What Is Democracy? Definition and Examples

  • B.S., Texas A&M University

A democracy is a form of government that empowers the people to exercise political control, limits the power of the head of state, provides for the separation of powers between governmental entities, and ensures the protection of natural rights and civil liberties . In practice, democracy takes many different forms. Along with the two most common types of democracies—direct and representative—variants such as participatory, liberal, parliamentary, pluralist, constitutional, and socialist democracies can be found in use today.

Key Takeaways: Democracy

  • Democracy, literally meaning “rule by the people,” empowers individuals to exercise political control over the form and functions of their government.
  • While democracies come in several forms, they all feature competitive elections, freedom of expression , and protection of individual civil liberties and human rights.
  • In most democracies, the needs and wishes of the people are represented by elected lawmakers who are charged with writing and voting on laws and setting policy.
  • When creating laws and policies, the elected representatives in a democracy strive to balance conflicting demands and obligations to maximize freedom and protect individual rights.

Despite the prominence in the headlines of non-democratic, authoritarian states like China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, democracy remains the world’s most commonly practiced form of government. In 2018, for example, a total of 96 out of 167 countries (57%) with populations of at least 500,000 were democracies of some type. Statics show that the percentage of democracies among the world’s governments has been increasing since the mid-1970s, currently standing just short of its post- World War II high of 58% in 2016.

Democracy Definition

Meaning “rule by the people,” democracy is a system of government that not only allows but requires the participation of the people in the political process to function properly. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln , in his famed 1863 Gettysburg Address may have best-defined democracy as a “…government of the people, by the people, for the people…”

Semantically, the term democracy comes from the Greek words for “people” (dēmos) and “rule” (karatos). However, achieving and preserving a government by the people—a “popular” government—is far more complicated than the concept’s semantic simplicity might imply. In creating the legal framework under which the democracy will function, typically a constitution, several crucial political and practical questions must be answered.

Is “rule by the people” even appropriate for the given state? Do the inherent freedoms of a democracy justify dealing with its complex bureaucracy and electoral processes, or would the streamlined predictability of a monarchy , for example, be preferable?

Assuming a preference for democracy, which residents of the country, state, or town should enjoy the political status of full citizenship? Simply stated, who are the “people” in the “government by the people” equation? In the United States, for example, the constitutionally established doctrine of birthright citizenship provides that any person born on U.S. soil automatically becomes a U.S. citizen. Other democracies are more restrictive in bestowing full citizenship.

Which people within the democracy should be empowered to participate in it? Assuming that only adults are allowed to fully participate in the political process, should all adults be included? For example, until the enactment of the 19th Amendment in 1920, women in the United States were not allowed to vote in national elections. A democracy that excludes too many of the governed from taking part in what is supposed to be their government runs the risk of becoming an aristocracy—government by a small, privileged ruling class—or an oligarchy —government by an elite, typically wealthy, few.

If, as one of the foundational principles of democracy holds, the majority rules, what will a “proper” majority be? A majority of all citizens or a majority of citizens who vote only? When issues, as they inevitably will, divide the people, should the wishes of the majority always prevail, or should, as in the case of the American Civil Rights Movement , minorities be empowered to overcome majority rule? Most importantly, what legal or legislative mechanisms should be created to prevent the democracy from becoming a victim of what one of America’s Founding Fathers , James Madison , called “the tyranny of the majority?”

Finally, how likely is it that a majority of the people will continue to believe that democracy is the best form of government for them? For a democracy to survive it must retain the substantial support of both the people and the leaders they choose. History has shown that democracy is a particularly fragile institution. In fact, of the 120 new democracies that have emerged around the world since 1960, nearly half have resulted in failed states or have been replaced by other, typically more authoritarian forms of government. It is therefore essential that democracies be designed to respond quickly and appropriately to the internal and external factors that will inevitably threaten them.

Democratic Principles

While their opinions vary, a consensus of political scientists agree that most democracies are based on six foundational elements:

  • Popular sovereignty: The principle that the government is created and maintained by the consent of the people through their elected representatives.
  • An Electoral System: Since according to the principle of popular sovereignty, the people are the source of all political power, a clearly defined system of conducting free and fair elections is essential.
  • Public Participation: Democracies rarely survive without the active participation of the people. Health democracies enable and encourage the people to take part in their political and civic processes. 
  • Separation of Powers: Based on a suspicion of power concentrated in a single individual—like a king—or group, the constitutions of most democracies provide that political powers be separated and shared among the various governmental entities.
  • Human Rights: Along with their constitutionally enumerated rights freedoms, democracies protect the human rights of all citizens. In this context, human rights are those rights considered inherent to all human beings, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other considerations.
  • A Rule of Law: Also called due process of law , the rule of law is the principle that all citizens are accountable to laws that are publicly created and equitably enforced in a manner consistent with human rights by an independent judicial system.

Types of Democracy

Throughout history, more types of democracy have been identified than there are countries in the world. According to social and political philosopher Jean-Paul Gagnon, more than 2,234 adjectives have been used to describe democracy. While many scholars refer to direct and representative as the most common of these, several other types of democracies can be found around the world today. While direct democracy is unique, most other recognized types of democracy are variants of representative democracy. These various types of democracy are generally descriptive of the particular values emphasized by the representative democracies that employ them.

Originated in Ancient Greece during the 5th century BCE, direct democracy , sometimes called “pure democracy,” is considered the oldest non-authoritarian form of government. In a direct democracy, all laws and public policy decisions are made directly by a majority vote of the people, rather than by the votes of their elected representatives.

Functionally possible only in small states, Switzerland is the only example of a direct democracy applied on a national level today. While Switzerland is no longer a true direct democracy, any law passed by the popularly elected national parliament can be vetoed by a direct vote of the public. Citizens can also change the constitution through direct votes on amendments. In the United States, examples of direct democracy can be found in state-level recall elections and lawmaking ballot initiatives .

Representative

Also called indirect democracy, representative democracy is a system of government in which all eligible citizens elect officials to pass laws and formulate public policy on their behalf. These elected officials are expected to represent the needs and viewpoints of the people in deciding the best course of action for the nation, state, or other jurisdiction as a whole.

As the most commonly found type of democracy in use today, almost 60% of all countries employ some form of representative democracy including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.

Participatory

In a participatory democracy, the people vote directly on policy while their elected representatives are responsible for implementing those policies. Participatory democracies rely on the citizens in setting the direction of the state and the operation of its political systems. While the two forms of government share similar ideals, participatory democracies tend to encourage a higher, more direct form of citizen participation than traditional representative democracies.

While there are no countries specifically classified as participatory democracies, most representative democracies employ citizen participation as a tool for social and political reform. In the United States, for example, so-called “grassroots” citizen participation causes such as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s have led elected officials to enact laws implementing sweeping social, legal, and political policy changes.

Liberal democracy is loosely defined as a form of representative democracy that emphasizes the principles of classical liberalism —an ideology advocating the protection of individual civil liberties and economic freedom by limiting the power of the government. Liberal democracies employ a constitution, either statutorily codified, as in the United States or uncodified, as in the United Kingdom, to define the powers of the government, provide for a separation of those powers, and enshrine the social contract .

Liberal democracies may take the form of a constitutional republic , like the United States, or a constitutional monarchy , such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Parliamentary

In a parliamentary democracy, the people directly elect representatives to a legislative parliament . Similar to the U.S. Congress , the parliament directly represents the people in making necessary laws and policy decisions for the country.

In parliamentary democracies such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan, the head of government is a prime minister, who is first elected to parliament by the people, then elected prime minister by a vote of the parliament. However, the prime minister remains a member of the parliament and thus plays an active role in the legislative process of creating and passing laws. Parliamentary democracies are typically a feature of a constitutional monarch, a system of government in which the head of state is a queen or king whose power is limited by a constitution.

In a pluralist democracy, no single group dominates politics. Instead, organized groups within the people compete to influence public policy. In political science, the term pluralism expresses the ideology that influence should be spread among different interest groups, rather than held by a single elite group as in an aristocracy. Compared to participatory democracies, in which individuals take part in influencing political decisions, in a pluralist democracy, individuals work through groups formed around common causes hoping to win the support of elected leaders.

In this context, the pluralist democracy assumes that the government and the society as a whole benefit from a diversity of viewpoints. Examples of pluralist democracy can be seen in the impact special interest groups, such as the National Organization for Women , have had on American politics.

Constitutional

While the exact definition continues to be debated by political scientists, constitutional democracy is generally defined as a system of government based on popular sovereignty and a rule of law in which the structures, powers, and limits of government are established by a constitution. Constitutions are intended to restrict the power of the government, typically by separating those powers between the various branches of government, as in the United States’ constitution’s system of federalism . In a constitutional democracy, the constitution is considered to be the “ supreme law of the land .”

Democratic socialism is broadly defined as a system of government based on a socialist economy , in which most property and means of production are collectively, rather than individually, controlled by a constitutionally established political hierarchy—the government. Social democracy embraces government regulation of business and industry as a means of furthering economic growth while preventing income inequality .

While there are no purely socialist governments in the world today, elements of democratic socialism can be seen in Sweden’s provision of free universal health care, education, and sweeping social welfare programs. 

Is America a Democracy

While the word “democracy” does not appear in the United States Constitution, the document provides the basic elements of representative democracy: an electoral system based on majority rule, separation of powers, and a dependence on a rule of law. Also, America’s Founding Fathers used the word often when debating the form and function of the Constitution.  

However, a long-running debate over whether the United States is a democracy or a republic continues today. According to a growing number of political scientists and constitutional scholars, it is both—a “democratic republic.”

Similar to democracy, a republic is a form of government in which the country is governed by the elected representatives of the people. However, since the people do not govern the state themselves, but do so through their representatives, a republic is distinguished from direct democracy.

Professor Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law argues that the governments of democratic republics embrace the principles shared by both republics and democracies. To illustrate his point, Volokh notes that in the United States, many decisions on local and state levels are made by the people through the process of direct democracy, while as in a republic, most decisions at the national level are made by democratically elected representatives.

Brief History

Archeological evidence suggests that disorganized practices at least resembling democracy existed in some parts of the world during prehistoric times, However, the concept of democracy as a form of populist civic engagement emerged during the 5th century BCE in the form of the political system used in some of the city-states of Ancient Greece , most notably Athens . At that time, and for the next several centuries, tribes or city-states remained small enough that if democracy was practiced at all, it took the form of direct democracy. As city-states grew into larger, more heavily populated sovereign nation-states or countries, direct democracy became unwieldy and slowly gave way to representative democracy. This massive change necessitated an entirely new set of political institutions such as legislatures, parliaments, and political parties all designed according to the size and cultural character of the city or country to be governed.

Until the 17th century, most legislatures consisted only of the entire body of citizens, as in Greece, or representatives selected from among a tiny oligarchy or an elite hereditary aristocracy. This began to change during the English Civil Wars from 1642 to 1651 when members of the radical Puritan reformation movement demanded expanded representation in Parliament and the universal right to vote for all male citizens. By the middle 1700s, as the power of the British Parliament grew, the first political parties—the Whigs and Tories—emerged. It soon became obvious that laws could not be passed or taxes levied without the support of the Whig or Tory party representatives in Parliament.

While the developments in the British Parliament showed the feasibility of a representative form of government, the first truly representative democracies emerged during the 1780s in the British colonies of North America and took its modern form with the formal adoption of the Constitution of the United States of America on March 4, 1789.

Sources and Further Reference

  • Desilver, Drew. “Despite global concerns about democracy, more than half of countries are democratic.” Pew Research Center , May 14, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/14/more-than-half-of-countries-are-democratic/.
  • Kapstein, Ethan B., and Converse, Nathan. “The Fate of Young Democracies.” Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 9780511817809.
  • Diamond, Larry. “Democracy in Decline?” Johns Hopkins University Press, October 1, 2015, ISBN-10 1421418185.
  • Gagnon, Jean-Paul. “2,234 Descriptions of Democracy: An Update to Democracy's Ontological Pluralism.” Democratic Theory, vol. 5, no. 1, 2018.
  • Volokh, Eugene. “Is the United States of America a republic or a democracy?” The Washington Post , May 13, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/13/is-the-united-states-of-america-a-republic-or-a-democracy/. 
  • Reasons to Keep the Electoral College
  • Republic vs. Democracy: What Is the Difference?
  • Key Election Terms for Students
  • Democracy Promotion as Foreign Policy
  • 7 Points to Know About Ancient Greek Government
  • What Is Federalism? Definition and How It Works in the US
  • Democracy Then and Now
  • Overview of United States Government and Politics
  • Direct Democracy: Definition, Examples, Pros and Cons
  • Is Iraq a Democracy?
  • The Three Branches of US Government
  • Representative Democracy: Definition, Pros, and Cons
  • Understanding the Ballot Initiative Process
  • The Powers of Congress
  • About the Legislative Branch of U.S. Government
  • Basic Structure of the US Government

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Normative democratic theory deals with the moral foundations of democracy and democratic institutions, as well as the moral duties of democratic representatives and citizens. It is distinct from descriptive and explanatory democratic theory, which aim to describe and explain how democracy and democratic institutions function. Normative democracy theory aims to provide an account of when and why democracy is morally desirable as well as moral principles for guiding the design of democratic institutions and the actions of citizens and representatives. Of course, normative democratic theory is inherently interdisciplinary and must draw on the results of political science, sociology, psychology, and economics in order to give concrete moral guidance.

This brief outline of normative democratic theory focuses attention on seven related issues. First, it proposes a definition of democracy. Second, it outlines different approaches to the question of why democracy is morally valuable at all. Third, it discusses the issue of whether and when democratic institutions have authority and different conceptions of the limits of democratic authority. Fourth, it explores the question of what it is reasonable to demand of citizens in large democratic societies. This issue is central to the evaluation of normative democratic theories. A large body of opinion has it that most classical normative democratic theory is incompatible with what we can reasonably expect from citizens. Fifth, it surveys different accounts of the proper characterization of equality in the processes of representation and the moral norms of representation. Sixth, it discusses the relationship between central findings in social choice theory and democracy. Seventh, it discusses the question of who should be included in the group that makes democratic decisions.

1. Democracy Defined

2.1.1.1 the production of relatively good laws and policies: responsiveness theories, 2.1.1.2 the production of relatively good laws and policies: epistemic theories, 2.1.1.3 character-based arguments, 2.1.2 instrumental arguments against democracy, 2.1.3 grounds for instrumentalism, 2.2.1 liberty, 2.2.2 democracy as public justification, 2.2.3 equality, 3.1 instrumentalist conceptions of democratic authority, 3.2.1 democracy as collective self-rule, 3.2.2 freedom and democratic authority, 3.2.3 equality and authority, 3.3.1 internal limits to democratic authority, 3.3.2 the problem of persistent minorities, 3.3.3 external limits to democratic authority, 4.1 the problem of democratic participation, 4.2.1 elite theory of democracy, 4.2.2 interest group pluralism, 4.2.3 neo-liberalism.

  • 4.2.4. The self-interest assumption

4.2.5 The Division of Democratic Labor

4.3.1 the duty to vote, 4.3.2 principled disobedience of the law, 4.3.3 accommodate disagreement through compromise and consensus, 5.1 what sort of representative system is best, 5.2 the ethics of representation, 6. social choice and democracy, 7. the boundary problem: constituting the demos, other internet resources, related entries.

The term “democracy”, as we will use it in this entry, refers very generally to a method of collective decision making characterized by a kind of equality among the participants at an essential stage of the decision-making process. Four aspects of this definition should be noted. First, democracy concerns collective decision making, by which we mean decisions that are made for groups and are meant to be binding on all the members of the group. Second, we intend for this definition to cover many different kinds of groups and decision-making procedures that may be called democratic. So there can be democracy in families, voluntary organizations, economic firms, as well as states and transnational and global organizations. The definition is also consistent with different electoral systems, for example first-past-the-post voting and proportional representation. Third, the definition is not intended to carry any normative weight. It is compatible with this definition of democracy that it is not desirable to have democracy in some particular context. So the definition of democracy does not settle any normative questions. Fourth, the equality required by the definition of democracy may be more or less deep. It may be the mere formal equality of one-person one-vote in an election for representatives to a parliament where there is competition among candidates for the position. Or it may be more robust, including substantive equality in the processes of deliberation and coalition building leading up to the vote. “Democracy” may refer to any of these political arrangements. It may involve direct referenda of the members of a society in deciding on the laws and policies of the society or it may involve the participation of those members in selecting representatives to make the decisions.

The function of normative democratic theory is not to settle questions of definition but to determine which, if any, of the forms democracy may take are morally desirable and when and how. To evaluate different moral justifications of democracy, we must decide on the merits of the different principles and conceptions of human beings and society from which they proceed.

2. The Justification of Democracy

In this section, we examine different views concerning the justification of democracy. Proposed justifications of democracy identify values or reasons that support democracy over alternative forms of decision-making, such as oligarchy or dictatorship. It is important to distinguish views concerning the justification of democracy from views concerning the authority of democracy, which we examine in section 3 . Attempts to establish democratic authority identify values or reasons in virtue of which subjects have a duty to obey democratic decisions. Justification and authority can come apart (Simmons 2001: ch. 7)—it is possible to hold that the balance of values or reasons supports democracy over alternative forms of decision-making while denying that subjects have a duty to obey democratic decisions.

We can evaluate the justification of democracy along at least two different dimensions: instrumentally, by reference to the outcomes of using it compared with other methods of political decision; or intrinsically, by reference to values that are inherent in the method.

2.1 Instrumentalism

2.1.1 instrumental arguments in favor of democracy.

Two kinds of in instrumental benefits are commonly attributed to democracy: (1) the production of relatively good laws and policies and (2) improvements in the characters of the participants.

It is often argued that democratic decision-making best protects subjects’ rights or interests because it is more responsive to their judgments or preferences than competing forms of government. John Stuart Mill, for example, argues that since democracy gives each subject a share of political power, democracy forces decision-makers to take into account the rights and interests of a wider range of subjects than are taken into account under aristocracy or monarchy (Mill 1861: ch. 3). There is some evidence that as groups are included in the democratic process, their interests are better advanced by the political system. For example, when African Americans regained the right to vote in the United States in 1965, they were able to secure many more benefits from the state than previously (Wright 2013). Economists argue that democracy promotes economic growth (Acemoglu et al. 2019). Several contemporary authors defend versions of this instrumental argument by pointing to the robust empirical correlation between well-functioning democratic institutions and the strong protection of core liberal rights, such as rights to a fair trial, bodily integrity, freedom of association, and freedom of expression (Gaus 1996: ch. 13; Christiano 2011; Gaus 2011: ch. 22).

A related instrumental argument for democracy is provided by Amartya Sen, who argues that

no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent country with a democratic form of government and a relatively free press. (Sen 1999: 152)

The basis of this argument is that politicians in a multiparty democracy with free elections and a free press have incentives to respond to the expressions of needs of the poor.

Epistemic justifications of democracy argue that, under the right conditions, democracy is generally more reliable than alternative methods at producing political decisions that are correct according to procedure-independent standards. While there are many different explanations for the reliability of democratic decision-making, we outline three of the most prominent explanations here: (1) Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, (2) the effects of cognitive diversity, and (3) information gathering and sharing.

The most prominent explanation for democracy’s epistemic reliability rests on Condorcet’s Jury Theorem (CJT), a mathematical theorem developed by eighteenth-century mathematician the Marquis de Condorcet that builds on the so-called “law of large numbers”. CJT states that, when certain assumptions hold, the probability that a majority of voters support the correct decision increases and approaches one as the number of voters increases. The assumptions are (Condorcet 1785):

  • each voter is more likely than not to identify the correct decision (the competence assumption );
  • voters vote for what they believe is the correct decision (the sincerity assumption );
  • votes are statistically independent of one another (the independence assumption ).

While Condorcet’s original proof was restricted to decisions with only two choices, more recent work argues that CJT can be extended to decisions with three or more choices (List & Goodin 2001). The use of CJT to explain democracy’s reliability is often thought to originate with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s claim that

[i]f, when a sufficiently informed populace deliberates, the citizens were to have no communication among themselves, the general will would always result from the large number of small differences, and the deliberation would always be good. (Rousseau 1762: Book III, ch. IV)

Contemporary theorists continue to rely on CJT, or variants of it, to justify democracy (Barry 1965; Cohen 1986; Grofman and Feld 1988; Goodin & Spiekermann 2019).

The appeal of CJT for epistemic democrats derives from the fact that, if its underlying assumptions are satisfied, decisions produced by even moderately-sized electorates are almost certain to be correct. For example, if the assumptions of CJT hold for an electorate of 10,000 voters, and if each voter is 51 percent likely to identify the correct decision of two options, then the probability that a majority will select the correct decision is 99.97 percent. The formal mathematics of CJT are not subject to dispute. However, critics of CJT-based arguments for democracy argue that the assumptions underlying CJT are rarely, if ever, satisfied in actual democracies (see Black 1963: 159–65; Ladha 1992; Estlund 1997b; 2008: ch. XII; Anderson 2006). First, many have remarked that voters’ opinions are not independent of each other. Indeed, the democratic process seems to emphasize persuasion and coalition building. Second, the theorem does not seem to apply to cases in which the information that voters have access to, and on the basis of which they make their judgments, is segmented in various ways. Segmentation occurs when some sectors of the society do not have the relevant information while others do have it. Modern societies and politics seem to instantiate this kind of segmentation in terms of class, race, ethnic groupings, religion, occupational position, geographical place and so on. Finally, all voters approach issues they have to make decisions on with strong ideological biases that undermine the claim that each voter is bringing a kind of independent observation on the nature of the common good to the vote.

