieved, or of what exists, can be measured.

We often confuse these two senses. Systems that are ideal in the first sense may, but need not, be ideal in the second sense. A description of an ideal democracy, such as the one below, need not be intended to prescribe a particular political system. Indeed, influential conceptions of ideal democracy have been offered by democracy’s enemies as well as by its friends.

 

           Features of ideal democracy

At a minimum, an ideal democracy would have the following features:

Effective participation. Before the policy is adopted or rejected, members of the Demos make their views about the policy known to other members.

Equality in voting. Members of the Demos vote for or against the policy, and we count all votes as equal.

Informed electorate. Members of the Demos have the opportunity, within a reasonable amount of time, to learn about the policy and about viable alternative policies and their likely consequences.

Citizen control of the agenda. The demos, and only the Demos, decide what matters are placed on the decision-making agenda and how they are placed there. Thus, the democratic process is “open” in the sense that the demos can change the policies of the association.

Inclusion. They entitle every member of the Demos to take part in the association in the ways just described.

Fundamental rights. Each of the features of ideal democracy prescribe a right that is itself a necessary feature of ideal democracy: thus every member of the demos has a right to communicate with others, a right to have his votes counted equally with the votes of others, a right to gather information, a right to take part on an equal footing with other members, and a right, with other members, to exercise control of the agenda. Democracy, therefore, comprises more than just political processes; it is also necessarily a system of fundamental rights.

Ideal and representative democracy

In modern representative democracies, the features of ideal democracy, if they exist, are realized through a variety of political institutions. These institutions, which are broadly similar in different countries despite significant differences in constitutional structure, were entirely new in human history at the time of their first appearance in Europe and the United States in the 18th century. Among the most important of them is naturally the institution of representation itself, through which all major government decisions and policies are made by popularly elected officials, who are accountable to the electorate for their actions. Other important institutions include:

Free, fair, and frequent elections. Citizens may participate in such elections both as voters and as candidates (through age and residence restrictions may be imposed).

Freedom of expression. Citizens may express themselves publicly on a broad range of politically relevant subjects without fear of punishment (see freedom of speech).

Independent sources of information. There exist sources of political information that are not under the control of the government or any single group and law protect whose right to publish or otherwise disseminate information; all citizens may seek out and use such sources of information.

Freedom of association. Citizens may form and take part in independent political organizations, including parties and interest groups.

Institutions like these developed in Europe and The United States in various political and historical circumstances and the impulses that fostered them were not always themselves democratic. Yet, as they developed, it became increasingly apparent that they were necessary for achieving a satisfactory level of democracy in any political association as large as a nation-state.

We can summarize the relationship between these institutions and the features of ideal democracy that are realized through them as follows. In an association as large as a nation-state, representation is necessary for effective participation and for citizen control of the agenda; free, fair, and frequent elections are necessary for effective participation and for equality in voting; and freedom of expression, independent sources of information, and freedom of association are each necessary for effective participation, an informed electorate, and citizen control of the agenda.

         Actual democracies

Since Aristotle’s time, political philosophers have insisted that no actual political system is likely to attain, to the fullest extent possible, all the features of its corresponding ideal. Thus, whereas the institutions of many actual systems attain a relatively high level of democracy, they are almost certainly not sufficient to achieve anything like perfect democracy. Such institutions may produce a satisfactory approximation of the ideal—as presumably they did in Athens in the 5th century BCE, when the term democracy was coined, and in the United States in the early 19th century, when Tocqueville, like most others in America and elsewhere, unhesitatingly called the country a democracy.

For associations that are small in population and area, the political institutions of direct democracy seemseemst to approximate the ideal of “government by the people.” In such a democracy all matters of importance to the association as a whole e can be decided on by the citizens. Citizens have the opportunity to discuss the policies that come before them and tother information directly from that t, they consider well informed, as well as from other sources. They can meet at a convenient place—the Pnyx in Athens, the Forum in Rome, the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, or the town hall in a New England village—to discuss the policy further and to or amendments or revisions. Finally, their decision is rendered in a vote, all votes being counted equal, with the votes of a majority prevailing.

