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

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

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

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

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

Following his visit to the United States in 183132, the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville asserted in no uncertain terms that the country he had observed was a democracyindeed, the worlds first representative democracy, where the fundamental principle of government was the sovereignty of the people. Tocquevilles estimation of the American system of government reached a wide audience in Europe and beyond through his monumental four-volume study Democracy in America (183540).

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

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

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Democracy - Democracy or republic? | Britannica

By Victor Kiprop on September 26 2018 in World Facts

The United States of America is governed as a federal republic, and therefore some argue that the U.S. is not a democracy. A republic is defined as a political system in which the supreme power is vested upon the citizenry that is entitled to vote for its representatives and officers responsible to them, while a democracy is defined as a government of the people and by the people exercised through elected or direct representative. It can be difficult to distinguish between a democracy and a republic, and therefore it would be rational to conclude that the United States is both a democracy and a republic.

The key difference between a republic and a democracy is not how power is projected, but the limits to power. Both use the representational system, meaning that the citizenry is represented in the government by elected leaders. In both cases, the majority rule, but in a republic the constitution limits how the government can exercise power. These rights are inalienable and cannot be changed or altered by an elected government. The United States is a typical example of a republic state because the constitution limits the power of the government. Some rights such as the Bill of Rights, the right to vote, and the powers to amend the constitution are limited and cannot be changed by the sitting government without consulting the public directly.

The United States is a democracy, but it is not a true democracy. Instead, it is a representative democracy. The common forms of democracy are direct democracy and representative democracy. A direct democracy is a system of government in which the majority have their say on every matter concerning governance. Direct democracies hold referendums each time an issue has to be decided upon because there are no elective representatives. The United States is a representative democracy, as the public elects individuals to represent them at the government level. The United States is also a constitutional democracy, meaning that the functions and roles of the government are governed by the constitution that also protects the rights and privileges of the citizenry regardless of whether they are majority or minority.

Modern states present themselves as democratic republics governed by a constitution. The government can amend the constitution through acts of parliaments and referendums. As long as the constitution continues to protect the rights of the people, the citizenry continues to vote for representatives, and the constitution limits the power of the government, the United States remains both a republic and a democracy.

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Is the United States a Republic or a Democracy? - WorldAtlas

A recent episode of the PBS series Royal Myths and Secrets dealt with the French Revolution.

My concept of this pivotal period in history was simple - there was an uprising by starving peasants due to the excesses of King Louis XVI and his self-indulgent queen, Marie Antoinette. It began with the storming of the Bastille. The king and queen were imprisoned and their lives put to a grisly end on the guillotine. End of storyor was it?

In 1789 France was in dire financial straits due to enormous debt incurred by supporting America during its fight for independence. It was the bourgeois middle-class, aligned with the nations nobility that were largely responsible for the revolt against the monarchy. The contrived assault on the Bastille did not free political prisoners but rather seven criminals who were subsequently rearrested. For three years the revolutionaries and loyalists along with the king sought reforms to address the nations problems. In that time, tales of the queens supposed disregard for the poor and rumors of alleged infidelities and perversions were published, circulating among the citizens, further inciting scorn and hatred for her.

By 1791 France was floundering. Civil war ensued. Attempting escape, the royal couple was captured and imprisoned. The end of his reign came in 1793 with his execution followed by that of the queen. This began the "The Reign of Terror" with over 14,000 citizens sent to the guillotine. It would be 80 years from the onset of the revolution before the first stable democracy was finally established in France

While France facilitated and was inspired by Americas success in establishing a democracy conceived in and dedicated to liberty and equality, their efforts resulted in a grim, lengthy struggle prolonged by internal strife.

Since its founding America has engaged in many battles - against Nazism, Fascism, Imperialism, Communism and Radical Terrorism.

Now we are instructed to believe in a new enemy - "bad, evil people" who "would tear down the beliefs, culture, identity" of America. Whose "radical view of American history is a web of lies."

Those who "indoctrinate our children" that are being "taught in school to hate their own country."

Those who seek "a cultural revolution" by means of "extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions."

Their weapon - "Cancel Culture", "driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees".

Those are the words of the President of the United States as delivered on the eve of a celebration of this nations independence; who further charged those posing these threats as "left-wing" "liberal Democrats" whose "goal is not a better America; their goal is the end of America."

I leave it to the reader to determine who poses the threat to the future of democracy in a truly united country.

Kathie Moore, rural Hutchinson, is a freelance artist, retired from the U.S. Postal Service. Email her at klmnews45@gmail.com.

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The enemy of democracy - News - The Hutchinson News

It is clear then that the best partnership in a state is the one which operates through the middle people, and also that those states in which the middle element is large, and stronger if possible than the other two together, or at any rate stronger than either of them alone, have every chance of having a well-run constitution. Aristotle, Politics

Covid-19 has been a global shock. But will it be a transformative one? The answer is that it might be a transformative event for a number of western societies, notably the US and UK.