Advocates of CJT-based justifications of democracy generally respond to these sorts of criticisms by attempting to develop variations of CJT with weaker assumptions. These assumptions are more easily satisfied in democracies and so the revised theorems may show that even moderately-sized electorates are almost certain to produce correct decisions (Grofman & Feld 1988; Austen-Smith 1992; Austen-Smith & Banks 1996).

A second common epistemic justification for democracy—which is often traced to Aristotle ( Politics , Book II, Ch. 11; see Waldron 1995)—argues that democratic procedures are best able to exploit the underlying cognitive diversity of large groups of citizens to solve collective problems. Since democracy brings a lot of people into the process of decision making, it can take advantage of many sources of information and perspectives in assessing proposed laws and policies. More recently, Hélène Landemore (2013) has drawn on the “diversity-trumps-ability” theorem of Scott Page and Lu Hong (Hong & Page 2004; Page 2007)—which states that a random collection of agents drawn from a large set of limited-ability agents typically outperforms a collection of the very best agents from that same set—to argue that democracy can be expected to produce better decisions than rule by experts. Both Page and Hong’s original theorem and Landemore’s use of it to justify democracy are subject to dispute (see Quirk 2014; Brennan 2014; Thompson 2014; Bajaj 2014).

A third common epistemic justification for democracy relies on the idea that democratic decision-making tends to be more informed than other forms of decision-making about the interests of citizens and the causal mechanisms necessary to advance those interests. John Dewey argues that democracy involves “a consultation and a discussion which uncovers social needs and troubles”. Even if experts know how best to solve collective problems, they need input from the masses to correct their biases tell them where the problems lie (Dewey 1927 [2012: 154–155]; see also Anderson 2006; Knight & Johnson 2011).

Many have endorsed democracy on the grounds that democracy has beneficial effects on the characters of subjects. Many agree with Mill and Rousseau that democracy tends to make people stand up for themselves more than other forms of rule do because it makes collective decisions depend on their input more than monarchy or aristocracy do. Hence, in democratic societies individuals are encouraged to be more autonomous. Relatedly, by giving citizens a share of control over political-decision-making, democracy cultivates citizens with active and productive characters rather than passive characters. In addition, it has been argued that democracy tends to get people to think carefully and rationally more than other forms of rule because it makes a difference to political outcomes whether they do or not. Finally, some argue that democracy tends to enhance the moral qualities of citizens. When they participate in making decisions, they have to listen to others, they are called upon to justify themselves to others and they are forced to think in part in terms of the interests of others. Some have argued that when people find themselves in this kind of circumstance, they can be expected genuinely to think in terms of the common good and justice. Hence, some have argued that democratic processes tend to enhance the autonomy, rationality, activity, and morality of participants. Since these beneficial effects are thought to be worthwhile in themselves, they count in favor of democracy and against other forms of rule (Mill 1861 [1991: 74]; Elster 1986 [2003: 152]; Hannon 2020).

Some argue in addition that the above effects on character tend to enhance the quality of legislation as well. A society of autonomous, rational, active, and moral decision-makers is more likely to produce good legislation than a society ruled by a self-centered person or a small group of persons who rule over slavish and unreflective subjects. Of course, the soundness of any of the above arguments depends on the truth of the causal theories of the consequences of different institutions.

Not all instrumental arguments favor democracy. Plato argues that democracy is inferior to various forms of monarchy, aristocracy and even oligarchy on the grounds that democracy tends to undermine the expertise necessary to the proper governance of societies (Plato 1974, Book VI). Most people do not have the kinds of intellectual talents that enable them to think well about the difficult issues that politics involves. But in order to win office or get a piece of legislation passed, politicians must appeal to these people’s sense of what is right or not right. Hence, the state will be guided by very poorly worked out ideas that experts in manipulation and mass appeal use to help themselves win office. Plato argues instead that the state should be ruled by philosopher-kings who have the wisdom and moral character required for good rule. He thus defends a version of what David Estlund calls “epistocracy”, a form of oligarchy that involves rule by experts (Estlund 2003).

Mill defends a form of epistocracy that is sometimes referred to as the “plural voting” scheme (1861: ch. 4). While all rational adults get at least one vote under this scheme, some citizens get a greater number of votes based on satisfying some measure of political expertise. While Mill identifies the relevant measure of expertise in terms of formal education, the plural voting scheme is consistent with other measures. This scheme might be thought to combine the instrumental value of political expertise with the intrinsic value of broad inclusion.

One objection to any form of epistocracy—the demographic objection —holds that any criterion of expertise is likely to select demographically homogeneous individuals who are be biased in ways that undermine their ability to produce political outcomes that promote the general welfare (Estlund 2003).

Hobbes argues that democracy is inferior to monarchy because democracy fosters destabilizing dissension among subjects (Hobbes 1651: chap. XIX). On his view, individual citizens and even politicians are apt not to have a sense of responsibility for the quality of legislation because no one makes a significant difference to the outcomes of decision making. As a consequence, citizens’ concerns are not focused on politics and politicians succeed only by making loud and manipulative appeals to citizens in order to gain more power, but all lack incentives to consider views that are genuinely for the common good. Hence the sense of lack of responsibility for outcomes undermines politicians’ concern for the common good and inclines them to make sectarian and divisive appeals to citizens.

Many contemporary theorists expand on these Platonic and Hobbesian criticisms. A good deal of empirical data shows that citizens of large-scale democracies are ill-informed and apathetic about politics. This makes room for special interests to control the behavior of politicians and use the state for their own limited purposes all the while spreading the costs to everyone. Moreover, there is empirical evidence that democratic citizens often engage in motivated reasoning that unconsciously aims to affirm their existing political identities rather than arrive at correct judgments (Lord, Ross, & Lepper 1979; Bartels 2002; Kahan 2013; Achen & Bartels 2016). Some theorists argue that these considerations justify abandoning democracy altogether, while modest versions of these arguments have been used to justify modification of democratic institutions (Caplan 2007; Somin 2013; Brennan 2016). Relatedly, some theorists argue that rather than having beneficial effects on the characters of subjects as Mill and others argue, democracy actually has deleterious effects on the subjects’ characters and relationships (Brennan 2016: ch. 3).

Pure instrumentalists argue that these instrumental arguments for and against the democratic process are the only bases on which to evaluate the justification of democracy or compare it with other forms of political decision-making. There are a number of different kinds of argument for pure instrumentalism. One kind of argument proceeds from a more general moral theory. For example, classical utilitarianism has no room in its monistic axiology for the intrinsic values of fairness and liberty or the intrinsic importance of an egalitarian distribution of political power. Its sole concern with maximizing utility—understood as pleasure or desire satisfaction—guarantees that it can provide only instrumental arguments for and against democracy.

But one need not be a thoroughgoing utilitarian to argue for instrumentalism in democratic theory. There are arguments in favor of instrumentalism that pertain directly to the question of democracy and collective decision making generally. One argument states that political power involves the exercise of power of some over others. And it argues that the exercise of power of one person over another can only be justified by reference to the protection of the interests or rights of the person over whom power is exercised. Thus no distribution of political power could ever be justified except by reference to the quality of outcomes of the decision making process (Arneson 1993 [2002: 96–97]; 2003; 2004; 2009). Another sort of argument for instrumentalism proceeds negatively, attempting to show that the non-instrumental values most commonly used in attempted justifications for democracy do not actually justify democracy, and that an instrumental justification for democracy is therefore the only available sort of justification (Wall 2007).

Other arguments question the coherence of the idea of intrinsically fair collective decision making processes. For instance, social choice theory questions the idea that there can be a fair decision making function that transforms a set of individual preferences into a rational collective preference. The core objection is that no general rule satisfying reasonable constraints can be devised that can transform any set of individual preferences into a rational social preference. And this is taken to show that democratic procedures cannot be intrinsically fair (Riker 1982: 116). Ronald Dworkin argues that the idea of equality, which is for him at the root of social justice, cannot be given a coherent and plausible interpretation when it comes to the distribution of political power among members of the society. The relation of politicians to citizens inevitably gives rise to inequality; the process of democratic deliberation inevitably gives those with superior argument making abilities and greater willingness to participate more influence and therefore more power, than others, so equality of political power cannot be intrinsically fair or just (Dworkin 2000). In later work, Dworkin has pulled back from this originally thoroughgoing instrumentalism (Dworkin 1996).

2.2 Non-instrumentalism

Few theorists deny that political institutions must be at least in part evaluated in terms of the outcomes of having those institutions. Some argue in addition, that some forms of decision making are morally desirable independent of the consequences of having them. A variety of different approaches have been used to show that democracy has this kind of intrinsic value.

One prominent justification for democracy appeals to the value of liberty. According to one version of the view, democracy is grounded in the idea that each ought to be master of his or her life. Each person’s life is deeply affected by the larger social, legal and cultural environment in which he or she lives. Only when each person has an equal voice and vote in the process of collective decision-making will each have equal control over this larger environment. Thinkers such as Carol Gould conclude that only when some kind of democracy is implemented, will individuals have a chance at self-government (Gould 1988: 45–85). Since individuals have a right of self-government, they have a right to democratic participation. The idea is that the right of self-government gives one a right, within limits, to do wrong. Just as an individual has a right to make some bad decisions for himself or herself, so a group of individuals have a right to make bad or unjust decisions for themselves regarding those activities they share.

One major difficulty with this line of argument is that it appears to require that the basic rule of decision-making be consensus or unanimity. If each person must freely choose the outcomes that bind him or her then those who oppose the decision are not self-governing. They live in an environment imposed on them by others. So only when all agree to a decision are they freely adopting the decision (Wolff 1970: ch. 2). The trouble is that there is rarely agreement on major issues in politics. Indeed, it appears that one of the main reasons for having political decision making procedures is that they can settle matters despite disagreement.

One liberty-based argument that might seem to escape this worry appeals to an irreducibly collective right to self-determination. It is often argued that political communities have a right as a community to organize themselves politically in accordance with their values, principles, or commitments. Some argue that the right to collective self-determination requires democratic institutions that give citizens collective control over their political and legal structure (Cassese 1995). However, many argue democratic institutions are sufficient but not necessary to realize the right to collective self-determination because political communities might exercise this right to implement non-democratic institutions (Altman & Wellman 2009; Stilz 2016).

Another non-instrumental justification of democracy appeals to the ideal of public justification. The idea behind this approach is that laws and policies are legitimate to the extent that they are publicly justified to the citizens of the community. Public justification is justification to each citizen as a result of free and reasoned debate among equals.

Jürgen Habermas’s discourse theory of deliberative democracy has been highly influential in the development of this approach. Habermas analyses the form and function of modern legal systems through the lens of his theory of communicative action. This analysis yields the Democratic Principle:

[O]nly those statutes may claim legitimacy that can meet with the assent of all citizens in a discursive process of legislation that in turn has been legally constituted. (Habermas 1992 [1996: 110])

Habermas advances a conception of democratic legitimacy according to which law is legitimate only if it results from a free and inclusive democratic process of “opinion and will-formation”. What might such a process look like in a complex and differentiated society? Habermas answers by advancing a “two-track” model that understands democratic legitimation in terms of the relationship between institutionalized deliberative bodies (e.g legislatures, agencies, courts) and informal communication in the public sphere, which is “wild”, and not centrally coordinated.

One possible objection to this view is that free and inclusive democratic procedures are insufficient to satisfy the demand for deliberative consensus embodied in the Democratic Principle. This demand is unlikely to be satisfied in diverse societies, since deep disagreements about which laws ought to be enacted is likely to remain after the relevant process of opinion and will-formation. The Democratic Principle might thus be thought to embody an overly idealistic conception of democratic legitimacy (Estlund 2008: ch.10). Another possible worry is that the Discourse Principle is not a genuine moral principle, but a principle that embodies the felicity conditions of practical discourse. As such, the Discourse Principle cannot ground a conception of democratic legitimacy that yields robust moral prescriptions (Forst 2016).

Drawing on Habermas and John Rawls, among others, Joshua Cohen (1996 [2003]) develops a conception of democracy in which citizens justify laws and policies on the basis of mutually acceptable reasons. Democracy, properly understood, is the context in which individuals freely engage in a process of reasoned discussion and deliberation on an equal footing. The ideas of freedom and equality provide guidelines for structuring democratic institutions.

The aim of Cohen’s conception of democracy as public justification is reasoned consensus among citizens. But a serious problem arises when we ask about what happens when disagreement remains. Two possible replies have been suggested. It has been urged that forms of consensus weaker than full consensus are sufficient for public justification and that the weaker varieties are achievable in many societies. For instance, there may be consensus on the list of reasons that are acceptable publicly but disagreement on the weight of the different reasons. Or there may be agreement on general reasons abstractly understood but disagreement about particular interpretations of those reasons. What would have to be shown here is that such weak consensus is achievable in many societies and that the disagreements that remain are not incompatible with the ideal of public justification.

The basic principle seems to be the principle of reasonableness according to which reasonable persons will only offer principles for the regulation of their society that other reasonable persons can reasonably accept. One only offers principles that others, who restrain themselves in the same way, can accept. Such a principle implies a kind of principle of restraint which requires that reasonable persons avoid proposing laws and policies on the basis of controversial moral or philosophical principles. When individuals offer proposals for the regulation of their society, they ought not to appeal to the whole truth as they see it but only to that part of the whole truth that others can reasonably accept. To put the matter in the way Rawls puts it: political society must be regulated by principles on which there is an overlapping consensus (Rawls 2005: Lecture IV). This is meant to obviate the need for a complete consensus on the principles that regulate society.

However, it is hard to see how this approach avoids the need for a complete consensus, which is highly unlikely to occur in any even moderately diverse society. The reason for this is that it is not clear why it is any less of an imposition on me when I propose legislation or policies for the society that I must restrain myself to considerations that other reasonable people accept than it is an imposition on others when I attempt to pass legislation on the basis of reasons they reasonably reject. For if I do restrain myself in this way, then the society I live in will not live up to the standards that I believe are essential to evaluating the society. I must then live in and support a society that does not accord with my conception of how it ought to be organized. It is not clear why this is any less of a loss of control over society than for those who must live in a society that is partly regulated by principles they do not accept. If one is a problem, then so is the other, and complete consensus is the only solution (Christiano 2009).

Many democratic theorists have argued that democracy is a way of treating persons as equals when there is good reason to impose some kind of organization on their shared lives but they disagree about how best to do it. Peter Singer argues that when people insist on different ways of arranging matters properly, each person in a sense claims a right to be dictator over their shared lives (Singer 1973: 30–41). But these claims to dictatorship cannot all hold up. Democracy embodies a kind of peaceful and fair compromise among these conflicting claims to rule. Each compromises equally on what he claims as long as the others do, resulting in each having an equal say over decision making. In effect, democratic decision making respects each person’s point of view on matters of common concern by giving each an equal say about what to do in cases of disagreement (Singer 1973; Waldron 1999: chap. 5).

What if people disagree on the democratic method or on the particular form democracy is to take? Are we to decide these latter questions by means of a higher order procedure? And if there is disagreement on the higher order procedure, must we also democratically decide that question? The view seems to lead to an infinite regress.

An alternative way of justifying democracy on the basis of equality is to ground democracy in public equality. Public equality is a principle of equality which ensures that people can see that they are being treated as equals. This view arises from three ideas. First, there is the basic egalitarian idea that people’s interests ought to be equally advanced, or at least that they ought to have equal opportunities to advance them. Second, human beings generally have highly fallible and biased understandings of their own and other people’s interests. Third, persons have fundamental interests in being able to see that they are being treated as equals. Public equality is an egalitarian principle that can be seen to be realized among persons despite the dramatically incomplete forms of knowledge people have. It is not all of justice, but it is essential that the principle be realized in a pluralistic society.

Democracy is a uniquely publicly egalitarian way to make collective decisions when there is substantial disagreement and conflict of interest among persons about how to shape the society they share. Each can see that the only plausible way of overcoming persistent disagreement over how to shape the society they all live in, while still publicly treating all persons as equals in the face of bias and fallibility, is to give each person an equal say in the process of shaping that society. Thus, democracy is necessary to the realization of public equality in a political society. Within the framework determined by this publicly realized equality, persons are permitted to attempt to bring about their more particular ideas about justice and the common good that they think are right.

The idea of public equality also grounds limits to democratic decision making. The thought is that a society cannot democratically decide to abolish the democratic rights of some of its members. Public equality also requires that basic liberal and civil rights be respected as well, by the democratic process and so serves as a limit to democratic decision making (Christiano 2008; Valentini 2013).

A number of worries attend this kind of view. First, it is generally thought that majority rule is required for treating persons as equals in collective decision making. This is because only majority rule is neutral towards alternatives in decision making. Unanimity tends to favor the status quo as do various forms of supermajority rule. But if this is so, the above view raises the twin dangers of majority tyranny and of persistent minorities, i.e., groups of persons who find themselves always losing in majority decisions. Surely these latter phenomena must be incompatible with public equality. Second, the kind of view defended above is susceptible to the worry that political equality is not a coherent ideal in any modern state with a complex division of labor and the need for representation. This last worry will be discussed in more detail in the next sections on democratic citizenship and legislative representation. The first worry will be discussed more in the discussion on the limits to democratic authority.

A related approach grounds democracy in the ideal of relational equality . A concern with relational equality is a concern for

human relationships that are, in certain crucial respects at least, unstructured by differences of rank, power, or status. (Scheffler 2010: 225)

Niko Kolodny argues that democratic institutions are an essential component of relational equality (Kolodny 2014a,b). One line of Kolodny’s argument holds that political decisions involve the use of coercive force. Inequalities in the power to use force undermine equal social status at least in part because the power to use force is “the power that usually determines the distribution of other powers” (Kolodny 2014b: 307). Individuals who have superior power to use force on others have a superior social status. An egalitarian distribution of political power is thus essential for realizing social equality. And only democratic institutions provide an egalitarian distribution of political power. We will discuss the relationship between relational equality and democracy further when we discuss the authority of democracy in Part 3 below.

3. The Authority of Democracy

Since democracy is a collective decision process, the question naturally arises about whether there is any duty of citizens to obey democratic decisions when they disagree with it.

There are three main concepts of the legitimate authority of the state. First, a state has legitimate authority to the extent that it is morally justified in coercively imposing its rule on the members. Legitimate authority on this account has no direct implications concerning the obligations or duties that citizens may hold toward that state. It simply says that if the state is morally justified in doing what it does, then it has legitimate authority. Second, a state has legitimate authority to the extent that its directives generate duties in citizens to obey. The duties of the citizens need not be owed to the state but they are real duties to obey. The third is that the state has a right to rule that is correlated with the citizens’ duty to it to obey it. This is the strongest notion of authority and it seems to be the core idea behind the legitimacy of the state. The idea is that when citizens disagree about law and policy it is important to be able to answer the question, who has the right to choose?

Instrumental arguments for democracy give some reason for why one ought to respect the democracy when one disagrees with its decisions. There may be many instrumental considerations that play a role in deciding on the question of whether one ought to obey. And these instrumental considerations are pretty much the same whether one is considering obedience to democracy or some other form of rule.

There is one instrumentalist approach which is quite unique to democracy and that seems to ground a strong conception of democratic authority. That is the epistemic approach inspired by the Condorcet Jury Theorem, which we discussed in section 2.1.1.2 above. There, we discussed a number of difficulties with the application of the Condorcet Jury Theorem to the case of voting in elections and referenda in large-scale democracies, including lack of independence, informational segmentation, and the existence of ideological biases.

One further worry about the Jury Theorem’s epistemic conceptions of authority is that it would prove too much since it undermines the common practice of the loyal opposition in democracies. If the background conditions of the Jury Theorem are met, a large-scale democracy majority is practically certain to produce the right decisions. On what basis can citizens in a political minority rationally hold on to their competing views? The members of the minority have a powerful reason for shifting their allegiance to the majority position, since each has very good reason to think that the majority is right. The epistemic conception of authority based on the Jury Theorem thus threatens to be objectionably authoritarian, since it looks like it demands not only obedience of action but obedience of thought as well. Even in scientific communities the fact that a majority of scientists favor a particular view does not make the minority scientists think that they are wrong, though it does perhaps give them pause (Goodin 2003: ch. 7).

Some theories of democratic authority combine instrumental and non-instrumental considerations. David Estlund argues that democratic procedures have legitimate authority because they are better than random and epistemically the best of the political systems that are acceptable to all reasonable citizens (Estlund 2008). They must be better than random because, otherwise, why wouldn’t we use a fair random procedure like a lottery or coin flip? Democratic authority must have an epistemic element. And the justification of democratic procedure must be acceptable to all reasonable citizens in order to respect their freedom and equality. Estlund’s conception of democratic authority—which he calls “epistemic proceduralism”— thus combines the ideal of public justification with a concern for the tendency of democracies to produce good decisions.