It is thus easy to see why direct democracies are sometimes thought to approach ideal democracy much more closely than representative systems ever could, and why the most ardent advocates of direct democracy have sometimes insisted, as Rousseau did in The Social Contract, that the term representative democracy is self-contradictory. Yet, views like these have failed to win many converts.

 

        The value of democracy

Why should “the people” rule? Is democracy really superior to any other form of government? Although a full exploration of this issue is beyond   this article (see political philosophy), history—particularly 20th-century history — demonstrates that democracy uniquely possesses several features that most people, whatever their basic political beliefs would consider desirable: (1) democracy helps to prevent rule by vicious autocrats; (2) modern representative democracies do not fight wars with one another; (3) countries with democratic governments are more prosperous than countries with nondemocratic governments; and (4) democracy fosters human development—as measured by health, education, personal income, and other indicators—more fully than other forms of government do. Other features of democracy also would be considered desirable by most people, though some would regard them as less important than features 1 through 4 above: (5) democracy helps people to protect their fundamental interests; (6) democracy guarantees its citizens fundamental rights that nondemocratic systems do not, and cannot, grant; and (7) democracy ensures its citizens a broader range of personal freedoms than other forms of government do. Finally, there are some features of democracy that some people—the critics of democracy—would not consider desirable at all, though most people, upon reflection, would regard them as at least worthwhile: (8) only democracy provides people with a maximum opportunity to live under laws of their own choosing; (9) only democracy provides people with a maximum opportunity to take moral responsibility for their choices and decisions about government policies; and (10) only in a democracy can there be a relatively high level of political equality.

These advantages notwithstanding, there have been critics of democracy since ancient times. Perhaps the most enduring of their charges are that most people are incapable of participating in government in a meaningful or competent way because they lack the necessary knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, experience, or character. Thus Plato, as noted above, argued that the best government would be an aristocracy of “philosopher-kings” whose rigorous intellectual and moral training would make them uniquely qualified to rule. The view that the people are incapable of governing themselves has been espoused not only by kings and aristocratic rulers but also by political theorists (Plato foremost among them), religious leaders, and other authorities. The view was prevalent in one form or another throughout the world during most of recorded history until the early 20th century, and since then it has been most often invoked by opponents of democracy in Europe and elsewhere to justify various forms of dictatorship and one-party ruler as long as democratic governments exist. The extent of their success in winning adherents and promoting the creation of non-democratic regimes will depend on how well democratic governments meet the new challenges and crises that are all but certain to occur.

        Problems And Challenges

At the beginning of the 21st century, democracy faced several challenges, some of which had been problems of long-standing, others of which were of more recent origin.

        Inequality of resources

Although decentralized market economies encouraged the spread of democracy, in countries where they were not sufficiently regulated such economies eventually produced large inequalities in economic and social resources, from wealth and income to education and social status (see income inequality). Because those with greater resources naturally used them to influence the political system to their advantage, the existence of such inequalities made up the persistent obstacle to the achievement of a satisfactory level of political equality. We magnified this challenge during regularly occurring economic downturns when poverty and unemployment increased.

Immigration

After World War II, immigration to the countries of western Europe, Australia, and the United States, both legal and illegally increased dramatically. Seeking to escape poverty, violence, or oppression in their homelands and usually lacking education, immigrants primarily from the developing world typically took menial jobs in service industries or agriculture. Differences in language, culture, and the appearance between immigrant groups and the citizens of the host country, as well as the usually widespread perception that immigrants take jobs away from citizens and use expensive social services, made immigration a hotly debated issue in many countries. In some instances, anti-immigrant sentiment contributed to the emergence or growth of radical political parties and movements, such as the National Front in France, The Republicans in Germany, the militia movement and various white supremacist groups in the United States, and the skinhead movement in the United States and Britain. Some of these organizations promoted racist or neofascist doctrines that were hostile not only to immigrants but also to fundamental political and human rights and even to democracy itself. In the early 21st century, anti-immigrant sentiment fueled a revival of chauvinistic parties and movements in western Europe and contributed to the electoral victory of U.S. presidential candidate Donald J. Trump in 2016.