For western liberal democracies, the era after the second world war can be divided into two sub-periods. The first, running roughly from 1945 to 1970 was the era of a social democratic or, as Americans might say, a New Deal consensus. The second, starting around 1980, was that of the global free market, or the Thatcher-Reagan consensus.

Between these two periods came an interregnum the high-inflation 1970s. We are now living in what seems to be another interregnum, which began with the global financial crisis. That crisis damaged the ideology of the free market. But, across the western world, valiant attempts were made to restore the ancien rgime, through the rescue of the financial system, tighter financial regulation and fiscal austerity.

Coronavirus has exposed frailties of our economic and social model. In a series of articles this week, the FT explores how the pandemic is forcing a rethink of the role of citizens, the state and business.

Will low-paid workers ever get a raise? Tuesday, July 7

Who will pay the bill? Taxing multinationals Wednesday, July 8

Generation is the new class - the crisis for millennials Thursday, July 9

How business became addicted to debt Friday, July 10

In the event, the rise of populist nationalism followed this attempted restoration. With his protectionism and bilateralism, promise to preserve social security and initial (since forgotten) emphasis on rebuilding infrastructure, Donald Trump became leader of his party because he was not a traditional free-market Republican. With his commitment to levelling up poorer regions and favourable references to Franklin Delano Roosevelts New Deal, Boris Johnson has also indicated a new direction of travel. These leaders have buried Ronald Reagan and MargaretThatcher.

Coronavirus has also now caused a still more dramatic return of government than the financial crisis. This may mark the end of the second postwar period of transition.

Around what idea might politics, society and the economy now revolve? The answer should be citizenship, a concept that goes back to the city states of the Greeks and Rome. It is more than just a political idea. As Aristotle also said: man is a political animal. We are only fully human, he thought, as active participants in a political community.

In a democracy, people are not just consumers, workers, business owners, savers or investors. We are citizens. This is the tie that binds people together ina shared endeavour.

In todays world, citizenship needs to have three aspects: loyalty to democratic political and legal institutions and the values of open debate and mutual tolerance that underpin them; concern for the ability of all fellow citizens to lead a fulfilled life; and the wish to create an economy that allows the citizens and their institutions to flourish.

The most important reason for emphasising citizenship today is that outlined by Aristotle almost two and a half millennia ago. A necessary condition for the stability of any constitutional democracy is a thriving middle class (by which is meant people in the middle of the income distribution). In its absence, the state risks turning into a plutocracy, a demagogy, or a tyranny.

With the hollowing out of the middle class, even established western democracies are now in danger. As Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth argue in Angrynomics, the combination of adverse economic developments with manifest unfairnesses has made many people angry.

In Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Anne Case and Angus Deaton argue that these developments have also driven many into severe ill-health. They note that the death rates of middle-aged white Americans have risen since 2000. Something similar seems more recently to be happening in the UK. Deaths of despair, they suggest, are prevalent among those who have been left behind, whose lives have not worked out as they expected.

How did we get here? How does Covid-19 fit in? And how might our ideas and policies need to change?

The postwar settlement worked well, for a while. It was egalitarian and economically dynamic, especially in countries devastated by war. Western governments took an active role in managing their domestic economies, while simultaneously liberalising and expanding foreign trade.

Intellectually, this should be called the Age of Keynes. But it died with the surge in inflation, which precipitated the labour unrest and economic slowdown of the 1970s. The Keynesian era was then followed by that of Milton Friedman, characterised by globalisation, liberalised markets, low marginal taxes and a focus on controlling inflation.

This new global era saw striking successes, notably reductions in global inequality and mass poverty. It also was an era of important innovations, notably in information technology. Not least, it was the era in which Soviet communism collapsed and the ideal of democracy spread across the world.

Yet a number of big weaknesses emerged. Economic growth in high-income countries tended to be low relative to that achieved in the postwar era. The distribution of income and wealth became more unequal. The economic value of relatively uneducated labour fell relative to that of college graduates. Labour markets became more flexible, but earnings were more precarious. The more unequal the society, the lower its social mobility.

In cultures that emphasise the obligation to look after oneself, inequality as such may not be so socially or politically destabilising. But the sense of deteriorating prospects for oneself and ones children certainly matters. So, too, does a strong sense of unfairness.

This is where the idea of rigged capitalism is relevant. One aspect of this is the inordinate growth of finance. Another is the shift towards the maximisation of shareholder value as the sole goal of companies and the associated tendency to reward management by reference to the price of stocks.

Another aspect is the decline in competition, documented for the US by Thomas Philippon in his book The Great Reversal. Also relevant is tax avoidance, notably by corporations. US multinationals have been allowed to report a huge proportion of their foreign profits in small, low-tax jurisdictions. Such opportunities and many others in different areas are not just being exploited. They are being actively created, through lobbying.