3.2 Intrinsic Conceptions of Democratic Authority

Some theorists argue that there is a special relation between democracy and legitimate authority grounded in the value of collective self-rule. John Locke argues that when a person consents to the creation of a political society, they necessarily consent to the use of majority rule in deciding how the political society is to be organized (Locke 1690: sec. 96). Locke thinks that majority rule is the natural decision rule when there is disagreement. He argues that a society is a kind of collective body that must move in the direction of the greater force. One way to understand this argument is as follows. If we think of each member of society as an equal and if we think that there is likely to be disagreement beyond the question of whether to join society or not, then we must accept majority rule as the appropriate decision rule. This interpretation of the greater force argument assumes that the expression “greater force” is to be understood in terms of the equal worth of each person’s interests and rights, so the society must go in the direction in which the greater number of persons wants it to go.

Locke thinks that a people, which is formed by individuals who consent to be members, could choose a monarchy by means of majority rule and so this argument by itself does not give us an argument for democracy. But Locke refers back to this argument when he defends the requirement of representative institutions for deciding when property may be regulated and taxes levied. He argues that a person must consent to the regulation or taxation of his property by the state. But he says that this requirement of consent is satisfied when a majority of the representatives of property holders consent to the regulation and taxation of property (Locke, 1690: sec. 140). This does seem to be moving towards a genuinely democratic conception of legitimate authority.

Rousseau argues that when individuals consent to form a political community, they agree to put themselves under the direction of the “general will” (Rousseau 1762). The general will is not a mere aggregation of individuals’ private wills. It is, rather, the will of the political community as a whole. And since the general will can only emerge as the product of a properly organized democratic procedure, individuals consent to put themselves under the direction of a properly organized democratic procedure. On one interpretation of Rousseau, democratic procedures are properly organized only when they (1) define rights that apply equally to all, (2) via a procedure that considers everyone’s interests equally, and (3) everyone who is coerced to obey the laws has a voice in that procedure.

There are at least two ways of understanding the idea of the general will. On what might be called the constitutive interpretation, the general will is constituted by the results of a properly organized democratic procedure. That is, the results of a properly organized democratic procedure are the general will in virtue of the fact that they emerge from a properly organized democratic procedure, and not because they reflect some procedure-independent truth about the common good. On what might be called the epistemic interpretation, the results of a properly organized democratic procedure are the way of tracking the procedure-independent truth about the common good. As we discussed in section 3.1 , Rousseau is often interpreted as appealing to Condorcet’s Jury Theorem to support the epistemic credentials of a properly organized democratic procedure.

Anna Stilz develops an account of democratic authority that appeals to the value of “freedom as independence” (Stilz 2009). Freedom as independence is freedom from being subject to the will of another. In order not to be subject to the will of others, individuals need property rights and a protected sphere of autonomy to pursue one’s plans. Drawing on Kant, Stilz argues that attempts by particular individuals, no matter how conscientious, to define and secure rights to property and autonomy in a state of nature will be inconsistent with freedom as independence. Such attempts unilaterally impose new obligations on others through acts of private will in the face of competing claims. But even if individuals in a state of nature do agree to a resolution of their competing claims, they are dependent on the will of others to honor this agreement. Stilz thus argues that justice must be administered by an authoritative legal system which can coercively impose one set of objective rules—rules we must respect even when we disagree—to adjudicate our conflicting claims. But if such a system is to be consistent with the freedom of subjects, it cannot be imposed by the private wills of rulers. The solution, Stilz argues, lies in Rousseau’s idea of the general will. When subjects obey the general will, they are not obeying the private will of any individual; they are obeying a will that arises from all and applies to all.

One worry with this account is that those who oppose democratically-enacted laws or policies can complain that those laws or policies are imposed against their will. Perhaps they are not subject to the will of a particular individual, but they are subject to the will of a majority. This might be thought to constitute a significant threat to individuals’ freedom as independence. Another worry, which Stilz’s view arguably inherits from Rousseau, is that the conditions for the general will to emerge are so demanding that the view implies that no state that exists or has existed has legitimate political authority. Stilz’s view might thus be thought to entail what A.J. Simmons calls “a posteriori anarchism” (Simmons 2001).

Another approach to democratic authority asserts that failing to obey the decisions of a democratic assembly amounts to treating one’s fellow citizens as inferiors (Christiano 2008: ch. 6). In the face of disagreement about substantive law and policy, democracy realizes a kind of public equality by giving each individual an equal say in determining which laws or policies will be enacted. Citizens who skirt laws made by suitably egalitarian procedures act contrary to the equal right of all citizens to have a say in making laws. Those who refuse to pay taxes or respect property laws on the grounds that they are unjust are affirming a superior right to that of others in determining how the shared aspects of social life ought to be arranged. Thus, they violate the duty to treat others publicly as equals. And there is reason to think this duty must normally have some pre-eminence. Public equality is the most important form of equality and democracy is required by public equality. The other forms of equality in play in substantive disputes about law and policy are ones about which people can have reasonable disagreements (within limits specified by the principle of public equality). Citizens thus have obligations to abide by the democratic process even if their favored conceptions of justice or equality are passed by in the decision making process.

Daniel Viehoff develops an egalitarian conception of democratic authority based on the ideal of relational equality (Viehoff 2014; see section 2.2.3 above for more on relational equality). Viehoff argues that relational equality is threatened by “subjection” in a relationship, which occurs when individuals have significantly different power over how they interact with and relate to one another. According to Viehoff, obeying the outcomes of egalitarian democratic procedures is necessary and sufficient for citizens to achieve coordination on common rules without subjection. It is sufficient because democratic procedures distribute decision-making power equally, which ensures that coordination is not determined by unequal power advantages. It is necessary because parties must set aside the considerations of greater and lesser power to realize non-subjection in their relationship.

Fabienne Peter develops a fairness-based conception of democratic authority that incorporates epistemic considerations (Peter 2008; 2009). Drawing on insights from proceduralist epistemology, Peter’s “pure epistemic proceduralism” holds that suitably egalitarian democratic decisions are binding at least in part because they result from a fair procedure of knowledge-production. This account differs from Estlund’s epistemic proceduralism (see section 5.1 above) because it does not condition the authority of democratic procedures on their ability to produce decisions that track the procedure-independent truth. Rather, the authority of democratic procedures is grounded in their fairness. And it differs from pure procedural accounts because the relevant notion of fairness is fairness in knowledge-production.

3.3 Limits to the Authority of Democracy

What are the limits to democratic authority? A limit to democratic authority is a principle violation of which defeats democratic authority. When the principle is violated by the democratic assembly, the assembly loses its authority in that instance or the moral weight of the authority is overridden. A number of different views have been offered on this issue. We can distinguish between internal and external limits to democratic authority. An internal limit arises from the constitutive requirements of the democratic process or from the principles that ground democracy. An external limit arises from principles that are independent of the values or requirements that ground democracy.

External limits to democratic authority are rebutting limits, which are principles that weigh against—and may sometimes outweigh the principles that ground democracy. So in a particular case, an individual may see that there are reasons to obey the assembly and some reasons against obeying the assembly and in the case at hand the reasons against obedience outweigh the reasons in favor of obedience. Internal limits to democratic authority are undercutting limits. These limits function not by weighing against the considerations in favor of authority, they undercut the considerations in favor of authority altogether; they simply short circuit the authority. When an undercutting limit is in play, it is not as if the principles which ground the limit outweigh the reasons for obeying the democratic assembly, it is rather that the reasons for obeying the democratic assembly are undermined altogether; they cease to exist or at least they are severely weakened.

Some have argued that the democratic process ought to be limited to decisions that are not incompatible with the proper functioning of the democratic process. So they argue that the democratic process may not legitimately take away the political rights of its citizens in good standing. It may not take away rights that are necessary to the democratic process such as freedom of association or freedom of speech. But these limits do not extend beyond the requirements for proper democratic functioning. They do not protect non political artistic speech or freedom of association in the case of non political activities (Ely 1980: chap. 4).

Another kind of internal limit is a limit that arises from the principles that underpin democracy. And the presence of this limit would seem to be necessary to making sense of the first limit because in order for the first limit to be morally important we need to know why a democracy ought to protect the democratic process.

Locke gives an account of the internal limits of democracy in his idea that there are certain things to which a citizen may not consent (Locke 1690: ch. XI). She may not consent to arbitrary rule or the violation of fundamental rights including democratic and liberal rights. Since consent is the basis of democratic authority for Locke, this account provides an explanation of the idea behind the first internal limit, that democracy may not be suspended by democratic means but it goes beyond that limit to suggest that rights that are not essentially connected with the exercise of the franchise may also not be violated because one may not consent to their violation.

More recently, Ronald Dworkin has defended an account of the limits of democratic authority (Dworkin 1996). He argues that democracy is justified by appeal to a principle of self-government. He argues that self-government cannot be realized unless all citizens are treated as full members of the political community, because, otherwise, they are not able to identify as members of the community. Among the conditions of full membership, he argues, are rights to be treated as equals and rights to have one’s moral independence respected. These principles support robust requirements of non-discrimination and of basic liberal rights.

The conception of democratic authority that grounds it in public equality also provides an account of the limits of that authority (Christiano 2008: ch. 6). Since democracy is founded in public equality, it may not violate public equality in any of its decisions. The basic idea is that overt violation of public equality by a democratic assembly undermines the claim that the democratic assembly embodies public equality. Democracy’s embodiment of public equality is conditional on its protecting public equality. To the extent that liberal rights are grounded in public equality and the provision of an economic minimum is also so grounded, this suggests that democratic rights and liberal rights and rights to an economic minimum create a limit to democratic authority. This account also provides a deep grounding for the kinds of limits to democratic authority defended in the first internal limit and it goes beyond these to the extent that protection of rights that are not connected with the exercise of the franchise is also necessary to public equality.

This account of the authority of democracy also provides some help with a vexing problem of democratic theory. This problem is the difficulty of persistent minorities. There is a persistent minority in a democratic society when that minority always loses in the voting. This is always a possibility in democracies because of the use of majority rule. If the society is divided into two or more highly unified voting blocks in which the members of each group votes in the same ways as all the other members of that group, then the group in the minority will find itself always on the losing end of the votes. This problem has plagued some societies, particularly those with indigenous peoples who live within developed societies. Though this problem is often connected with majority tyranny it is distinct from the problem of majority tyranny because it may be the case that the majority attempts to treat the minority well, in accordance with its conception of good treatment. It is just that the minority never agrees with the majority on what constitutes proper treatment. Being a persistent minority can be highly oppressive even if the majority does not try to act oppressively. This can be understood with the help of the very ideas that underpin democracy. Persons have interests in being able to correct for the cognitive biases of others and to be able to make the world in such a way that it makes sense to them. These interests are set back for a persistent minority since they never get their way.

The conception of democracy as grounded in public equality can shed light on this problem. It can say that the existence of a persistent minority violates public equality (Christiano 2008: chap. 7). In effect, a society in which there is a persistent minority is one in which that minority is being treated publicly as an inferior because it is clear that its fundamental interests are being set back. Hence to the extent that violations of public equality undercut the authority of a democratic assembly, the existence of a persistent minority undermines the authority of the democracy at least with respect to the minority. This suggests that certain institutions ought to be constructed so that the minority is not persistent.

One natural kind of limit to democratic authority is the external kind of limit. Here the idea is that there are certain considerations that favor democratic decision making and there are certain values that are independent of democracy that may be at issue in democratic decisions. For example, many theories recognize core liberal rights—such as rights to property, bodily integrity, and freedom of thought and expression—as external limits to democratic authority. Locke is often interpreted as arguing that individuals have natural rights to property in themselves and the external world that democratic laws must respect in order to have legitimate authority (Locke 1690).

Some views may assert that there are only external limits to democratic authority. But it is possible to think that there are both internal and external limits. Such an issue may arise in decisions to go to war, for example. In such decisions, one may have a duty to obey the decision of the democratic assembly on the grounds that this is how one treats one’s fellow citizens as equals but one may also have a duty to oppose the war on the grounds that the war is an unjust aggression against other people. To the extent that this consideration is sufficiently serious it may outweigh the considerations of equality that underpin democratic authority. Thus one may have an overall duty not to obey in this context. Issues of foreign policy in general seem to give rise to possible external limits to democracy.

4. The Demands of Democratic Participation

In this section, we examine the demands of participation in large-scale democracies. We begin by examining a core challenge to the idea that democratic citizens are capable of governing a large and complex society. We then explore different proposed solutions to the core challenge. Finally, we examine the moral duties of democratic citizens in large-scale democracies in light of the core challenge.

A vexing problem of democratic theory has been to determine whether ordinary citizens are up to the task of governing a large and complex society. There are three distinct problems here:

  • 1. First, Plato argued that some people are more intelligent and informed about political matters than others and have a superior moral character, and that those persons ought to rule ( The Republic , Book VI)
  • 2. Second, others have argued that a society must have a division of labor. If everyone were engaged in the complex and difficult task of politics, little time or energy would be left for the other essential tasks of a society. Conversely, if we expect most people to engage in other difficult and complex tasks, how can we expect them to have the time and resources sufficient to devote themselves intelligently to politics?
  • 3. Third, since individuals have so little impact on the outcomes of political decision making in large societies, they have little sense of responsibility for the outcomes. Some have argued that it is not rational to vote since the chances that an individual’s vote will a decide the outcome of an election (i.e., will determine whether a candidate gets elected or not) are nearly indistinguishable from zero. For example, one widely accepted estimate puts the odds of an individual casting the deciding vote in a United States presidential election at 1 in 100 million. Many estimates put the odds much lower. Worse still, Anthony Downs has argued that almost all of those who do vote have little reason to become informed about how best to vote (Downs 1957: ch.13). On the assumption that citizens reason and behave roughly according to the Downsian model, either the society must in fact be run by a relatively small group of people with minimal input from the rest or it will be very poorly run. As we can see these criticisms are echoes of the sorts of criticisms Plato and Hobbes made.

These observations pose challenges for any robustly egalitarian or deliberative conception of democracy. Without the ability to participate intelligently in politics one cannot use one’s votes to advance one’s aims nor can one be said to participate in a process of reasoned deliberation among equals. So, either equality of political power implies a kind of self-defeating equal participation of citizens in politics or a reasonable division of labor seems to undermine equality of power. And either substantial participation of citizens in public deliberation entails the relative neglect of other tasks or the proper functioning of the other sectors of the society requires that most people do not participate intelligently in public deliberation.

4.2 Proposed Solutions to the Problem of Democratic Participation

Some modern theorists of democracy, called elite theorists, have argued against any robustly egalitarian or deliberative forms of democracy in light of the problem of democratic participation. They argue that high levels of citizen participation tend to produce bad legislation designed by demagogues to appeal to poorly informed and overly emotional citizens. They look upon the alleged uninformedness of citizens evidenced in many empirical studies in the 1950s and 1960s as perfectly reasonable and predictable. Indeed they regard the alleged apathy of citizens in modern states as highly desirable social phenomena.

Political leaders are to avoid divisive and emotionally charged issues and make policy and law with little regard for the fickle and diffuse demands made by ordinary citizens. Citizens participate by voting but since they know very little they are not effectively the ruling part of the society. The process of election is usually just a fairly peaceful way of maintaining or changing those who rule (Schumpeter 1942 [1950: 269]).

On Schumpeter’s view, however, citizens do have a role to play in avoiding serious disasters. When politicians act in ways that nearly anyone can see is problematic, the citizens can throw the bums out.

So the elite theory of democracy does seem compatible with some of the instrumentalist arguments given above but it is strongly opposed to the intrinsic arguments from liberty, public justification and equality. To be sure, there can be an elite deliberative democracy wherein elites deliberate, perhaps even out of sight of the population at large, on how to run the society.

A view akin to the elite theory but less pessimistic about citizens’ political agency and competence argues that a well-functioning representative democracy can function as a kind of “defensible epistocracy” (Landa & Pevnick 2020). This view holds that, under the right conditions, elected officials can be expected to exercise political power more responsibly than citizens in a direct democracy because each official is far more likely to cast the deciding vote in legislative assemblies (the “pivotality effect”) and officials have more incentive to exercise power with due regard for the general welfare (the “accountability effect”). Moreover, under the right conditions, representative democracy allows individuals to assess the competence of candidates for office and to select candidates who are best able to help the community pursue its commitments.

One approach that is in part motivated by the problem of democratic citizenship but which attempts to preserve some elements of equality against the elitist criticism is the interest group pluralist account of politics. Robert Dahl’s early statement of the view is very powerful.

In a rough sense, the essence of all competitive politics is bribery of the electorate by politicians… The farmer… supports a candidate committed to high price supports, the businessman…supports an advocate of low corporation taxes… the consumer…votes for candidates opposed to a sales tax. (Dahl 1959: 69)

In this conception of the democratic process, each citizen is a member of an interest group with narrowly defined interests that are closely connected to their everyday lives. On these subjects citizens are supposed to be quite well informed and interested in having an influence. Or at least, elites from each of the interest groups that are relatively close in perspective to the ordinary members are the principal agents in the process. On this account, democracy is not rule by the majority but rather rule by coalitions of minorities. Policy and law in a democratic society are decided by means of bargaining among the different groups.

This approach is conceivably compatible with the more egalitarian approach to democracy. This is because it attempts to reconcile equality with collective decision making by limiting the tasks of citizens to ones which they are able to perform reasonably well. It is not particularly compatible with the deliberative public justification approach because it takes the democratic process to be concerned essentially with bargaining among the different interest groups where the preferences are not subject to further debate in the society as a whole.

A third approach inspired by the problem of participation may be called the neo-liberal approach to politics favored by public choice theorists such as James Buchanan & Gordon Tullock (1962). Against elite theories, they contend that elites and their allies will tend to expand the powers of government and bureaucracy for their own interests and that this expansion will occur at the expense of a largely inattentive public. For this reason, they argue for severe restrictions on the powers of elites. They argue against the interest group pluralist theorists that the problem of participation occurs within interest groups more or less as much as among the citizenry at large. Only powerful economic interests are likely to succeed in organizing to influence the government and they will do so largely for their own benefit. Since economic elites will advance their own interests in politics while spreading the costs to others, policies will tend to be more costly (because imposed on everyone in society) than they are beneficial (because they benefit only the elites in the interest group.)

Neo-liberals infer that one ought to transfer many of the current functions of the state to the market and limit the state to the enforcement of basic property rights and liberties. These can be more easily understood and brought under the control of ordinary citizens.

But the neo-liberal account of democracy must answer to two large worries. First, citizens in modern societies have more ambitious conceptions of social justice and the common good than are realizable by the minimal state. The neo-liberal account thus implies a very serious curtailment of democracy of its own. More evidence is needed to support the contention that these aspirations cannot be achieved by the modern state. Second, the neo-liberal approach ignores the problem of large private concentrations of wealth and power that are capable of pushing small states around for their own benefit and imposing their wills on populations without their consent.

Somin (2013) also argues that government be significantly reduced in size so that citizens have a lesser knowledge burden to carry. But he calls for government decentralization so that citizens can vote with their feet in favor of or against competing units of government, in effect creating a kind of market in governments among which citizens can choose.

4.2.4 The self-interest assumption

A considerable amount of the literature in political science and the economic theory of the state are grounded in the assumption that individuals act primarily and perhaps even exclusively in their self-interest narrowly construed. The problem of participation and the accounts of the democratic process described above are in large part dependent on this assumption. When the preferences of voters are not assumed to be self-interested the calculations of the value of participation change. For example, if a person is a motivated utilitarian, the small chance of making a difference is coupled with a huge accumulated return to many people if there is a significant difference between alternatives. It may be worth it in this case to become reasonably well informed (Parfit 1984: 74). Even more weakly altruistic moral preferences could make a big difference to the rationality of becoming informed, for example if one had a preference to comply with perceived civic duty to vote responsibly (see section 4.3.1 for discussion of the duty to vote). Any moral preference can be formulated in consistent utility functions.

Moreover, defenders of deliberative democracy often claim that concerns for the common good and justice are not merely given prior to politics but that they can evolve and improve through the process of discussion and debate in politics (Elster 1986 [2003]; Gutmann & Thompson 2004; Cohen 1989 [2009]). They assert that much debate and discussion in politics would not be intelligible were it not for the fact that citizens are willing to engage in open minded discussion with those who have distinct morally informed points of view. Empirical evidence suggests that individuals are motivated by moral considerations in politics in addition to their interests (Mansbridge 1990).