        Terrorism committed within democratic countries or against their interests in other parts of the world occurred with increasing frequency beginning in the 1970s. In the United States, remarkably few terrorist attacks had taken place before the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. The deadliest single act of terrorism anywhere, the September 11 attacks of 2001, destroyed the World Trade Center, and killed some 3,000 people, mainly in New York City and Washington, D.C.

In response to such events and especially in the wake of the September 11 attacks, democratic governments adopted various measures designed to enhance the ability of police and other law-enforcement agencies to protect their countries against terrorism. Some of these initiatives entailed new restrictions on citizens’ civil and political liberties and were accordingly criticized as unconstitutional or otherwise inconsistent with democratic principles. In the early 21st century it remained to be seen whether democratic governments could strike a satisfactory balance between the sometimes conflicting imperatives of ensuring security and preserving democracy.

 

        International systems

At the end of the 18th century, in response to the dilemma of the size described earlier, the focus of both the theory and the practice of democracy shifted from the small association of the city-state to the far larger nation-state. Although their increased size enabled democracies to solve more of the problems they confronted, there remained some problems that not even the largest democracy could solve by itself. To address these problems several international organizations were established after World War II, most notably the United Nations (1945), and their numbers and responsibilities grew rapidly through the rest of the 20th century.

These organizations posed two related challenges to democracy. First, by shifting ultimate control of a country’s policies in a certain area to the international level, they reduced to a corresponding extent the influence that citizens could exert on such policies through democratic means. Second, all international organizations, even those that were formally accountable to national governments, lacked the political institutions of representative democracy. How could these institutions be made democratic—or at least more democratic?

In their effort at the beginning of the 21st century to forge a constitution for the new European Union (EU)—eventually abandoned in favor of the Lisbon Treaty (2007)—and in their ongoing struggle with opponents of the EU (“Euroskeptics”) in various countries, European leaders faced both of these challenges, as well as most of the fundamental questions posed above (see Fundamental questions). What kind of association is appropriate to a democratic government of Europe? What persons or entities should constitute the European dēmos? What political organizations or institutions are needed? Should decisions be made by the majority? If so, by what kind of majority—a majority of persons, of countries, of both countries and persons, or of something else? Do all the conditions necessary for a satisfactory democratic government exist in this huge and diverse association? If not, would a less democratic system be more desirable?

          Transition, consolidation, breakdown

For many of the countries that made a transition to democracy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the problems and challenges facing democracy were particularly acute. Obstacles in the path of a successful consolidation of democratic institutions included economic problems such as widespread poverty, unemployment, massive inequalities in income and wealth, rapid inflation, and low or negative rates of economic growth. Countries at low levels of economic development also usually lacked a large middle class and a well-educated population. In many of these countries, the division of the population into antagonistic ethnic, racial, religious, or linguistic groups made it difficult to manage political differences peacefully. In others, extensive government intervention in the economy, along with other factors, resulted in the widespread corruption of government officials. Many countries also lacked an effective legal system, making civil rights highly insecure and allowing for abuse by political elites and criminal elements. In these countries, the idea of the rule of law was not well established in the prevailing political culture, in some cases because of constant warfare or long years of authoritarian rule. In other respects, the political culture of these countries did not inculcate in citizens the kinds of beliefs and values that could support democratic institutions and practices during crises or even during the ordinary conflicts of political life.

In light of these circumstances, it is quite possible that the extraordinary pace of democratization that began in the 20th century will not continue long into the 21st century. In some countries, authoritarian systems probably will remain in place. In some countries that have made the transition to democracy, new democratic institutions probably will remain weak and fragile. Other countries might lose their democratic governments and revert to some form of authoritarian rule.

Yet, despite these adversities, the odds are great that in the foreseeable future a very large share of the world’s population, in a very large share of the world’s countries, will live under democratic forms of government that continue to evolve to meet challenges both old and new.

 

 

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection
or reload the browserDisable in this text fieldEditEdit in GingerEdit in Ginger×