Public deliberation in any large-scale democracy will occur within a complex and differentiated “deliberative system”, a

wide variety of institutions, associations, and sites of contestation accomplish political work. (Mansbridge et. al. 2012)

Moreover, the deliberative system of a complex democracy will be characterized by a division of democratic labor , with different parts of the system making different contributions to the overall system. The question arises: what is the appropriate role for a citizen in this division of labor? Philosophically, we should ask two questions. What ought citizens have knowledge about in order to fulfill their role? What standards ought citizens’ beliefs live up to in order to be adequately supported? One promising view is that citizens must think about what ends the society ought to aim at and leave the question of how to achieve those aims to experts (Christiano 1996: ch 5). The rationale for this division of labor is that expertise is not as fundamental to the choice of aims as it is to the development of legislation and policy. Citizens are capable in their everyday lives of understanding and cultivating deep understandings of values and of their interests. And if citizens genuinely do choose the aims and others faithfully pursue the means to achieving those aims, then citizens are in the driver’s seat in society and they can play this role as equals.

To be sure, citizens need to know who to vote for and whether those they vote for are genuinely advancing their aims. This would appear to require some basic knowledge of about how best to achieve their political aims. How is this possible without extensive knowledge? In addition, there is empirical evidence that those who are better informed have more influence on representatives (Erikson 2015). So, if this task requires some kind of knowledge to do well, how can this be compatible with equality?

One promising response is that ordinary citizens do not need individually to have a lot of knowledge of social science and particular facts in order to make political decisions based on such knowledge. Recent research in cognitive science indicates the individuals use “cognitive shortcuts” to save on time in acquiring information about the world they live in (Lupia & McCubbins 1998). This use of shortcuts is common and essential throughout economic and political life. In political life, we see part of the rationale for the many intermediate institutions between government and citizens (Downs 1957: 221–229). Citizens save time by making use of institutions such as the press, unions and other interest group associations, political parties, and opinion leaders to get information about politics. They also rely on interactions in the workplace as well as conversations with friends and families. Political parties can connect ordinary citizens in various ways to expertise because each one contains a division of labor within them that mirrors that in the state. Experts in parties have incentives to make their expertise intelligible to other members (Christiano 2012). In addition, under favorable conditions, political parties stimulate the development of citizens’ normative perspectives and facilitate a healthy public competition of political justifications based on those perspectives (White & Ypi 2016).

People are dependent on social networks in other ways in a democracy. People receive “free” information (which they do not deliberately seek out) about politics and law in school, through their jobs, in discussion with friends, colleagues and family and incidentally through the media. And this can form a better or worse basis on which to pursue other information. Institutions can make a difference to the stream of free information individuals receive. Education can be distributed in a more or less egalitarian way. The circumstances of work can provide more or less free information about politics and law. People who have jobs with a significant amount of power such as lawyers, business persons, government officials will be beneficiaries of very high quality free information. They need to know about law and politics to do their jobs properly. Those who hold low skilled and non-unionized jobs will receive much less free information about politics at work. To the extent that we can alter the economic division of labor by for example giving more place to unions or having greater worker participation, we might be able to reduce inequalities of information among citizens.

4.3 The Moral Duties of Democratic Citizens

What are the moral duties of democratic citizens in complex democracies? In this section, we discuss three important democratic duties: (1) the duty to vote, (2) the duty to promote justice through principled disobedience of the law, and (3) duties to accommodate disagreement through compromise and consensus.

It is often thought that democratic citizens have a moral duty to vote in elections. But this is not obvious. Individual votes are a causally insignificant contribution to the democratic process. In large-scale democracies, the chance that any particular citizen’s vote will decide the outcome of an election is minuscule. What moral reason do democratic citizens have to participate in politics even though they’re almost certain not to make the difference to who gets elected? Why shouldn’t they seek to promote the good or justice in other ways?

Parfit develops an act-utilitarian answer to this question (Parfit 1984: 73–75). Act-utilitarians hold that morally right actions maximize the total expected sum of the utilities of all persons in the society. Parfit argues that voting might nonetheless maximize expected utility if one candidate is significantly superior to the other(s). If we add the benefits to each member of the society of having the superior candidate win, we get a very large difference in value. So when we multiply that value by the probability of casting the deciding vote, which is often thought to be about 1/100,000,000 in a United States presidential election, we might still get a reasonably high expected value. When we subtract the cost to the voter and others of voting, which is often quite low, from this number, we may still have a good reason to vote.

One worry with Parfit’s view is that it faces a version of what Jason Brennan calls “the particularity problem” (Brennan 2011). This is the problem of explaining why citizens ought to promote value through political participation as opposed to through non-political acts. Voting is just one way of promoting overall utility; we need to know the expected utility of the different acts they might perform instead. Even if the argument above is correct, it might be the case that many individuals maximize expected utility by not voting and doing something even more beneficial with their time.

Alex Guerrero argues that citizens have moral reasons to vote because candidates who win by a larger proportion of votes can claim a greater “normative mandate” to govern (Guerrero 2010). Still each individual vote makes only a tiny contribution to the proportion of votes a candidate receives. So, we might doubt the strength of the reason to vote that Guerrero identifies.

Some theorists argue that individuals have a moral duty to vote in order to absolve themselves of complicity in state injustices (Beerbohm 2012; Zakaras 2018). All states commit injustices—they make and enforce unjust laws, wage unjust wars, and much else. And citizens of large-scale democracies have a kind of standing responsibility, by paying taxes and obeying laws, for their state’s injustices of which they must actively absolve themselves The complicity account argues that citizens avoid shared responsibility for their state’s injustices if they oppose those injustices through voting and of public advocacy (Beerbohm 2012).

One worry is that it is unclear why voting and publicly advocating against injustice should be thought to absolve responsibility that is established by paying taxes and obeying laws. Another worry is that one’s concern to oppose injustice should derive from a more direct concern for the wrongs suffered by victims of injustice rather than a concern with keeping one’s hands clean.

One sort of account that avoids this worry grounds the moral duty to vote in the importance of doing one’s fair share of the demands of political justice consistent with public equality. The demands of creating and sustaining just institutions distribute fairly among all citizens (Maskivker 2019). If one fails to do one’s fair share of these demands, then one fails to show due regard for the eventual victims of injustice. Furthermore, voting provides citizens with a mechanism for doing their fair shares of the demands of making their institutions just in a way that is consistent with respecting the public equality of fellow citizens. By showing up and casting a vote, citizens can contribute to the collective achievement of justice while maintaining equal decision-making power with fellow citizens.

Civil disobedience has long been recognized as a central mechanism through which democratic citizens may legitimately promote political justice in their society. According to the standard view, civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law that aims to change laws or government policies. People who engage in civil disobedience are willing to accept the legal consequences of their actions in order to show fidelity to the law (Bedau 1961; Rawls 1971: ch. 55). The standard definition of civil disobedience has been subjected to challenge. For example, some argue that the private acts in which the disobedient seeks to evade legal consequences can count as instances of civil disobedience (Raz 1979; Brownlee 2004, 2007, 2012).

Perhaps the most common way of justifying civil disobedience argues that the same considerations that ground the pro tanto duty to obey the law sometimes make it appropriate to engage in civil disobedience of the law (see, e.g., Rawls 1971: ch. 57; Sabl 2001; Markovits 2005; Smith 2011). For example, Rawls argues that while citizens of a “nearly just” society have a pro tanto duty to obey its laws in virtue of it being nearly just, civil disobedience can be justified as a way of making the relevant society more just (Rawls 1971: ch. 57). Similarly, Daniel Markovits argues that members of a society with suitably egalitarian and inclusive democratic procedures have a general duty to obey its laws because they are produced by procedures that are suitably egalitarian and inclusive, but that civil disobedience can be justified as a way of making the relevant procedures more egalitarian or inclusive (Markovits 2005).

It is easy to see why this constitutes an attractive way of justifying civil disobedience, since it justifies it by appeal to the same values that ground the pro tanto duty to obey the law. On the other hand, as Simmons notes, if there is no general duty to obey the law, there would seem to be no presumption in favor of obedience and thus no special need for a justification of civil disobedience; obedience and disobedience would stand equally in need of justification (Simmons 2007: ch 4).

Advocates of the standard approach generally assume that only civil disobedience can be justified in this way. However, some argue civil disobedience does not enjoy a special normative presumption over uncivil disobedience. The core idea that insofar as the values that ground a pro tanto duty to obey the law—for example, justice or democratic equality—are sometimes best served by civil disobedience of the law, they are sometimes best served by covert, evasive, anonymous, or even violent disobedience of the law (Delmas 2018; Lai 2019; Pasternak 2018).

Disagreement about what laws, policies, or principles ought to be implemented is a persistent feature of democratic societies. It is often argued that citizens and officials have duties to moderate their political activity in order to accommodate the competing views of fellow citizens or officials. Two duties of accommodation are widely discussed in the literature: duties of compromise and duties of public justification.

A compromise can be understood as an agreement between parties to advance laws or policies that all regard as suboptimal because they disagree about which laws or policies are optimal (May 2005). While it is widely accepted that there are sometimes compelling instrumental reasons to compromise, whether there are intrinsic moral reasons to compromise is more controversial. Some defend intrinsic reasons to compromise based on democratic values like inclusion, mutual respect, and reciprocity (Gutmann and Thompson 2014; Wendt 2016; Weinstock 2013). However, Simon May argues that such arguments fail and that all reasons to compromise are pragmatic (May 2005).

Advocates of the public justification approach to democracy (see section 2.2.2 ) often argue that democratic citizens and officials have individual moral duties of public justification. John Rawls argues for a “duty of civility” that requires citizens and officials to be prepared to give mutually acceptable justifications for important laws when voting and engaged in public advocacy. Given the inevitability of disagreement about comprehensive moral and philosophical truth in free democracies, the duty of civility requires citizens to appeal to a reasonable “political” conception of justice that can be the object of an “overlapping consensus” between different comprehensive doctrines. While different theorists motivate duties of public justification in different ways, many appeal to the need for exercises of coercive political authority to respect citizens’ freedom and equality.

5. Democratic Representation

Representation is an essential part of the division of labor of large-scale democracies. In this section, we examine two moral questions concerning representation. First, what sort of representative system is best? Second, by what moral principles are representatives bound?

A number of debates have centered on the question of what kinds of representative systems are best for a democratic society. What choice we make here will depend heavily on our underlying moral justification of democracy, our conception of citizenship as well as on our empirical understanding of political institutions and how they function. The most basic types of formal political representation available are single member district representation, proportional representation and group representation. In addition, many societies have opted for multicameral legislative institutions. In some cases, combinations of the above forms have been tried.

Single member district representation returns single representatives of geographically defined areas containing roughly equal populations to the legislature and is prominent in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India, among other places. The most common form of proportional representation is party list proportional representation. In a simple form of such a scheme, a number of parties compete for election to a legislature that is not divided into geographical districts. Parties acquire seats in the legislature as a proportion of the total number of votes they receive in the voting population as a whole. Group representation occurs when the society is divided into non-geographically defined groups such as ethnic or linguistic groups or even functional groups such as workers, farmers and capitalists and returns representatives to a legislature from each of them.

Many have argued in favor of single member district legislation on the grounds that it has appeared to them to lead to more stable government than other forms of representation. The thought is that proportional representation tends to fragment the citizenry into opposing homogeneous camps that rigidly adhere to their party lines and that are continually vying for control over the government. Since there are many parties and they are unwilling to compromise with each other, governments formed from coalitions of parties tend to fall apart rather quickly. The post war experience of governments in Italy appears to confirm this hypothesis. Single member district representation, in contrast, is said to enhance the stability of governments by virtue of its favoring a two party system of government. Each election cycle then determines which party is to stay in power for some length of time.

Charles Beitz argues that single member district representation encourages moderation in party programs offered for citizens to consider (Beitz 1989: ch. 7). This results from the tendency of this kind of representation towards two party systems. In a two party system with majority rule, it is argued, each party must appeal to the median voter in the political spectrum. Hence, they must moderate their programs to appeal to the median voter. Furthermore, they encourage compromise among groups since they must try to appeal to a lot of other groups in order to become part of one of the two leading parties. These tendencies encourage moderation and compromise in citizens to the extent that political parties, and interest groups, hold these qualities up as necessary to functioning well in a democracy.

In criticism, advocates of proportional and group representation have argued that single member district representation tends to muffle the voices and ignore the interests of minority groups in the society (Mill 1861; Christiano 1996). Minority interests and views tend to be articulated in background negotiations and in ways that muffle their distinctiveness. Furthermore, representatives of minority interests and views often have a difficult time getting elected at all in single member district systems so it has been charged that minority views and interests are often systematically underrepresented. Sometimes these problems are dealt with by redrawing the boundaries of districts in a way that ensures greater minority representation. The efforts are invariably quite controversial since there is considerable disagreement about the criteria for apportionment.

In proportional representation, by contrast, representatives of different groups are seated in the legislature in proportion to citizens’ choices. Minorities need not make their demands conform to the basic dichotomy of views and interests that characterize single member district systems so their views are more articulated and distinctive as well as better represented.

Advocates of group representation, like Iris Marion Young, have argued that some historically disenfranchised groups may still not do very well under proportional representation (Young 1990: ch. 6). They may not be able to organize and articulate their views as easily as other groups. Also, minority groups can still be systematically defeated in the legislature and their interests may be consistently set back even if they do have some representation. For these groups, some have argued that the only way to protect their interests is legally to ensure that they have adequate and even disproportionate representation.

One worry about group representation is that it tends to freeze some aspects of the agenda that might be better left to the choice of citizens. For instance, consider a population that is divided into linguistic groups for a long time. And suppose that only some citizens continue to think of linguistic conflict as important. In the circumstances a group representation scheme may tend to be biased in an arbitrary way that favors the views or interests of those who do think of linguistic conflict as important.

What moral norms apply to representatives carrying out their official duties? We can get a better handle on possible answers by introducing Hannah Pitkin’s famous distinction between trustees and delegates (Pitkin 1967). Representatives who act as trustees rely on their own independent judgments in carrying out their duties. Norms of trusteeship are supported in recognition that, given a natural division of democratic labor, officials are in a much better position to make well-reasoned and well-informed political decisions than ordinary citizens.

Representatives who act as delegates defer to the judgments of their citizens. These norms might be thought to reflect the value of democratic accountability. Because the people authorize representatives to govern, it is natural to think that representatives are accountable to the people to enact their judgments. If representatives are not accountable in this way, citizens lose democratic control over their representatives’ actions.

Which norms should win out when they conflict? Pitkin argues that the answer varies by context. This seems plausible. For example, if we take the view that citizens primarily have the role of determining the aims of the society, we might think that representatives ought to be delegates with regard to the aims, but trustees with regard to the ways of realizing the aims (Christiano 1996). See Suzanne Dovi’s discussion of representation for a deeper and more nuanced discussion of these issues.

Kenneth Arrow’s impossibility theorem is thought by some to provide a major set of difficulties for democratic theory (Arrow 1951). William Riker, Russell Hardin, and others have thought that the impossibility theorem shows that there are deep problems with democratic ideals (Riker 1982; Hardin 1999). Neither of these thinkers are opposed to democracy itself, they both think that there are good instrumental reasons for having democracy.

The basic results of social choice theory are laid out in detail elsewhere in the encyclopedia (List 2013). Here we will simply articulate the basic result and an illustration. The question of Arrowian social choice theory is: how do we determine a social preference for a society overall on the basis of the set of the individual preferences of the members? Arrow shows that a social choice function that satisfies a number of plausible constraints cannot be defined when there are three or more alternatives to be chosen by the group. He lays out a number of conditions to be imposed on a social choice function. Unlimited domain : The social choice function must be able to give us a social preference no matter what the preferences of the individuals over alternatives are. Non dictatorship : the social choice function must not select the preference of one particular member regardless of others’ preferences. Transitivity and completeness : The individual preferences orderings must be transitive and complete orderings and the social preference derived from them must be transitive and complete. Independence of irrelevant alternatives : the social preference between two alternatives must be the result only of the individual orderings between those two alternatives. Pareto condition : if all the members prefer an alternative x over y , then x must be ranked above y in the social preference. The theorem says that no social choice function over more than two alternatives can satisfy all of these conditions.

A useful illustration of this idea involves an extension of majority rule to cases of more than two alternatives. The Condorcet rule says that an alternative x wins when, for every other alternative, a majority prefers x over that alternative. For example, suppose we have three persons A , B and C and three alternatives x , y and z . A prefers x over y , y over z ; B prefers y over z and z over x ; C prefers x over z and z over y . In this case, x is the Condorcet winner since it beats y , and it beats z . The problem with this plausible sounding rule is the case of a majority cycle. Suppose you have three persons A , B and C , and three alternatives, x , y and z . In the case in which A prefers x over y and y over z , while B prefers y over z and z over x , and C prefers z over x and x over y , the Condorcet rule will yield a social preference of x over y , y over z and z over x . One can see here that the Condorcet rule satisfies all the conditions except transitivity of social preference. One way to avoid intransitivity is to restrict the domain of preferences from which the social preference arises. Another is to introduce cardinal information that compares the how much people prefer alternatives (violating independence). Another might be to make one person a dictator. So, this case nicely illustrates that one cannot satisfy all of the constraints simultaneously.

Riker argues that the theorem shows that the idea that the popular will can be the governing element in a society is false. If an existence condition for a popular will is a restricted set of preferences the question naturally arises as to whether such a condition is always or normally met in a moderately complex society. We might wonder whether a highly pluralistic society with a very complex division of labor is likely to satisfy the restricted preference set condition necessary to avoid cycles or other pathologies of social choice. Some have argued that we have empirical evidence to the effect that modern societies do normally satisfy such conditions (Mackie 2003). Others have argued that this seems unlikely (Riker 1982; Ingham 2019). This is not merely a defense of unlimited domain. It is a defense of the thesis that normally the collections of preferences in modern societies are not likely to have the properties that enable them to avoid cycles.

The fairness critique from social choice theory is based on the idea that when a voting process meets requirements of fairness, the fairness of the process and the preferences may not generate determinate outcomes. If cycles are pervasive, the outcomes of democratic processes may be determined by clever strategies and not by the fairness of the procedures (Riker 1982). Three remarks are in order here. First, it is compatible with the process being completely fair that the outcomes of the process are indeterminate. After all, coin flips are fair. Second, there is some question as to how prominent the cycles are. Third, one might think that if the conditions which enable opposing sides to strategize effectively are themselves roughly equal, then the concerns for fairness are fully met. If resources for persuasion and organization are distributed in an egalitarian way, perhaps the fairness account is vindicated after all. This point can be made more compelling when we consider Sean Ingham’s account of political equality. He includes intensity of preference in his account of fairness. This is a departure from the Arrowian approach, but it is in many ways a realistic one. The idea is that majorities have equal control over policy areas when they are able to get what they want with the same amount of intensity of preferences. And equality holds generally when all groups of the same size have the same control (Ingham 2019). There remains an extreme case in which all majorities have equal intensity of preference and are caught in a majority cycle. But the chances of this happening are very slim, even if the chances of majority cycles more generally are not as small. Even if there are a lot of majority cycles, if the issues are resolved in such a way that those majorities that have most at stake in the conflict are the ones that get their way, then we can have fairness in a quite robust sense even while having pervasive majority cycles.

If democratic societies allow members to participate as equals in collective decision making, a natural question arises: who has the right to participate in making collective decisions? We can ask this question within a particular jurisdiction (ought all adults have the right to participation? Ought children have the right to participation? Ought all residents have such rights?). But we can also ask what the extent of the jurisdiction ought to be. How many of the people in the world ought to be included in the collective decision-making? An easy, though slightly misleading, way of asking this question is, what ought the physical boundaries of a particular institution of collective decision-making be? We see partially democratic societies within the confines of the modern nation-state. But we might ask, why should we restrict the set of persons who participate in making decisions of the modern state just to those who happen to be the physical inhabitants of those states? Surely there are many other persons affected by decisions made by democratic states aside from those persons. For example, activities in one society A can pollute another society B . Why shouldn’t the members of B have a say in the decisions regarding the polluting activities in A ? And there can be many other effects that activities in A can have on B .

Some have suggested that the boundaries of a state ought to be determined through a principle of national self-determination. We identify a nation as an ongoing group of persons who share certain cultural, historical and political norms and who identify with each other and with a piece of land. Then we determine the boundaries of the territory by appeal to the size of the group of people and the land they cherish (Miller 1995; Song 2012). This is an appealing idea in many ways: shared nationality breeds a willingness to share the sacrifices that arise from collective decision making; it generates a sense of at-homeness for people. But it is hard to use as a general principle for dividing land among persons when one of the central facts for many societies is that a diversity of nations, ethnic groups and cultures co-mingle on the very same land.

Is there a democratic solution to the boundary problem? A number of ideas have been suggested. The first idea is that the people ought to decide what the boundaries are. But this suggestion, while it may be a pragmatic resolution to the problem, seems to beg the question about who the members are and who are not (Whelan 1983).

A second theoretical solution that has some democratic credentials is to invoke the principle that all who are subjected to decision making, in the sense of who are coerced or have duties imposed upon them, ought to have a say in the decision making (Abizadeh 2008). This principle is plausible enough, but it doesn’t get at enough cases. The pollution case above is not a case of subjection.

A third proposed theoretical solution is the all-affected principle. One formulation is “all affected persons ought to have a say in the decisions that affect them”. This does suggest that when the activities in one state affect those of another state, the people of the other state ought to have a say in those activities. Some have thought that this principle tends to lead to a kind of politically cosmopolitan principle in support of world government (Goodin 2007).

But the all-affected principle is conceptually quite uncertain and morally deeply problematic, and it provides very little, if anything, in the way of a solution to the boundary problem.

First, “having a say” is not clear. Does it require having a vote in collective decision-making? Or is it also satisfied by a person’s being able to modify another’s action by negotiating with them, as we see when there is bargaining over an externality? This latter version would undermine the idea that the all-affected principle has direct implications for the boundary problem. When the United States permits activities that produce acid rain in Canada, Canada can negotiate with the United States to lessen the production of acid rain and/or to compensate Canada for the harm. As long as there is a fair and effective system of negotiation, this would seem to satisfy the all-affected principle without giving Canadians a vote in American politics or Americans a vote in Canadian politics.

Second, it is not clear what “being affected” means. One, does a person being affected just mean that there is a change in the person’s situation or must the effect involve the setting back of one’s preferences, or interests, or legitimate interests, or exercise of one’s capacities or one’s good? Two, are one’s interests affected by a decision only when they are advanced or set back relative to some baseline (either the present state of affairs or some morally defined baseline like what you have promised me), or am I affected by decisions that could be to my advantage or disadvantage but end up making no difference? For example, if I am drowning in a pool and you are deciding whether to save me or go buy yourself a candy bar, am I affected by your buying the candy bar? If I am not affected when no change occurs, then who is affected by a decision often depends on who participates in the decision and we have no solution to the problem of inclusion. If I am affected, then the principle has some quite extraordinary implications. Now it turns out that impoverished persons in South Asia are affected by my buying a candy bar, since I could have sent the money to them (Goodin 2007).

The all-affected principle is a merely suggestive and rhetorically effective phrase. It is a conversation starter and a list of topics to be discussed, not a genuine principle. For example, if I must include everyone possibly affected by my decision for every decision I make, I will not be able to make many decisions and my decision making will no longer enable me to give a shape to my own life and my relations with others. My life becomes fragmented and lacks integrity (Williams 1973). An analog of this problem would arise for political societies, presumably. Each society would have to include a variety of different persons in each decision. It is hard to see how any society could take on any particular character if this is the case.

A more plausible principle that encompasses some of the suggestions of the all-affected principle is that a framework of institutions should be set up so that people have power to advance and protect their legitimate interests in life.

But if we understand the principle in this way, it is not clear that it helps us much with the boundary problem. First of all, there are different ways in which people can be said to possess power over their lives. One kind of power is the power to participate as an equal in a collective decision-making process. Another kind is to be able to advance one’s interests in a decentralized process like a market or a system of agreement making like international law. Recalling our pollution problem above, we could give the state of which they are members power to negotiate with the polluting state terms that are mutually agreeable. Only the power to participate as an equal in collective decision-making involves the boundaries of collective decision-making.

Another solution to the boundary problem is a conservative one. The basic idea is to keep the boundaries of states roughly as they are except if there is a pressing need to change them. Trying to alter the boundaries of political societies is a recipe for serious conflict because there is no institution that has the legitimacy or power actually to resolve problems at an international level and there is likely to be a lot of disagreement on how to do it. States as we know them, are by far the most powerful political entities in the international system. They have developed more effective practices of accountability of power than any other entity in the system. They have created unified societies with highly interdependent populations. Finally, states and the individuals in them can be made accountable to some degree to other individuals and states through the process of negotiation and international law making. The origin of these boundaries may be arbitrary, but it is not, for all that, irrelevant. To be sure, there are clear cases where borders can be changed. One source of pressing need is serious injustice within a country. Another might be the existence of permanent minorities that are sectionally defined. Here, we ask only how to revise boundaries and the basis of such revision is that it is a remedy for serious injustice (Buchanan 1991).

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Definition of democracy

Frequently asked questions.

Is the United States a democracy or a republic?

The United States is both a democracy and a republic. Democracies and republics are both forms of government in which supreme power resides in the citizens. The word republic refers specifically to a government in which those citizens elect representatives who govern according to the law. The word democracy can refer to this same kind of representational government, or it can refer instead to what is also called a direct democracy , in which the citizens themselves participate in the act of governing directly.

What is the basic meaning of democracy ?

The word democracy most often refers to a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting.

What is a democratic system of government?

A democratic system of government is a form of government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodic free elections.

  • self-government

Examples of democracy in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'democracy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

borrowed from Middle French democracie, democratie, borrowed from Late Latin dēmocratia, borrowed from Greek dēmokratía, from dēmo- demo- + -kratia -cracy

1539, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Phrases Containing democracy

  • pure democracy
  • social democracy

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Cite this entry.

“Democracy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy. Accessed 15 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of democracy.

from early French democratie "democracy," from Latin democratia (same meaning), from Greek demokratia "democracy," from dēmos "people, the masses" and -kratia "rule, government," from kratos "strength, power, authority" — related to epidemic

Legal Definition

Legal definition of democracy, more from merriam-webster on democracy.

Nglish: Translation of democracy for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of democracy for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about democracy

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Human Rights Careers

What Does Democracy Mean?

Democracy is a system of government where everyone gets a say. That may be done directly or through elected representatives. Unlike other systems such as monarchies or theocracies, democracy is based on principles like equality, participation, and fundamental rights. To form a basic understanding of what democracy means, we’ll cover the history of democracy, its features, the two main types, and its challenges.

A brief history of democracy

There’s some evidence suggesting prehistoric hunter-gatherers . followed certain elements of democratic processes. In 1943, Thorkild Jacobsen examined Sumerian myths and scraps of records, suggesting that pre-Babylonian Meosoptomia may have practiced something like a democracy where male citizens held most of the power. Many other historians won’t call this system “democracy,” however, because of a lack of clear evidence and how different it most likely was from modern democracy. In the 6th-4th centuries BCE, India may have established somewhat democratic systems, though again, hard evidence is lacking. Most experts agree that Greece is the birthplace of democracy.

Athenian democracy

In 507 BCE, Athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced the “demokratia,” which means “rule by the people.” Democracy in Athens, a city-state, had three parts : the ekklesia, the boule, and the diskasteria. The ekklesia was a sovereign governing body in charge of writing laws and foreign policy. The boule was a council of representatives from the 10 Athenian tribes. The dikasteria was a system of courts where citizens could bring cases and present them to a group of lottery-selected jurors. Democracy in Greece peaked under Pericles, a famous orator and politician.

While Cleisthenes wanted to remove distinctions between the aristocrats, the middle class, and the working class (mostly the army and navy), the “people” in Greece’s democracy still excluded the majority of Athenian society. Women, foreigners, and slaves couldn’t participate. According to History.com , that meant that of the 100,000 citizens, 10,000 resident foreigners, and 150,000 slaves in the mid-4th century, only 40,000 people (male citizens older than 18) could actually participate in democracy.

The Iroquois Confederacy

The Iroquois Confederacy is considered the oldest living participatory democracy in the world. Sometime between 1450 and 1660, it was created after years of conflict between five northeast woodlands tribes – the Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga nations. Hiawatha, chief of the Onondaga tribe, and Deganawida, The Great Peacemaker, are credited with establishing the democratic system. Each tribe agreed to maintain its own leadership and come together in the Grand Council of Chiefs to decide on common causes. The Tuscarora joined in the 1700s, which is why the Iroquois Confederacy is also known as the Six Nations. The group called themselves the Haudenosaunee, or “peoples of the longhouse.”

The Great Law of Peace , an oral constitution, guided the Iroquois Confederacy. It was also recorded through wampum symbols and later translated into various accounts. It established separation of powers, participatory democracy, restrictions on holding dual offices, and processes on how to remove leaders. The Iroquois Confederacy inspired the Founding Fathers and the democratic system they established, though there were some major differences, such as the status of women. The women of the Haudenosaunee had significant social and political power, which the Founding Fathers did not replicate. According to WeForum , the United States is the only country with a continuous democracy older than 200 years.

Principles of democracy

What features need to be present in a functioning democracy? Britannica lists six principles of an “ideal” democracy while Liberties lists 14 principles. We won’t list every single one, but here’s a summary:

Fundamental rights

Democracy is based on the idea that people possess certain rights that can’t be taken away. They have a right to vote, to have that vote counted equally, to participate equally, and to get the information they need to participate in an informed manner. The principle of fundamental rights is essential because without rights, democracy isn’t really democracy.

Equal voting

Voting is one of the most fundamental rights of democracy. Without this right, people don’t have the opportunity to participate in political processes or have a say in what happens in their country. Equal voting means people don’t only have the right to vote, but they have the right for their vote to be counted equally. A person’s vote does not get more or less power based on anything, whether it’s their class, ethnicity, gender, or other traits.

Equal participation

Voting is closely linked to equal participation, but it doesn’t end there. Equal participation also means people either have a direct say in policies and laws or they have the right to choose who represents them. People also have the right to participate equally in town halls, protests, public debates, and so on.

Informed electorate

Before making any decision – whether it’s choosing a political leader or a specific policy – the voting population has the right to any information relevant to their decision. That can include where a politician is getting their money, their voting records, how a policy might affect the future, where money for the policy will come from, what the alternative options are, and so on. Accurate, clear information empowers voters and is key to a functioning democracy.

Accountability

What happens when those in power abuse that power or fail to keep their promises? A functioning democracy needs mechanisms that hold leaders accountable. That can include punishments for corruption, recall elections, fines, and more. Free and fair elections are also part of accountability; if voters no longer like a politician for any reason, they can vote them out. For serious violations, there should ideally be more immediate consequences.

Types of democracies

As a “rule by the people,” democracy is a fairly broad term. There are several forms of democracy which are described in an article on ThoughtCo by Robert Longley, though for our purposes, we’ll highlight the two main types:

Direct democracy

Direct democracy (also called ‘pure” democracy) is when the people directly decide on all policies and laws. Ancient Athens used this type of democracy, though their definition of people was, as we described before, limited. Of those considered people (men over a certain age), they were required to vote on every major government issue. Direct democracy has some advantages. It is a true “rule by the people” and ensures government transparency and accountability. When everyone has to vote on everything, it’s much harder to hide anything. On the other hand, it would be extremely difficult to decide on anything. It could also encourage tension and lead to what the Founding Fathers called “tyranny of the majority.” Those in the minority – which could include the most marginalized groups – would lose their power.

Representative democracy

Representative democracy is the opposite of direct democracy. Instead of directly voting on laws, people elect others to represent them. Almost 60% of the world uses some kind of representative democracy. Within representative democracy, there are different types such as democratic republics and constitutional monarchies. There are some common features, including a constitution that defines the powers of elected representatives. Representatives may also get the right to select other leaders, not just laws. The big advantage of this type of democracy is how efficient it can be. Rather than have thousands of people voting on everything, people select others to represent their interests. If representatives don’t represent voters well, voters can choose someone else. On the other hand, politicians frequently mislead voters or become corrupted. With enough money and powerful backers, even representatives who fail their constituents can keep getting elected over and over again. Representative democracies can also fail to live up to their promises of efficiency and become bogged down with complicated processes.

Challenges facing democracy today

According to Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World 2022” report, democracy is eroding everywhere around the globe. In the report’s words, “The global order is nearing a tipping point…” The authors point to many reasons, including the promotion of autocratic norms, coups, and power grabs. Within established democracies, which are also losing their freedoms, there’s been election perversions, discrimination against migrants, attacks on media freedom, and a weakening rule of law. DemocracyCo, an organization focusing on government reform, names issues like disillusionment, rising inequality, and distrust as challenges to democracy.

In the report, Freedom House names specific countries that saw important developments in 2021. In Russia, President Putin eliminated competition in the parliamentary elections by cracking down on civil organizations and political opponents. In Slovenia, the prime minister grew more hostile toward civil society groups and the media while in Sudan, a military coup blocked a transition to democratic elections. There were positive developments in some areas, like Zambia. Voters elected Hichilema, an opposition leader, in a victory that resisted political violence and other restrictions.

How to protect democracy

What can be done to save democracy? Freedom House lists a handful of policy recommendations, including protecting democracy at the local level, increasing civic education, protecting free and fair elections, and fighting international corruption. Established democracies must commit to democratic norms like supporting and protecting free media and grassroots democratic organizations internationally. Education about democracy through school, online courses , masters and other means is crucial. The private sector must be involved as well by sticking to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and dialoguing with civil society organizations. Democracy means freedom and equality for all. It’s only as strong as society’s willingness to participate and protect it. It takes all hands on deck – individuals, civil society organizations, businesses, governments, and intergovernmental organizations – to keep democracy healthy.

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The Concept of Democracy: An Essay on Conceptual Amelioration and Abandonment

The Concept of Democracy: An Essay on Conceptual Amelioration and Abandonment

The Concept of Democracy: An Essay on Conceptual Amelioration and Abandonment

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If we don’t know what the words “democracy” and “democratic” mean, then we don’t know what democracy is. This book defends a radical view: these words mean nothing and should be abandoned. The argument for abolitionism is simple: those terms are defective and we can easily do better, so let’s get rid of them. According to the abolitionist, the switch to alternative devices would be a significant communicative, cognitive, and political advance. The first part of the book presents a general theory of abandonment: the conditions under which language should be abandoned. The rest of the book applies this general theory to the case of “democracy” and “democratic”. The book shows that “democracy” and “democratic” are semantically, pragmatically, and communicatively defective. Abolitionism is not all gloom and doom. It also contains a message of good cheer: we have easy access to conceptual devices that are more effective than “democracy”. We can do better. These alternative linguistic devices will enable us to ask better questions, provide genuinely fruitful answers, and have more rational discussions. Moreover, those questions and answers better articulate the communicative and cognitive aims of those who use empty terms such as “democracy” and “democratic”.

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‘America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy’ Is a Dangerous—And Wrong—Argument

Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it.

An illustration of columns, the Founding Fathers, and the Constitution

Dependent on a minority of the population to hold national power, Republicans such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah have taken to reminding the public that “we’re not a democracy.” It is quaint that so many Republicans, embracing a president who routinely tramples constitutional norms, have suddenly found their voice in pointing out that, formally, the country is a republic. There is some truth to this insistence. But it is mostly disingenuous. The Constitution was meant to foster a complex form of majority rule, not enable minority rule.

The founding generation was deeply skeptical of what it called “pure” democracy and defended the American experiment as “wholly republican.” To take this as a rejection of democracy misses how the idea of government by the people, including both a democracy and a republic, was understood when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. It misses, too, how we understand the idea of democracy today.

George Packer: Republicans are suddenly afraid of democracy

When founding thinkers such as James Madison spoke of democracy, they were usually referring to direct democracy, what Madison frequently labeled “pure” democracy. Madison made the distinction between a republic and a direct democracy exquisitely clear in “ Federalist No. 14 ”: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.” Both a democracy and a republic were popular forms of government: Each drew its legitimacy from the people and depended on rule by the people. The crucial difference was that a republic relied on representation, while in a “pure” democracy, the people represented themselves.

At the time of the founding, a narrow vision of the people prevailed. Black people were largely excluded from the terms of citizenship, and slavery was a reality, even when frowned upon, that existed alongside an insistence on self-government. What this generation considered either a democracy or a republic is troublesome to us insofar as it largely granted only white men the full rights of citizens, albeit with some exceptions. America could not be considered a truly popular government until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which commanded equal citizenship for Black Americans. Yet this triumph was rooted in the founding generation’s insistence on what we would come to call democracy.

The history of democracy as grasped by the Founders, drawn largely from the ancient world, revealed that overbearing majorities could all too easily lend themselves to mob rule, dominating minorities and trampling individual rights. Democracy was also susceptible to demagogues—men of “factious tempers” and “sinister designs,” as Madison put it in “Federalist No. 10”—who relied on “vicious arts” to betray the interests of the people. Madison nevertheless sought to defend popular government—the rule of the many—rather than retreat to the rule of the few.

American constitutional design can best be understood as an effort to establish a sober form of democracy. It did so by embracing representation, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the protection of individual rights—all concepts that were unknown in the ancient world where democracy had earned its poor reputation.

In “Federalist No. 10” and “Federalist No. 51,” the seminal papers, Madison argued that a large republic with a diversity of interests capped by the separation of powers and checks and balances would help provide the solution to the ills of popular government. In a large and diverse society, populist passions are likely to dissipate, as no single group can easily dominate. If such intemperate passions come from a minority of the population, the “ republican principle ,” by which Madison meant majority rule , will allow the defeat of “ sinister views by regular vote .” More problematic are passionate groups that come together as a majority. The large republic with a diversity of interests makes this unlikely, particularly when its separation of powers works to filter and tame such passions by incentivizing the development of complex democratic majorities : “In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good.” Madison had previewed this argument at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 using the term democracy , arguing that a diversity of interests was “the only defense against the inconveniences of democracy consistent with the democratic form of government.”

Jeffrey Rosen: America is living James Madison’s nightmare

Yet while dependent on the people, the Constitution did not embrace simple majoritarian democracy. The states, with unequal populations, got equal representation in the Senate. The Electoral College also gave the states weight as states in selecting the president. But the centrality of states, a concession to political reality, was balanced by the House of Representatives, where the principle of representation by population prevailed, and which would make up the overwhelming number of electoral votes when selecting a president.

But none of this justified minority rule, which was at odds with the “republican principle.” Madison’s design remained one of popular government precisely because it would require the building of political majorities over time. As Madison argued in “ Federalist No. 63, ” “The cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers.”

Alexander Hamilton, one of Madison’s co-authors of The Federalist Papers , echoed this argument. Hamilton made the case for popular government and even called it democracy: “A representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated & the exercise of the legislative, executive and judiciary authorities, is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will in my opinion be most likely to be happy, regular and durable.”

The American experiment, as advanced by Hamilton and Madison, sought to redeem the cause of popular government against its checkered history. Given the success of the experiment by the standards of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, we would come to use the term democracy as a stand-in for representative democracy, as distinct from direct democracy.

Consider that President Abraham Lincoln, facing a civil war, which he termed the great test of popular government, used constitutional republic and democracy synonymously, eloquently casting the American experiment as government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And whatever the complexities of American constitutional design, Lincoln insisted , “the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible.” Indeed, Lincoln offered a definition of popular government that can guide our understanding of a democracy—or a republic—today: “A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.”

The greatest shortcoming of the American experiment was its limited vision of the people, which excluded Black people, women, and others from meaningful citizenship, diminishing popular government’s cause. According to Lincoln, extending meaningful citizenship so that “all should have an equal chance” was the basis on which the country could be “saved.” The expansion of we the people was behind the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ratified in the wake of the Civil War. The Fourteenth recognized that all persons born in the U.S. were citizens of the country and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The Fifteenth secured the vote for Black men. Subsequent amendments, the Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth, granted women the right to vote, prohibited poll taxes in national elections, and lowered the voting age to 18. Progress has been slow— and s ometimes halted, as is evident from current efforts to limit voting rights —and the country has struggled to become the democratic republic first set in motion two centuries ago. At the same time, it has also sought to find the right republican constraints on the evolving body of citizens, so that majority rule—but not factious tempers—can prevail.

Adam Serwer: The Supreme Court is helping Republicans rig elections

Perhaps the most significant stumbling block has been the states themselves. In the 1790 census, taken shortly after the Constitution was ratified, America’s largest state, Virginia, was roughly 13 times larger than its smallest state, Delaware. Today, California is roughly 78 times larger than Wyoming. This sort of disparity has deeply shaped the Senate, which gives a minority of the population a disproportionate influence on national policy choices. Similarly, in the Electoral College, small states get a disproportionate say on who becomes president. Each of California’s electoral votes is estimated to represent 700,000-plus people, while one of Wyoming’s speaks for just under 200,000 people.

Subsequent to 1988, the Republican presidential candidate has prevailed in the Electoral College in three out of seven elections, but won the popular vote only once (2004). If President Trump is reelected, it will almost certainly be because he once again prevailed in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. If this were to occur, he would be the only two-term president to never win a plurality of the popular vote. In 2020, Trump is the first candidate in American history to campaign for the presidency without making any effort to win the popular vote, appealing only to the people who will deliver him an Electoral College win. If the polls are any indication, more Americans may vote for Vice President Biden than have ever voted for a presidential candidate, and he could still lose the presidency. In the past, losing the popular vote while winning the Electoral College was rare. Given current trends, minority rule could become routine. Many Republicans are actively embracing this position with the insistence that we are, after all, a republic, not a democracy.

They have also dispensed with the notion of building democratic majorities to govern, making no effort on health care, immigration, or a crucial second round of economic relief in the face of COVID-19. Instead, revealing contempt for the democratic norms they insisted on when President Barack Obama sought to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat, Republicans in the Senate have brazenly wielded their power to entrench a Republican majority on the Supreme Court by rushing to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The Senate Judiciary Committee vote to approve Barrett also illuminates the disparity in popular representation: The 12 Republican senators who voted to approve of Barrett’s nomination represented 9 million fewer people than the 10 Democratic senators who chose not to vote. Similarly, the 52 Republican senators who voted to confirm Barrett represented 17 million fewer people than the 48 senators who voted against her. And the Court Barrett is joining, made up of six Republican appointees (half of whom were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote) to three Democratic appointees, has been quite skeptical of voting rights—a severe blow to the “democracy” part of a democratic republic.  In 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder , the Court struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that allowed the federal government to preempt changes in voting regulations from states with a history of racial discrimination.

As Adam Serwer recently wrote in these pages , “ Shelby County ushered in a new era of experimentation among Republican politicians in restricting the electorate, often along racial lines.” Republicans are eager to shrink the electorate. Ostensibly seeking to prevent voting fraud, which studies have continually shown is a nonexistent problem, Republicans support efforts to make voting more difficult—especially for minorities, who do not tend to vote Republican. The Republican governor of Texas, in the midst of a pandemic when more people are voting by mail, limited the number of drop-off locations for absentee ballots to one per county. Loving, with a population of 169, has one drop-off location; Harris, with a population of 4.7 million (majority nonwhite), also has one drop-off location. States controlled by Republicans, such as Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, have also closed polling places, making voters in predominantly minority communities stand in line for hours to cast their ballot.

Who counts as a full and equal citizen—as part of we the people —has shrunk in the Republican vision. Arguing against statehood for the District of Columbia, which has 200,000 more people than the state of Wyoming, Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas said Wyoming is entitled to representation because it is “a well-rounded working-class state.” It is also overwhelmingly white. In contrast, D.C. is 50 percent nonwhite.

High-minded claims that we are not a democracy surreptitiously fuse republic with minority rule rather than popular government. Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it. Routine minority rule is neither desirable nor sustainable, and makes it difficult to characterize the country as either a democracy or a republic. We should see this as a constitutional failure demanding constitutional reform.

This story is part of the project “ The Battle for the Constitution ,” in partnership with the National Constitution Center .

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  • Democracy Essay for Students in English

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Essay on Democracy

Introduction.

Democracy is mainly a Greek word which means people and their rules, here peoples have the to select their own government as per their choice. Greece was the first democratic country in the world. India is a democratic country where people select their government of their own choice, also people have the rights to do the work of their choice. There are two types of democracy: direct and representative and hybrid or semi-direct democracy. There are many decisions which are made under democracies. People enjoy few rights which are very essential for human beings to live happily. 

Our country has the largest democracy. In a democracy, each person has equal rights to fight for development. After the independence, India has adopted democracy, where the people vote those who are above 18 years of age, but these votes do not vary by any caste; people from every caste have equal rights to select their government. Democracy, also called as a rule of the majority, means whatever the majority of people decide, it has to be followed or implemented, the representative winning with the most number of votes will have the power. We can say the place where literacy people are more there shows the success of the democracy even lack of consciousness is also dangerous in a democracy. Democracy is associated with higher human accumulation and higher economic freedom. Democracy is closely tied with the economic source of growth like education and quality of life as well as health care. The constituent assembly in India was adopted by Dr B.R. Ambedkar on 26 th November 1949 and became sovereign democratic after its constitution came into effect on 26 January 1950.

What are the Challenges:

There are many challenges for democracy like- corruption here, many political leaders and officers who don’t do work with integrity everywhere they demand bribes, resulting in the lack of trust on the citizens which affects the country very badly. Anti-social elements- which are seen during elections where people are given bribes and they are forced to vote for a particular candidate. Caste and community- where a large number of people give importance to their caste and community, therefore, the political party also selects the candidate on the majority caste. We see wherever the particular caste people win the elections whether they do good for the society or not, and in some cases, good leaders lose because of less count of the vote.

India is considered to be the largest democracy around the globe, with a population of 1.3 billion. Even though being the biggest democratic nation, India still has a long way to becoming the best democratic system. The caste system still prevails in some parts, which hurts the socialist principle of democracy. Communalism is on the rise throughout the globe and also in India, which interferes with the secular principle of democracy. All these differences need to be set aside to ensure a thriving democracy.

Principles of Democracy:

There are mainly five principles like- republic, socialist, sovereign, democratic and secular, with all these quality political parties will contest for elections. There will be many bribes given to the needy person who require food, money, shelter and ask them to vote whom they want. But we can say that democracy in India is still better than the other countries.

Basically, any country needs democracy for development and better functioning of the government. In some countries, freedom of political expression, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, are considered to ensure that voters are well informed, enabling them to vote according to their own interests.

Let us Discuss These Five Principles in Further Detail

Sovereign: In short, being sovereign or sovereignty means the independent authority of a state. The country has the authority to make all the decisions whether it be on internal issues or external issues, without the interference of any third party.

Socialist: Being socialist means the country (and the Govt.), always works for the welfare of the people, who live in that country. There should be many bribes offered to the needy person, basic requirements of them should be fulfilled by any means. No one should starve in such a country.

Secular: There will be no such thing as a state religion, the country does not make any bias on the basis of religion. Every religion must be the same in front of the law, no discrimination on the basis of someone’s religion is tolerated. Everyone is allowed to practice and propagate any religion, they can change their religion at any time.

Republic: In a republic form of Government, the head of the state is elected, directly or indirectly by the people and is not a hereditary monarch. This elected head is also there for a fixed tenure. In India, the head of the state is the president, who is indirectly elected and has a fixed term of office (5 years).

Democratic: By a democratic form of government, means the country’s government is elected by the people via the process of voting. All the adult citizens in the country have the right to vote to elect the government they want, only if they meet a certain age limit of voting.

Merits of Democracy:

better government forms because it is more accountable and in the interest of the people.

improves the quality of decision making and enhances the dignity of the citizens.

provide a method to deal with differences and conflicts.

A democratic system of government is a form of government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodic free elections. It permits citizens to participate in making laws and public policies by choosing their leaders, therefore citizens should be educated so that they can select the right candidate for the ruling government. Also, there are some concerns regarding democracy- leaders always keep changing in democracy with the interest of citizens and on the count of votes which leads to instability. It is all about political competition and power, no scope for morality.

Factors Affect Democracy:

capital and civil society

economic development

modernization

Norway and Iceland are the best democratic countries in the world. India is standing at fifty-one position.

India is a parliamentary democratic republic where the President is head of the state and Prime minister is head of the government. The guiding principles of democracy such as protected rights and freedoms, free and fair elections, accountability and transparency of government officials, citizens have a responsibility to uphold and support their principles. Democracy was first practised in the 6 th century BCE, in the city-state of Athens. One basic principle of democracy is that people are the source of all the political power, in a democracy people rule themselves and also respect given to diverse groups of citizens, so democracy is required to select the government of their own interest and make the nation developed by electing good leaders.

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FAQs on Democracy Essay for Students in English

1. What are the Features of Democracy?

Features of Democracy are as follows

Equality: Democracy provides equal rights to everyone, regardless of their gender, caste, colour, religion or creed.

Individual Freedom: Everybody has the right to do anything they want until it does not affect another person’s liberty.

Majority Rules: In a democracy, things are decided by the majority rule, if the majority agrees to something, it will be done.

Free Election: Everyone has the right to vote or to become a candidate to fight the elections.

2. Define Democracy?

Democracy means where people have the right to choose the rulers and also people have freedom to express views, freedom to organise and freedom to protest. Protesting and showing Dissent is a major part of a healthy democracy. Democracy is the most successful and popular form of government throughout the globe.

Democracy holds a special place in India, also India is still the largest democracy in existence around the world.

3. What are the Benefits of Democracy?

Let us discuss some of the benefits received by the use of democracy to form a government. Benefits of democracy are: 

It is more accountable

Improves the quality of decision as the decision is taken after a long time of discussion and consultation.

It provides a better method to deal with differences and conflicts.

It safeguards the fundamental rights of people and brings a sense of equality and freedom.

It works for the welfare of both the people and the state.

4. Which country is the largest democracy in the World?

India is considered the largest democracy, all around the world. India decided to have a democratic Govt. from the very first day of its independence after the rule of the British. In India, everyone above the age of 18 years can go to vote to select the Government, without any kind of discrimination on the basis of caste, colour, religion, gender or more. But India, even being the largest democracy, still has a long way to become perfect.

5. Write about the five principles of Democracy?

There are five key principles that are followed in a democracy. These Five Principles of Democracy of India are -  secular, sovereign, republic, socialist, and democratic. These five principles have to be respected by every political party, participating in the general elections in India. The party which got the most votes forms the government which represents the democratic principle. No discrimination is done on the basis of religion which represents the secular nature of democracy. The govt. formed after the election has to work for the welfare of common people which shows socialism in play.

what is the definition of democracy essay

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Essay on Democracy in 100, 300 and 500 Words

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  • Updated on  
  • Jan 15, 2024

Essay on Democracy

The oldest account of democracy can be traced back to 508–507 BCC Athens . Today there are over 50 different types of democracy across the world. But, what is the ideal form of democracy? Why is democracy considered the epitome of freedom and rights around the globe? Let’s explore what self-governance is and how you can write a creative and informative essay on democracy and its significance. 

Today, India is the largest democracy with a population of 1.41 billion and counting. Everyone in India above the age of 18 is given the right to vote and elect their representative. Isn’t it beautiful, when people are given the option to vote for their leader, one that understands their problems and promises to end their miseries? This is just one feature of democracy , for we have a lot of samples for you in the essay on democracy. Stay tuned!

Can you answer these questions in under 5 minutes? Take the Ultimate GK Quiz to find out!

This Blog Includes:

What is democracy , sample essay on democracy (100 words), sample essay on democracy (250 to 300 words), sample essay on democracy for upsc (500 words).

Democracy is a form of government in which the final authority to deliberate and decide the legislation for the country lies with the people, either directly or through representatives. Within a democracy, the method of decision-making, and the demarcation of citizens vary among countries. However, some fundamental principles of democracy include the rule of law, inclusivity, political deliberations, voting via elections , etc. 

Did you know: On 15th August 1947, India became the world’s largest democracy after adopting the Indian Constitution and granting fundamental rights to its citizens?

Must Explore: Human Rights Courses for Students 

Must Explore: NCERT Notes on Separation of Powers in a Democracy

Democracy where people make decisions for the country is the only known form of governance in the world that promises to inculcate principles of equality, liberty and justice. The deliberations and negotiations to form policies and make decisions for the country are the basis on which the government works, with supreme power to people to choose their representatives, delegate the country’s matters and express their dissent. The democratic system is usually of two types, the presidential system, and the parliamentary system. In India, the three pillars of democracy, namely legislature, executive and judiciary, working independently and still interconnected, along with a free press and media provide a structure for a truly functional democracy. Despite the longest-written constitution incorporating values of sovereignty, socialism, secularism etc. India, like other countries, still faces challenges like corruption, bigotry, and oppression of certain communities and thus, struggles to stay true to its democratic ideals.

essay on democracy

Did you know: Some of the richest countries in the world are democracies?

Must Read : Consumer Rights in India

Must Read: Democracy and Diversity Class 10

As Abraham Lincoln once said, “democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people.” There is undeniably no doubt that the core of democracies lies in making people the ultimate decision-makers. With time, the simple definition of democracy has evolved to include other principles like equality, political accountability, rights of the citizens and to an extent, values of liberty and justice. Across the globe, representative democracies are widely prevalent, however, there is a major variation in how democracies are practised. The major two types of representative democracy are presidential and parliamentary forms of democracy. Moreover, not all those who present themselves as a democratic republic follow its values.

Many countries have legally deprived some communities of living with dignity and protecting their liberty, or are practising authoritarian rule through majoritarianism or populist leaders. Despite this, one of the things that are central and basic to all is the practice of elections and voting. However, even in such a case, the principles of universal adult franchise and the practice of free and fair elections are theoretically essential but very limited in practice, for a democracy. Unlike several other nations, India is still, at least constitutionally and principally, a practitioner of an ideal democracy.

With our three organs of the government, namely legislative, executive and judiciary, the constitutional rights to citizens, a multiparty system, laws to curb discrimination and spread the virtues of equality, protection to minorities, and a space for people to discuss, debate and dissent, India has shown a commitment towards democratic values. In recent times, with challenges to freedom of speech, rights of minority groups and a conundrum between the protection of diversity and unification of the country, the debate about the preservation of democracy has become vital to public discussion.

democracy essay

Did you know: In countries like Brazil, Scotland, Switzerland, Argentina, and Austria the minimum voting age is 16 years?

Also Read: Difference Between Democracy and Dictatorship

Democracy originated from the Greek word dēmokratiā , with dēmos ‘people’ and Kratos ‘rule.’ For the first time, the term appeared in the 5th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in Greek city-states, notably Classical Athens, to mean “rule of the people.” It now refers to a form of governance where the people have the right to participate in the decision-making of the country. Majorly, it is either a direct democracy where citizens deliberate and make legislation while in a representative democracy, they choose government officials on their behalf, like in a parliamentary or presidential democracy.

The presidential system (like in the USA) has the President as the head of the country and the government, while the parliamentary system (like in the UK and India) has both a Prime Minister who derives its legitimacy from a parliament and even a nominal head like a monarch or a President.

The notions and principle frameworks of democracy have evolved with time. At the core, lies the idea of political discussions and negotiations. In contrast to its alternatives like monarchy, anarchy, oligarchy etc., it is the one with the most liberty to incorporate diversity. The ideas of equality, political representation to all, active public participation, the inclusion of dissent, and most importantly, the authority to the law by all make it an attractive option for citizens to prefer, and countries to follow.

The largest democracy in the world, India with the lengthiest constitution has tried and to an extent, successfully achieved incorporating the framework to be a functional democracy. It is a parliamentary democratic republic where the President is head of the state and the Prime minister is head of the government. It works on the functioning of three bodies, namely legislative, executive, and judiciary. By including the principles of a sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic, and undertaking the guidelines to establish equality, liberty and justice, in the preamble itself, India shows true dedication to achieving the ideal.

It has formed a structure that allows people to enjoy their rights, fight against discrimination or any other form of suppression, and protect their rights as well. The ban on all and any form of discrimination, an independent judiciary, governmental accountability to its citizens, freedom of media and press, and secular values are some common values shared by all types of democracies.

Across the world, countries have tried rooting their constitution with the principles of democracy. However, the reality is different. Even though elections are conducted everywhere, mostly, they lack freedom of choice and fairness. Even in the world’s greatest democracies, there are challenges like political instability, suppression of dissent, corruption , and power dynamics polluting the political sphere and making it unjust for the citizens. Despite the consensus on democracy as the best form of government, the journey to achieve true democracy is both painstaking and tiresome. 

Difference-between-Democracy-and-Dictatorship

Did you know: Countries like Singapore, Peru, and Brazil have compulsory voting?

Must Read: Democracy and Diversity Class 10 Notes

Democracy is a process through which the government of a country is elected by and for the people.

Yes, India is a democratic country and also holds the title of the world’s largest democracy.

Direct and Representative Democracy are the two major types of Democracy.

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E. B. White on “The Meaning of Democracy”

what is the definition of democracy essay

By The New Yorker

E. B. White on “The Meaning of Democracy”

This piece originally appeared in the Notes and Comment section of the July 3, 1943, issue of The New Yorker. “ The 40s: The Story of a Decade ,” an anthology of New Yorker articles, stories, and poems, will be released on Tuesday.

We received a letter from the Writers’ War Board the other day asking for a statement on “The Meaning of Democracy.” It presumably is our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure. Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is. — E. B. White

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E.B. White’s definition of democracy

I’ve read a lot of e.b. white, but i’d never before come across his interesting definition of democracy, written in june 1943: democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time..

I've read a lot of E.B. White, but I'd never before come across his interesting definition of democracy, written in June 1943:

I’ve read a lot of E.B. White, but I’d never before come across his interesting definition of democracy, written in June 1943:

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter:  @tomricks1

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Democracy Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on democracy.

Democracy is known as the finest form of government. Why so? Because in a democracy, the people of the country choose their government. They enjoy certain rights which are very essential for any human being to live freely and happily. There are various democratic countries in the world , but India is the largest one. Democracy has withstood the test of time, and while other forms have the government has failed, democracy stood strong. It has time and again proved its importance and impact.

Democracy essay

Significance of a Democracy

Democracy is very important for human development . When people have free will to live freely, they will be happier. Moreover, we have seen how other forms of government have turned out to be. Citizens are not that happy and prosperous in a monarchy or anarchy.

Furthermore, democracy lets people have equal rights. This ensures that equality prevails all over the country. Subsequently, it also gives them duties. These duties make them better citizens and are also important for their overall development.

Most importantly, in a democracy, the people form the government. So, this selection of the government by the citizens gives everyone a chance to work for their country. It allows the law to prevail efficiently as the rules are made by people whom they have selected.

In addition, democracy allows people of various religions and cultures to exist peacefully. It makes them live in harmony with one another. People of democracy are more tolerant and accepting of each other’s differences. This is very important for any country to be happy and prosper.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

India: A Democratic Country

India is known to be the largest democracy all over the world. After the rule of the British ended in 1947 , India adopted democracy. In India, all the citizens who are above the age of 18 get the right to vote. It does not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed, gender, color, or more.

what is the definition of democracy essay

Although India is the largest democracy it still has a long way to go. The country faces a lot of problems which do not let it efficiently function as a democracy. The caste system is still prevalent which hampers with the socialist principle of democracy. Moreover, communalism is also on the rise. This interferes with the secular aspect of the country. All these differences need to be set aside to ensure the happiness and prosperity of the citizens.

In short, democracy in India is still better than that in most of the countries. Nonetheless, there is a lot of room for improvement which we must focus on. The government must implement stringent laws to ensure no discrimination takes place. In addition, awareness programs must be held to make citizens aware of their rights and duties.

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Plato’s “Republic” – What Is Democracy?

What is democracy, what is plato’s definition of democracy and is it accurate, re-defining democracy to persuade others, works cited.

Poverty, inequality, and rising crime rates are some of the social problems that plague countries all over the world. Brilliant people argue that the only way to develop a cost efficient solution to these problems is to establish an effective system of governance. After a careful analysis of Plato’s ideas, it is high time to consider the importance of democracy. Democracy is a flawed system of government. However, democracy is the best form of government to solve the problems mentioned earlier.

Ancient Greece provided the seed of the idea that enabled the emergence of democracy. The idea came from them, and the modern world is thankful for their contribution. Ancient Greece demonstrated an alternative form of government that encourages the participation of ordinary people. Ancient Greece also provided the framework that enabled modern men to come into agreement and resolve difficult issues. As a result of their contribution, modern people are able to resolve issues through the electoral process.

Socrates was one of the brilliant minds that shaped the idea of democracy. Socrates’ planted the seed; however, it was Plato who explained the idea of his mentor. Plato was the brilliant student of Socrates. Plato’s book entitled The Republic expressed his thoughts regarding this particular form of government. However, Plato’s uninspired view of democracy was not enough to change the conclusion made earlier that democracy is the best form of government.

Without a doubt, Plato’s conception of democracy was different compared to its modern version. It is possible to determine Plato’s understanding of democracy by the discussion of the different forms of government in Book VIII. In this particular section of the book he pointed out the similarity between oligarchy and democracy (Plato, Book VIII).

Plato’s argument was based on one assumption. He assumed that oligarchy gave birth to democracy. Oligarchy is unpopular in the modern age, because it is linked to the rule of the elite. It is safe to assume that an oligarchy is a group of leaders that came from the aristocracy. Thus, the author was justified in his belief that this form of democracy was bound to fail (Plato Book VIII). However, Plato did not have an accurate definition of democracy.

The best way to redefine democracy is to use the ideas found in The Republic. For example, the principles rooted in timocracy must be included in the new definition. In addition, the idea about the philosopher-king must be considered in redefining democracy as well. Plato’s description of timocracy brings out the importance of honor in government (Pappas 45). Plato’s analysis of the philosopher-king brings out the need for a wise ruler.

Thus, an ideal democracy is a form of government ruled by a wise leader. More importantly, it is a government ruled by an honorable leader. This combination will create a leadership that is immune from temptations to steal from the people and oppress the weak. This type of government will create servant leaders.

Honor, honesty, and competence are not enough to create a democracy. Therefore, it is important to modify the idea of Plato that democracy comes from oligarchy. It is imperative to prevent the aristocracy from ruling like tyrants. However, an ideal democracy is a government composed of a group of leaders. Thus, the best way to experience true democracy is to establish an idealized version of a parliamentary form of government.

A parliamentary form of government prevents the emergence of a tyrant. At the same time, the parliamentary form of government eliminates the possibility of electing a popular candidate who is not competent to rule the land. There are many countries all over the world that started as a democracy but ended up as a dictatorship. These dictators were once popular candidates who were elected to the highest position because of their popularity.

An idealized version of a parliamentary government requires two ingredients to succeed. First, the citizens will elect the leaders. Second, the citizens aspire to become philosophers. Plato lamented the fact that only a few people can appreciate what it takes to become the leader of a country.

However, Plato did not live to see the day when ordinary people had the chance to read books and study like the philosophers of ancient Greece. It is now possible to raise up a nation of people who are educated and understand the qualifications required to become a national leader. People will support this new version, because it is now possible to change the way people think through education. In Plato’s time the idea that children of poor farmers can become sophisticated thinkers was an impossible dream.

An idealized version of a parliamentary government is the redefinition of democracy. Therefore, an ideal version of democracy is a government ruled by a group of people who were elected into office by ordinary citizens. However, the selection process installs qualified leaders to key positions in government. This is made possible by the quality of the voters. Plato failed to see the emergence of a new social class. He failed to see the possibility of transforming ordinary people into intelligent members of the electorate through the process of higher education.

Pappas, Nickolas. The Routledge Guide to The Republic . New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Plato. “ The Republic .” The Internet Classics Archive . 2009.

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Democracy Essay

Democracy is derived from the Greek word demos or people. It is defined as a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people. Democracy is exercised directly by the people; in large societies, it is by the people through their elected agents. In the phrase of President Abraham Lincoln, democracy is the “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” There are various democratic countries, but India has the largest democracy in the world. This Democracy Essay will help you know all about India’s democracy. Students can also get a list of CBSE Essays on different topics to boost their essay-writing skills.

500+ Words Democracy Essay

India is a very large country full of diversities – linguistically, culturally and religiously. At the time of independence, it was economically underdeveloped. There were enormous regional disparities, widespread poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and a shortage of almost all public welfare means. Since independence, India has been functioning as a responsible democracy. The same has been appreciated by the international community. It has successfully adapted to challenging situations. There have been free and fair periodic elections for all political offices, from the panchayats to the President. There has been a smooth transfer of political power from one political party or set of political parties to others, both at national and state levels, on many occasions.

India: A Democratic Country

Democracy is of two, i.e. direct and representative. In a direct democracy, all citizens, without the intermediary of elected or appointed officials, can participate in making public decisions. Such a system is only practical with relatively small numbers of people in a community organisation or tribal council. Whereas in representative democracy, every citizen has the right to vote for their representative. People elect their representatives to all levels, from Panchayats, Municipal Boards, State Assemblies and Parliament. In India, we have a representative democracy.

Democracy is a form of government in which rulers elected by the people take all the major decisions. Elections offer a choice and fair opportunity to the people to change the current rulers. This choice and opportunity are available to all people on an equal basis. The exercise of this choice leads to a government limited by basic rules of the constitution and citizens’ rights.

Democracy is the Best Form of Government

A democratic government is a better government because it is a more accountable form of government. Democracy provides a method to deal with differences and conflicts. Thus, democracy improves the quality of decision-making. The advantage of a democracy is that mistakes cannot be hidden for long. There is a space for public discussion, and there is room for correction. Either the rulers have to change their decisions, or the rulers can be changed. Democracy offers better chances of a good decision. It respects people’s own wishes and allows different kinds of people to live together. Even when it fails to do some of these things, it allows a way of correcting its mistakes and offers more dignity to all citizens. That is why democracy is considered the best form of government.

Students must have found this “Democracy Essay” useful for improving their essay writing skills. They can get the study material and the latest update on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams, at BYJU’S.

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Regions & Countries

How people in 24 countries think democracy can improve.

Illustrations by John Carlo Mandapat

what is the definition of democracy essay

Dissatisfaction with democracy is high and, in many places, rising . But how do people think democracy in their country could be improved? To answer this, Pew Research Center asked over 30,000 people in 24 countries what they think would help make democracy work better where they live.

Three key themes emerged:

what is the definition of democracy essay

Addressing basic needs. People highlight problems with their country’s economy, the need for jobs, a desire for safety and security, and problems with roads, electricity, health care and more – pointing to the precursors to democracy , or the things they need in order for it to function at all.

what is the definition of democracy essay

Improving the system. People also want to improve parts of the government they already have. They want better politicians or fairer implementation of existing rights. And many call for their country’s citizens to participate more or behave differently in other ways.

what is the definition of democracy essay

Overhauling the system. Some feel like the system itself needs to be reformed through changes to the electoral process, the balance of power between institutions, or the structure of courts, among other suggestions.

Jump to our quote collection to read how people want to improve their democracy in their own words. For a deeper dive into the 17 types of changes people suggest, read “What Can Improve Democracy?”

Addressing basic needs

For some, there is a sense that good democracy is based on their needs being met – and this is particularly true in the middle-income countries we surveyed. For example, one woman in Indonesia emphasized the need to “improve economic conditions to ensure democracy goes well.” Others highlight jobs , managing inflation , caring for the poor, livable wages, union reform and more. Infrastructure is also a key focus. One man in Nigeria noted, “When education, roads, hospitals and adequate water are made available then I can say democracy will improve.” In South Africa, amid months of rolling blackouts , one woman said, “The government must support the nation with service delivery. We poor people don’t get any benefits. Electricity must be solved.” In India, agricultural policies also command attention – both prioritizing agriculture and implementing specific policy changes, like decreasing seed prices or reducing farmers’ loans. And some people emphasize the need for the state to reduce crime and increase safety, especially for women. One woman in Mexico suggested her government “pay more attention to what they need to: supporting women who suffer violence, rape or mistreatment.”

what is the definition of democracy essay

“They should just work to reduce crime and get us jobs and houses because that is what we are voting for.”

Economic reform, Policies and legislation, Safety

– Man, 18, South Africa 

“Change the economic system in Indonesia first so people will get welfare. Then the democratic system will go well.”

Economic reform

– Woman, 41, Indonesia

Improving the system

Fixing democracy for many respondents comes down to improving politicians, changing citizen behavior and ensuring the fair implementation of laws. In most countries, getting different or better politicians – whether they be more representative of the population, more competent or more responsive – is the most commonly requested change. One Australian woman called for “more younger politicians and those who are from working-class communities and realistic in understanding how the less wealthy live.” A Kenyan woman said democracy would improve if “leaders listen to Kenyans’ opinions and put the country’s well-being ahead of their own.” Some highlight how citizens themselves can change. This includes general calls for kindness, unity and respect, and appeals to end specific social conflicts – as in the case of one Israeli man who called for understanding “between religious and secular people.” Others see the need for the people to do more: vote at higher rates; educate themselves, especially in civics; and even protest at key moments. Some focus on fairer implementation of existing laws and rights . For example, a number of people broadly call for leaders to “follow the Constitution,” while others stress not allowing leaders charged with crimes to run for office. Treating everyone equally – both in general and in terms of specific ethnic, racial or religious groups – is also a dominant theme in some countries. One French woman proposed “more equality between men and women, better integration of immigrants, eradication of poverty, and elimination of child and animal abuse” as means to improve democracy.

what is the definition of democracy essay

“Increased participation of the population in politics. Education for people, because knowledgeable people know how to deal with different opinions.”

Citizens, Policies and legislation

– Woman, 31, Brazil

“This country is full of idiots. Let’s have some real people in politics instead of these toffee-nosed public school boys. I know it’s a generalization, but it sort of sums it up. Why can’t we have some specialists, some real people to advise? Not those handpicked from the aristocratic elite.”

Politicians

– Woman, 54, UK

Overhauling the system

For some, fundamental changes are needed to improve democracy. These can be very country-specific changes, like abolishing the House of Lords in the United Kingdom , changing the power of autonomous regions in Spain or revising Article 49.3 in France . Others focus on the need to change the size of certain institutions (such as the legislature), balance power between branches or levels of government, or impose stricter term limits. Reforming the judicial system , whether by replacing the judges on the Constitutional Tribunal in Poland , changing how judges are appointed in Spain or adding term limits to the U.S. Supreme Court , is also a priority. In Israel, where the survey was conducted during a wave of protests against judicial reform (and prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack), calls to “weaken the High Court of Justice because it’s harmful to democracy” as well as preserve the court’s independence were the most commonly suggested democratic improvement. The way elections are conducted is also a concern, with many proposing a switch to proportional representation, or the implementation of ranked choice voting or first-past-the-post elections. Country-specific issues such as eliminating the Electoral College in the United States , abolishing the D’hondt method in Spain or raising the electoral threshold in the Netherlands were also suggested as improvements to democracy. There are also broader calls for more elections – especially referenda or ballot initiatives . Sometimes, people called for votes on specific issues, as one woman in Sweden did: “More referenda on nuclear power, sexuality, NATO and the EU.” Other times, people simply wanted the public to have a more direct say in policymaking, as in the case of one Australian man who said, “Direct democracy. Allow the citizens to vote on the important policy directions the country makes.”

what is the definition of democracy essay

“Changing the electoral law with the possibility of directly electing deputies and senators. It should not be as it is now, that they are assigned by the parties. We should give more leeway to the prime minister.”

Electoral reform

– Man, 78, Italy

“Bring more issues to the general public for voting instead of letting the current representatives vote on them. More referendum-style voting on various issues.”

Direct democracy

– Woman, 34, Canada

In their own words

Below, we have a selection of quotes that describe what people think should be changed in their country to make democracy function better. You can explore the quotes by country or by topic. Quotes are also available in their original language for select languages.

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Digital democracy

Introduction.

Digital democracy is a much discussed but rather fuzzy concept that still lacks a clear definition. We propose understanding digital democracy as a concept that links practices and institutions of collective political self-determination with its mediating digital infrastructures. Digital democracy has both an analytical and a normative dimension. As an analytical lens, digital democracy investigates how the use of digital technologies may influence the conditions, institutions and practices of political engagement and democratic governance. As a normative concept, it enables us to think about democracy as an open, alterable form of political organisation that is always in the making. Its dynamics are on the one hand due to conflicting principles, interpretations, and aspirations endemic to the democratic idea, like freedom, equality, or popular sovereignty. On the other hand, these dynamics also reflect a changing media landscape, which brings about new possibilities of imagining, realising, and practicing political self-determination. Therefore, digital democracy should neither be seen as a utopian model of an imminent future nor as a mere disintermediation of the existing democratic institutions. Instead of relying on monocausal, linear explanations, we suggest studying digital democracy as a contingent, open-ended phenomenon that interconnects two evolving areas, that of democratic self-government and that of digital infrastructures.

This text consists of three parts. The first section traces the harbingers and histories of digital democracy including their specific media constellation. It describes continuities and discontinuities in the interplay of technical change and hopes for democratisation. Interestingly, dreams of a direct democracy are among the recurring motifs. The second section critically reviews the premise of democratisation through technology. We find two schools of thought, one identifying digitalisation as a (disintermediating) driver of political change and another assessing the potential of digital technologies to bring democratic principles to bear in new and experimental settings. The final section covers four domains of digital democracy to illustrate the current transformation of democratic institutions and practices: democratic governance and the role of citizens, the public sphere as a condition of democratic action and political opinion formation, the organisation and repertoires of political action, and finally new forms of power and domination.

1. A brief historical outline

Digital democracy is a term filled with political aspirations. From an historical perspective, it is the latest model succeeding electronic democracy or teledemocracy, each of which emphasise the idea of democratisation through technology. Importantly, this idea has manifested itself not only in texts and discussions, but also in experimental projects. From the WELL (Rheingold, 1993) to the political participation platform “Rousseau”, these projects have sought to link specific visions of communication technology with the objective of improving democracy (Dahlberg, 2011) by reducing political alienation and increasing self-determination. Over the last 40 years, we can roughly distinguish three historical constellations in the evolution of digital democracy, each consisting of specific configurations of technologies and democratic imaginaries: i) electronic democracy, ii) virtual democracy, and iii) web 2.0 / network democracy. Depending on one’s point of view, these three periods are linked either by continuities or discontinuities in thought (for a different periodisation, see Vedel, 2006). A central common idea of these configurations refers to the use of communication technologies for implanting direct-democratic elements into representative democracy, which is often regarded as a “sorry substitute for the real thing” (Dahl, 1982).

Electronic democracy

One of the early forerunners of today’s social network sites (boyd & Ellison, 2007) and participation platforms is the back-channel-capable cable television of the 1980s, which inspires the idea of teledemocracy (Dutton, 1992; se Etzioni, 1992; Toffler, 1980). Using technology for improving democracy in the 1980s centres on strengthening information flows among citizens and facilitating participation. Cable TV channels would allow citizens to communicate among themselves without mediators (van Dijk, 2012, p. 50) and thereby create direct-democratic opportunities (Hindmann, 2009, p. 5; see Grossmann, 1996). An iconic image of this idea is the electronic town hall meeting. Evoking the dream of an Athenean agora, they are addressing political alienation by assembling like-minded people, making democracy more tangible and bridging the gap towards the political class (Dahlberg, 2011; Bimber, 2003; Barber, 1984; Held, 1987; Dahl, 1989).

The notion of information technology underlying the model of teledemocracy is predominantly limited to that of a tool, and therefore often shallow. An exception is Barber’s concept of a strong democracy, which argues that technology can be used in various, more or less democracy-enhancing ways. Hence, its “penchant for immediacy, directness, lateral communication” needs to be teased out (Barber, 1998, p. 585). Examples are Fishkin’s technique of deliberative polling (developed in 1988) or the use of Bulletin Board Systems for the networking of political activists (Myers, 1994; Rafaeli, 1984).

Virtual democracy

With the spread of the internet and its communication services in the early 1990s, new visions of virtual communities (Rheingold, 1993) emerged, which highlighted their unique features. The iconic image is no longer that of a local town hall but of “the global village”. Roughly thirty years after McLuhan coined the term, the global village seizes the Californian “small is beautiful” formula and links it to the utopian idea of a denationalised democracy, which will unfold in the virtual realm out of the government’s reach. Condemning existing political institutions as alienating, the internet pioneers intend to transfer their techno-libertarian imaginary of democracy into the emerging cyberspace (Schaal, 2016, p. 285). John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Independence (1996) boldly portrays established democracies as tyrannies while cyberspace will facilitate new forms of political and economic self-determination, consisting of free and equal individuals (for the economic equivalent of liberation, see Dyson, 1997).

Merging neoliberal ideas of freedom from government (Johnson & Post, 1996) with a strong sense of individual liberation and privatisation counterculture (Turner, 2006), the distributed, seemingly power-diverting architecture of the internet comes to epitomise the 1990s style of political self-determination (for a different take, see Lessig, 1999; Goldsmith & Wu, 2006). Yet, in the shadow of neoliberalism, the rise of usenet groups, IRC channels and email lists also supports a communitarian version of democracy. It aims to revive the lost community as a new form of civic commons that John Gastil would later refer to as a “democracy machine” (Gastil, 2016). New types of “network cultures” (Lovink, 2009) are emerging, which may shed off “meat-spaced” ways of discrimination and marginalisation: “on the Internet nobody knows you are a dog”. However, with the demise of “internet exceptionalism” (Wu, 2011) in the early 2000s and the rising calls for regulating the digital infrastructure, democratic notions of a distinct cyberspace are losing traction.

Between web 2.0 and network democracy

T he participatory web of the new century’s first decade marks the transition from the “read-only” to the “read/write” web, with now constantly changing services supposed to “get(s) better the more people use it” (O’Reilly, 2005; see also Beer & Burrow, 2007). In light of the web 2.0, the netizens (Hauben & Hauben, 1997) of the 1990s are now turning into content producers who are able for the first time to individually contribute to the public discourse (Bruns & Schmidt, 2011; Shirky, 2008). Emerging communication services such as blogs, ‘daily me’ diaries, podcasts, virtual radios and video channels create novel possibilities of practising but also of imagining democracy (Dahlgren, 2000, p. 339).

While the web 2.0 democracy is broadly welcomed as a “tool for political change” (McPhillips, 2006), it lacks the utopian, revolutionary touch of virtual democracy. Instead, it focuses on realising a new stage of “mass participation in a representative democracy” (Froomkin, 2004, p. 3). Freedom is no longer the privilege of an elite of internet pioneers but becomes reconciled with notions of “cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice” (Benkler, 2006) within a “network democracy” (Hacker, 2002) or a “wikidemocracy” (Noveck, 2009). The price for mainstreaming the internet, however, is the amalgamation of commercial and emancipatory logics. New business models drive the global socialisation of novel communication services while simultaneously commodifying the private sphere and the human mind.

The perceived immediacy of digital technology and its possibilities of “organizing without organization” (Shirky, 2008) are expected to flatten established hierarchies and eliminate powerful bureaucracies. Indeed, there is a specific strength found in the “weak cooperation” among digitally connected people, which links individualism and solidarity in unpredictable, crowd-enabled ways (Aguiton & Cardon, 2007). The web 2.0 democracy also strongly resonates with Habermas’ concept of deliberative democracy, which emphasises the role of the public sphere for collective self-determination (Chadwick, 2008; see Habermas, 1996).

Unlike virtual democracy, which revisited the revolutionary roots of American independence, the periods of teledemocracy and web 2.0 democracy primarily pursued reformatory intentions. Premised on the optimistic belief that communication technology is democratic per se (Hindmann, 2009, p. 5), the overall goal is to release its potential for a more direct-democratic self-determination. A few years later, “platform populism” (Morozov, 2021) will take up the hope of an unmediated and direct ability to collectively act through digital technology (De Blasio & Sorice, 2018).

2. Mediated democracy in the digital constellation

Most contributions to the concept of digital democracy are concerning themselves with the ongoing transformation of democratic government. While some approaches centre on the de-institutionalising aspects of this change, others are interested in the experimental practices that may result in new or modified democratic institutions.

The first set of works tells stories of decay and destabilisation. This includes observations on the growing fragility of once powerful political parties, the dethroning of elections and electoral bodies as core democratic institutions and the profound structural change of the public sphere. The latter also concerns the eroding agenda-setting power of the mass media in favour of a more direct form of political communication (Dahlgren, 2005; Coleman, 2017). According to this perspective, digital communication services have become a threat to post-world war democracy and, therefore, raise the question if and how democracy needs to be defended against the fragmentation and hybridisation of the public sphere, the growing unpredictability of political will formation, but also the normalisation of hate speech, violence and disinformation campaigns (De Blasio & Viviani, 2020; Howard, 2020; Bennett & Livingston, 2020).

Approaches of de-institutionalisation or “disintermediation” (Urbinati, 2019) tend to put the blame on digital technologies. They take platforms and algorithmic systems as drivers of democratic change and thus ascribe a strong agency to digitalisation and its underlying business models. According to this popular view, social media distort democratic discourse through echo chambers and social bots (Pariser, 2011; Sunstein, 2017). Due to their global scope, social media concentrate “instrumentarian” (Zuboff, 2019) or “communication” power (Castells, 2009) in the hands of a few tech giants, effectively undermining a society’s capacity for self-determination (Rahman & Thelen, 2019). Terms such as “network democracy” imply that digital infrastructures also have formative effects on democratic institutions and thus tacitly accept them as blueprints of social change (Hacker, 2002).

By contrast, narratives on democratic transformation portray digital democracy as an experimental setting for the active reform of existing representative institutions. Digital resources for political action allow challenging democratic processes, some of which may translate into novel institutional settings. Traditionally, the law and the legislator form a central political medium: laws are the means by which citizens, through their parliamentary representatives, shape social order and social relationships. A growing number of civic tech organisations are emerging around legislative functions with the goal of reforming, enhancing or even replacing those legislative functions (Lukensmeyer, 2017). Platform parties aim to make organised political will formation more transparent and direct (Deseriis, 2020a; Gerbaudo, 2019). NGOs such as European Digital Rights (EDRi) strive for more effective ways of holding the political elite to account. Social movements also experiment with direct forms of democratic decision-making that includes the development of customised infrastructures for local bottom-up engagement, such as the digital platforms of “democracy-driven governance” in Barcelona and Madrid (Bua & Bussu, 2020; Lopez, 2018).

From the present vantage point of a democracy in flux, both narratives on digital change (the version on de-institutionalising and the one on re-institutionalising democratic institutions) shed light on practices, bodies and mechanisms once taken for granted, which used to constitute a now disintegrating political constellation (Berg et al., 2020a). Both perspectives thereby strengthen our awareness of the alterability of democracy, but particularly the latter points out new options for putting political self-determination into practice and thus politicising and shaping democracy itself.

Following the latter line of thought, digital technologies should neither be regarded as independent drivers nor a mere tool of political change. In philosophy of technology lingo, they constitute a “space of possibilities” (Hubig, 2006, pp. 155-160) structured by specific “affordances” (Evans et al., 2017), which may suggest but do not determine how democracies appropriate digital media (see Bossetta, 2018 for a contrasting approach). The notion of space of possibilities means that technologies enable countless, contingent ways of making use of them, with unpredictable effects on our future lives. “Digital democratic affordances” in the sense of Deseriis (2020b, p. 1), for example, refer to “the democratic capacities of digital media”, roughly defined as reducing the costs of political coordination. Crucially, such collective capacities can accommodate very different scenarios, ranging from instrumental action committed to a modernised representative democracy to ambitions of “democratising democracy” ( De Sousa Santos , 2005) aiming to challenge the given power distribution of governance structures.

Understood as media, the appropriation and use of technologies change our world views, our experiences, interpretations and expectations. However, how digital technologies are perceived and integrated into a democracy’s texture of political institutions, how we shape them and how they shape us, cannot be understood without taking into account the broader constellation of social, cultural and economic change (Hofmann, 2019). Digital democracy, then, is to be perceived as a re-intermediation rather than a disintermediation, ultimately resulting in new or changing institutions and infrastructural logics (Epstein, Katzenbach, Musiani, 2016; see Bolter & Grusin, 1999).

Understood as re-intermediation, digital democracy also encourages us to trace the evolution of democracy in a dynamic, open-ended fashion instead of creating linear narratives of rise and decline. The multiple, often conflicting trends in the relationship between political self-determination and its mediating infrastructures are becoming more visible from this perspective. Such a temporalising view on democracy entails sense-making narratives of the past: at least implicitly, we make sense of digital democracy by distinguishing it from former models of self-determination whose characteristics are taking on new meanings in the course of their decline.

3. Four domains of democratic transformation

Digitalisation provides new possibilities for realising democratic self-determination. This concerns constitutional dimensions that can be clustered in four domains of democratic transformation. These domains are i) the role of government and citizenship, ii) the public sphere, iii) the relationship between participation and representation, and iv) the issues of domination and rights. The following section takes a look at the concepts, terms and discourses that indicate how these possibilities are perceived and put into practice.

Democratic government and the role of citizens

In line with its predecessors, digital democracy implies various new notions of democratic governance. These notions include initiatives for Open Government (Noveck, 2015) or Open Democracy (Landemore, 2020) at one end of the spectrum and managerial data-based modes of governing the population at the other end.

Open government and open democracy projects aim to make policy processes more responsive and transparent. By empowering citizens to directly engage with public administrations, policies can be tailored more closely to their needs. The concept of open democracy extends to all levels, from local collaborations to nationwide digital Town halls or international agreements such as the Open Government Partnership (see Schnell, 2020). Some open government projects explicitly pursue strategies to sideline political parties and traditional hierarchies. The reimagining of government as a digital platform (O'Reilly, 2011, p. 13) or "wiki” (Noveck, 2009) intends to achieve horizontal forms of civic collaboration towards the undistorted realisation of the common good.

Despite all hopes for effective steps towards a digitally enabled direct democracy, concepts of mass participation have been facing organisational limits (Landemore, 2021, p. 78). For this reason, open government initiatives used to primarily focus on improving "accountability through transparency" (Hansson et al., 2015, p. 545) and exchange between citizens and government institutions (see Coleman, 2017). In the meantime, new decision-making systems and models for active mass participation have emerged, accommodating a broader understanding of citizenship. Notwithstanding the avant-gardist status, in most of these projects citizens are no longer perceived in their role of voters or (critical) spectators of democratic governance. Instead, citizens are meant to become actively involved in consultation as well as decision-making processes (Simon et al., 2017, p. 5; Deseriis 2020a, p. 2; De Blasio & Selva, 2016). Again, the city of Barcelona exemplifies the development of a well-thought-out participation strategy that has translated into a highly praised experiment of digitally empowered municipal self-government (Morozov & Bria, 2018; López, 2018, 2020).

In contrast to these participatory initiatives, digital technologies also facilitate more technocratically-oriented notions of responsive governance. The concept of "data democracy" (Susskind, 2018, p. 246), for example, imagines digital democracy as a science and management project geared towards perfecting the information base as a condition for effective policies. Epistemic practices such as "demos scraping", which seek to create data-based representations of the citizenry, reflect the idea that data analytics can "yield unprecedented insights into populations for policy makers" (Ulbricht, 2020, p. 429, see Khanna, 2017, p. 30). Approaches such as data democracy are criticised for epitomising the spirit of paternalistic liberalism (König, 2019). They tend to substitute data collection for political participation and achieve social well-being through “nudges” from above rather than through capacity-building for everyone.

Public sphere

As a space of opinion and will formation, the public sphere is an essential condition for liberal democracies. Communication media, the public sphere and democratic life are interconnected in many ways. This becomes obvious when we consider the profound political changes that new communication infrastructure have made possible since the introduction of broadcasting (Chadwick, 2013). With regard to digitalisation, this chiefly concerns the facilitating of public voices or user-generated content. While broadcasting and the printing press afforded privileged access to public speech to professionally trained journalists and the social elite, digital media has introduced many-to-many communication services, which, at least in principle, give a voice to everyone and create the foundation for “networked publics” (Varnelis, 2008). Social networks, the blogosphere and messenger services have formed a communication infrastructure, which both enables and shapes the present type of “mass self-communication” (Castells, 2009).

The transformation of the public sphere cannot only be attributed to digital media, however. As the growing appreciation of deliberative democracy (Habermas, 1996) shows, political opinion formation through public discourse has become increasingly important in itself but also relative to elections and parliamentary decision-making (Urbinati, 2006). Responding to a decline in trust in democratic institutions and public elites, the public sphere has also assumed the function of a watchdog, which holds the exercise of political power to account. In the digital constellation, the expanding role of the public sphere and the rise of digital media intersect, resulting in a changing representation of the public and a diversifying watchdog function. Tweets and hashtag assemblages have become accepted as expressions of public opinion and vox populi (McGregor 2019); the watchdog function is now exercised by a broader range of actors, among them civic tech activists, grassroot media and “influencers”.

Notions of monitory democracy (Keane, 2013) or “counter democracy” (Rosanvallon, 2008) represent one way of making sense of the digital constellation. “Networked publics” emphasises the horizontal links within a more active audience (Ito, 2008), with repercussions for our understanding of democratic agency and the democratic subject (Hofmann, 2019). In sum, there is a strong interdependence between shifting interpretations of the public sphere, changing democratic practices and the appropriation of digital technologies by citizens. This interdependence cannot be easily understood in terms of causal relationships.

As a side-effect of interacting through digital media such as platforms, the public is contributing to the production, circulation and ranking of information flows (Castells, 1996). With the public becoming generative, established social and legal boundaries between the production, circulation and consumption of news are blurring. Traditional mass media are losing control over their channels of communication to social networks (Kleis Nielson & Ganter, 2018). Journalistic standards of relevance are competing against algorithmic methods of content curation, including a probabilistic calculation of popularity and personalised interests (Ananny, 2020). The personalisation and horizontal distribution of information flows contributes to a significant pluralisation of the public sphere (Kleis Nielsen & Fletcher, 2020; Bennett & Pfetsch, 2018). As a result, shared political reference points, previously seen as a prerequisite for democratic discourse and will formation, may lose their self-evidence.

The ongoing “platformisation” (Poell et al., 2019; Helmond, 2015) of the public sphere offers insights into the now decaying stabilising mechanisms of representative democracies. The redistribution of public voice illuminates the rules and norms that used to delimit public discourse. This concerns familiar binaries between public and private, truth and lie, rational and irrational, politically influential and marginal positions. The agenda-setting power of traditional mass media shaped national world-views and helped delimit the invisible yet powerful “universe of the thinkable and unthinkable” (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 236). Democracy research has acknowledged the ambivalence of this development. Digital democracy may shift the locus of self-determination towards post-electoral, extra-parliamentary practices and institutionalise some form of “negative sovereignty” (Rosanvallon, 2008), which focus on the limitation of power rather than on its constructive use.

Political action beyond participation and representation

Digital democracy is taking shape at a time when once privileged forms of political action are in decline: political parties are suffering from membership loss, the emancipatory aura of the electoral franchise is fading, and the audience of the passive citizen has evolved to the active audience of “prosumers” (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). A rebalancing has been taking place among the “two powers of the democratic sovereign” (Urbinati, 2014, p. 22), the public sphere as a space for discussion and the sphere of institutional decision-making, whereby the former has gained relevance compared to the latter. At the “democratic interface” (Bennett et al., 2018) between the institutionalised and non-institutionalised sphere of political action we observe a spirit of change, of exploring new types of engagement and influencing representative institutions. Not all of these experiments qualify as emancipatory, however. Some of them are testing constitutional boundaries, are manipulative or anti-democratic (Bennett & Livingston, 2018), evoking an “industry of democratic defences” (Müller, 2021) that are no less problematic (Farkas & Schou, 2019).

Digital campaign platforms enable mobilising for political issues, which, as in the case of Moveon.org or Avaaz, stand for the idea of voicing the people’s will more directly via crowdfunded lobbying (Karpf, 2012). Hashtag activism on social networks diversifies traditional forms of journalistic agenda-setting, transcends the passive notion of audience, and complements activist practices via the bottom-up creation of issue-publics, such as in the case of #BlackLivesMatter (Garza, 2020; see Berg et al., 2020b). The evolving civic tech activism creates digital infrastructures such as DECIDIM to “make engagement easier for citizens, improve communication and feedback between governments and citizens, and strengthen political accountability” (Baack, 2018, p. 45; Webb, 2020; Shrock, 2018). However, digital activism is not automatically more inclusive and receives more political recognition than analogue forms of engagement (Hindmann, 2009). On the contrary, the rise of the communicative paradigm that highlights public discourse and manifests in social movements runs the risk of neglecting the necessity of organisational ties to decision-making institutions such as parliaments and parties.

Political participation undergoes a shift from long-term engagement in political parties or associations towards issue-oriented, short-term and ephemeral forms of action, described by Bennett and Segerberg as a transition from collective to “connective action” (2012; see also Bimber, 2016). Yet, the fragile, volatile nature of most digital movements indicates that political organisations are not becoming obsolete. “Platform parties”, for example, aim to establish horizontal membership structures and engagement platforms designed to make internal communication and decision-making more direct and transparent (Deseriis & Vittori, 2019; McKelvey & Piebiak, 2018). Other political parties make their boundaries more permeable to recruit the temporary support of non-members (Scarrow, 2015, p. 128; Chadwick & Stromer-Galley, 2016).

Again, not all of these organisational experiments imply a democratisation of political structures. "Computational management" strategies (Kreiss, 2012, p. 144) aim to control political mobilisation along the manipulative incentive structures of the “voter surveillance” (Bennett & Lyon, 2019) and advertisement industry (Boler & Davis, 2021). In particular, this concerns the adoption of psychometric heuristics for the purpose of microtargeting specific groups of voters, which may fuel identity politics rather than create an enlightening public discourse (Kreiss, 2018; Papacharissi, 2015). The democratic idea of undermining the control of party elites through primaries and networked mobilisation not only allows for progressive politics. These structures also foster populist mobilisation, the rise of celebrities and political demagogues (De Blasio & Viviani, 2020).

The infrastructure of digital democracy allows for horizontal democratic self-organisation on a broader and interactive scale. Simultaneously, representative institutions are changing their repertoire of political coordination. Thus, digital democracy tackles the hierarchical bureaucratic organisation of representative democracy. New models are emerging along the tension of "interactivity and control" (Chadwick & Stromer-Galley, 2016, p. 3), partly absorbing the influences of a commodified and market-based approach to politics, through which political citizenship emerges to form public opinion and impact political decision-making.

Domination and rights

In the broadest sense, political power can be understood as a potential for individual and collective action to shape social order (Arendt, 1958; Rosanvallon, 2006). In its institutionalised form, power turns into rules, norms and domination. Digital democracy generates both new sources of power and changing constellations of rule and domination. Data and datafication exemplify new forms of power while their systematic collection and commodification as part of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019) constitute novel modes of domination. Both, new forms of power and changing constellations of domination are related since the latter structures the opportunities for democratising digital governance.

Today, digital platforms are described as the “organizational form of the early twenty-first century”, which monopolises the collection and analysis of data and establishes a specific form of “network dominance” (Stark & Pais, 2021; Magalhães & Couldry, 2021). As economic actors, they merge the datafication of everything with a commodification of everything, even democratic communication (Dean, 2009, see Zuboff, 2019). As versatile intermediaries, platforms have become private governors in their own right (Helberger, 2020; Gillespie, 2018), with profound effects on the infrastructure of democracy, including the conditions of “opinion power” (Helberger, 2020, p. 4), will formation, and self-government (Müller, 2021; Urbinati, 2019). Hence, platform power creates specific problems of domination for digital democracy and challenges constitutional ideas and arrangements of power-balancing (Suzor, 2018; Celeste, 2019).

The relationship between governments and digital platforms is complex and charged with paradoxical effects, subverting traditional notions of democratic sovereignty. As a customer of data, governments are mandating cooperation and obliging platforms to grant access to their data trove, for example in the area of law enforcement, police work and state security. For the field of intelligence services, Edward Snowden’s revelations have demonstrated the extent of public-private collaboration, including its problematic effects for human rights (Lyon, 2015; Jørgensen, 2019). As a regulator of data-based services, governments are enrolling platforms “as proxies of the state to enforce laws” (Fourcade & Gordon, 2020, p. 94), for example through “notice and take-down” provisions in the field of media law and communication (Keller & Leerssen, 2020). The boundaries between public and private sector seem to be blurring towards a symbiotic power constellation of aligned interests, which become legally and technically inscribed into the provision of digital infrastructures. The outsourcing of law enforcement to the private sector appoints platforms as “the primary governors of online communication (Helberger, 2020, p. 7; Klonick, 2017), with unclear consequences for the quality of public oversight and democratic accountability. And while fundamental rights could principally be strengthened in digital democracy, they are practically coming under pressure from both data-based business models and expanding surveillance competences of the state (de Gregorio, 2021; Redeker et al., 2018).

However, there are also initiatives towards a democratic re-embedding of these constellations of power and domination. With regard to human rights, the growing discrepancy between the potential and practical conditions of exercising human rights is increasingly yet unsystematically politicised across national borders. Internationally, the political struggle evolving around democratic principles for the digital constellation centres on a “language of users’ rights” (Suzor, 2018, p. 4) aiming to combat the current power constellation and the corresponding vulnerabilities of citizenship (Padovani & Santaniello, 2018). Such a language could sediment in a reinterpretation of fundamental rights as the normative framework for regulating platform power (Suzor et al., 2019). Since platforms govern the public sphere and thus determine the conditions for exercising the rights to freedom of speech and privacy, platforms should also be required to respect and protect human rights (Haggart & Keller, 2021; Kaye, 2019).

Mushrooming initiatives towards an “Internet Bill of Rights” are seen as evidence for a digital constitutionalism from below (Redecker et al., 2015). Digital constitutionalism gives birth to a new category of “constitutional subjects” (Teubner, 2004), among them not only international NGOs but, according to some, also the global platform corporations themselves. In this view, all actors affected contribute with informal norms to the juridification of the digital sphere (for recent examples, see Douek, 2019; Kloneck, 2020). However, such an approach has to navigate the fine line of including the private sector as constitutional subjects while at the same time preventing it from becoming the dominant one.

In addition to rights-based approaches, which pose the risk of individualising and depoliticising digital forms of domination, other forms of engagement can be found on the micro and the macro level. An example of the former refers to the growing political engagement of IT sector employees against management decisions in the form of “leaks” or walk-outs. On the macro level, national governments are addressing platform power under the claim of digital sovereignty. However, notions of sovereignty primarily justify a strengthening of the nation state instead of promoting democratisation (Pohle & Thiel, 2020). In contrast, civic tech approaches may be paving the way towards democratising digital constellations of power from below. As part of a “constitutional moment” (Celeste, 2019), digital democracy challenges the traditional state- and nation-centred focus and argues for a more pluralist approach to re-embed platform power and tame digital constellations of domination.

4. Conclusion

Digital democracy links political self-determination to technical innovation in contingent, unpredictable ways. Hence, its evolution reflects the open-ended, often experimental interplay of political imaginaries, concerns, and goals with new technical possibilities. However, investigating digital democracy entails lessons that go beyond the present techno-political constellation: political self-determination is a profoundly mediated project whose institutions and practices are constantly and contingently in flux. The changes we observe are often ambivalent and do not reflect a linear progression towards more direct, unmediated, or transparent forms of sovereignty. Likewise, digital democracy cannot be reduced to a strengthening, or weakening, of single elements such as freedom, equality, participation, or directness. Instead, political engagement and its objective are driven by different ways of interpreting and implementing democratic principles, which more often than not are in tension with each other. Given these endogenous dynamics, current changes of democracy defy a monocausal explanation and ask for interpretations that pay attention to the contingent interplay of political aspirations, digital possibilities and their social context.

Digital democracy evolves under mediated conditions that political actors can only partly control. While emerging democratic practices show traces of digital business models as well as commercial and political surveillance ambitions, they are simultaneously pushing back against these forms of alienation. New technologies are not only means, they also have become subject of political engagement. Hence, digital democracy involves struggles over its foundational principles, its directions and meaning, its infrastructure. It should therefore be understood as a contingent political arrangement in flux.

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  1. Democracy

    democracy, literally, rule by the people. The term is derived from the Greek dēmokratia, 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. (Read Madeleine Albright's Britannica essay on democracy.)

  2. What Is Democracy? Definition and Examples

    Published on January 29, 2021. A democracy is a form of government that empowers the people to exercise political control, limits the power of the head of state, provides for the separation of powers between governmental entities, and ensures the protection of natural rights and civil liberties. In practice, democracy takes many different forms.

  3. Democracy

    Democracy Defined. The term "democracy", as we will use it in this entry, refers very generally to a method of collective decision making characterized by a kind of equality among the participants at an essential stage of the decision-making process. Four aspects of this definition should be noted.

  4. What is democracy?

    Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the "people," a group historically constituted by only a minority of the population (e.g., all free adult males in ancient Athens or all sufficiently propertied adult males in 19th-century Britain) but generally understood since ...

  5. Democracy

    Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized : dēmokratía, dēmos 'people' and kratos 'rule') [1] is a system of government in which state power is vested in the people or the general population of a state. [2] Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitive elections while more expansive ...

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    Democracy is a word that is over 2500 years old. It comes from ancient Greece and means "the power of the people.". When democracy was first invented, in ancient Athens, the most stunning feature of this new form of government was that poor men were allowed to participate alongside rich men in determining the fate of the city: whether to go ...

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    democracy, Form of government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodic free elections.In a direct democracy, the public participates in government directly (as in some ancient Greek city-states, some New England town meetings, and some cantons in modern Switzerland).

  8. The importance of democracy

    Importance of democracy in a free and just society. Historically, many thinkers argued democracy can only be detrimental to a free and just society, characterizing rule by the majority as inherently unstable, irrational, and a threat to private property. The rich shall pay all the taxes, and the poor shall make all the laws.

  9. Democracy Definition & Meaning

    democracy: [noun] a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

  10. What Does Democracy Mean?

    Democracy is a system of government where everyone gets a say. That may be done directly or through elected representatives. Unlike other systems such as monarchies or theocracies, democracy is based on principles like equality, participation, and fundamental rights. To form a basic understanding of what democracy means, we'll cover the ...

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    The first part of the book presents a general theory of abandonment: the conditions under which language should be abandoned. The rest of the book applies this general theory to the case of "democracy" and "democratic". The book shows that "democracy" and "democratic" are semantically, pragmatically, and communicatively defective.

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    Indeed, Lincoln offered a definition of popular government that can guide our understanding of a democracy—or a republic—today: "A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and ...

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    Using such tools, a variety of prima facie problems for the power equality approach are addressed and defused. Finally, the theory is compared to epistemic and deliberative approaches to democracy; and reasons are offered for the attractiveness of democracy that flows from the power equality theme.

  15. Essay on Democracy in 100, 300 and 500 Words

    Sample Essay on Democracy (250 to 300 words) As Abraham Lincoln once said, "democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people.". There is undeniably no doubt that the core of democracies lies in making people the ultimate decision-makers. With time, the simple definition of democracy has evolved to include other ...

  16. (PDF) Democracy

    Democracy is a term that is used to denote a variety of distinct objects and ideas. Democracy describes either a set of political institutions or an ideal of collective self-rule. Democracy can ...

  17. E. B. White on "The Meaning of Democracy"

    Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and the cream ...

  18. E.B. White's definition of democracy

    Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

  19. Democracy Essay for Students and Children

    500+ Words Essay on Democracy. Democracy is known as the finest form of government. Why so? Because in a democracy, the people of the country choose their government. They enjoy certain rights which are very essential for any human being to live freely and happily. There are various democratic countries in the world, but India is the largest one.

  20. Plato's "Republic"

    Plato's description of timocracy brings out the importance of honor in government (Pappas 45). Plato's analysis of the philosopher-king brings out the need for a wise ruler. Thus, an ideal democracy is a form of government ruled by a wise leader. More importantly, it is a government ruled by an honorable leader.

  21. Definition Of Democracy Essay

    Essay On Australian Democracy 1267 Words | 6 Pages. The term democracy is a contested concept with many classifications. A government made up of the people for the people is the easiest definition to focus on. A democracy needs have these key elements of a political system for choosing the

  22. Democracy Essay

    Democracy Essay. Democracy is derived from the Greek word demos or people. It is defined as a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people. Democracy is exercised directly by the people; in large societies, it is by the people through their elected agents. In the phrase of President Abraham Lincoln, democracy is the ...

  23. How People in 24 Countries Think Democracy Can Improve

    Overhauling the system. For some, fundamental changes are needed to improve democracy. These can be very country-specific changes, like abolishing the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, changing the power of autonomous regions in Spain or revising Article 49.3 in France.Others focus on the need to change the size of certain institutions (such as the legislature), balance power between ...

  24. Digital democracy (Concept Series)

    Abstract. For contemporary societies, digital democracy provides a key concept that denotes, in our understanding, the relationship between collective self-government and mediating digital infrastructures. New forms of digital engagement that go hand in hand with organisational reforms are re-intermediating established democratic settings in ...

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    2 likes, 0 comments - aces_classical_education_ on January 7, 2023: "Syntopicon: The collection compiles history's greatest written works, from the ancient classics t..."