However convenient it is to blame foreigners, they are not the guilty parties. Trade, especially the sudden expansion of manufactured imports from China in the first decade of this century, generated local shocks. Yet Harvard economist Elhanan Helpman concludes a review of the literature by stating that globalisation in the form of foreign trade and offshoring has not been a large contributor to rising inequality.

Far more important has been technological change. Particularly significant has been rapid productivity growth in manufacturing, as Martin Sandbu argues in The Economics of Belonging. Also important has been the rising demand for skilled labour relative to unskilled labour.

The decline of manufacturing as a source of employment has had adverse effects on towns and regions in which they were concentrated. When factories close or lay off a large proportion of their workforce, the wider local economy is also adversely affected. Such left behind regions have become a crucial element in the coalitions of the disaffected. Meanwhile, cities, especially the great metropolises, are dynamic hubs for educated people and new activities, as Oxford university economist Paul Collier has noted.

The global financial crisis was the outcome of financial liberalisation in the context of rising macroeconomic imbalances, as argued by Matthew Klein and Michael Pettis in Trade Wars are Class Wars. The most important outcomes were the sudden economic collapse, the rescues of the financial system, the subsequent emphasis on curbing government spending and the post-crisis slowdown of economic growth. In the eurozone, this was exacerbated by the way in which creditor countries lectured the strugglers on their alleged irresponsibility.

Mr Trump became president of the US and Mr Johnson became prime minister of the UK because of their success in incorporating the resentment of those left behind into their conservative coalitions. This, in turn, was partly a reaction of large parts of the old working classes to the transformation of the traditional parties of the left (Labour and Democrats) into ones more representative of university-educated cosmopolitan voters, and ethnic and cultural minorities.

Some argue that viewing these political shifts in economic terms is an error. These are, they argue, responses to cultural changes, such as immigration, the changing place of women and new sexual mores. This is unpersuasive, for two reasons: first, cultural and economic changes cannot be separated from each another; and second, culture does not change so quickly.

What needs explaining is the shifts in voting behaviour. The answer is the changing allegiances of people who have come to suffer from status anxiety the fear that they live on the edge of an economic cliff or are already falling over it.

Into this already fraught situation has come the thunderstorm of Covid-19. This in turn has had at least five big effects.

First, it has caused an economic shutdown to curb the spread of the disease. This came at the expense of the young, who are relatively immune to the effects of the virus, and in favour of the old, who are the most vulnerable.

Second, it has tended to hit women harder than men and the unskilled harder than the skilled. This is explained by the relatively high intensity of female employment in some hard-hit (and risky) service sectors and to the ability of a higher proportion of skilled people to work securely from home.

Third, coronavirus seems set to exacerbate many prior inequalities. Some of the largest support has gone to the financial sector, as happened in the financial crisis.

Fourth, the pandemic has forced vastly greater fiscal spending even compared with the financial crisis. This now raises the question of how this debt is going to be managed and who is going to pay.

Fifth, the virus has demonstrated the power and resources available to the state. Reagan used to say that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are:Im from the government, andImhere to help. That was the best encapsulation of the philosophy of the era he helped create. Today, the demand not just for help from government but for help from competent government is back.

So what might a return to the idea of citizenship mean, in this new context?

It does not mean that the state should have no concern for the welfare of non-citizens. Nor does it mean that it sees the success of its own citizens as a counterpart to the failures of others. On the contrary, it seeks mutually beneficial relations with other states.

It does not mean that states should cut themselves off from free and fruitful exchange with other societies. Trade, movement of ideas, movement of people and movement of capital, properly regulated, can all be highly beneficial.

It does not mean that states should avoid co-operating closely with one another to achieve shared goals. This applies above all to actions designed to protect the global environment.

What it does mean is that the first concern of democratic states is the welfare of all their citizens. To make this real, certain things follow.

Every citizen should have the reasonable possibility of acquiring an education that would allow them to participate as fully as possible in the life of a high-skilled modern economy. Every citizen should also have the security needed to thrive, even if afflicted by the ill luck of illness, disability or other misfortunes.

Every citizen should have the protection at work needed to be free from abuse, both physical and mental. Every citizen should also be able to co-operate with other workers in order to protect their collective rights.

Successful citizens should expect to pay taxes sufficient to sustain such a society. Corporations should understand that they have obligations to the societies that make their existence possible.

The institutions of politics must be susceptible to the influence of all citizens, not just that of the wealthiest. Policy should aim at creating and sustaining a vigorous middle class while ensuring a safety net for everybody. All citizens, whatever their race, ethnicity, religion or gender are entitled to equal treatment.

Citizens are entitled to decide who is allowed to come and work in their countries and who is entitled to share the obligations and rights of citizens with them.

How precisely such aims might be achieved is what politics must be about. But this does not mean going back to the 1960s. The world has changed too profoundly and in most ways for the better.

We are not going back to a world of mass industrialisation, where most educated women did not work, where there were clear ethnic and racial hierarchies and where western countries dominated. Moreover, we face, with climate change, the rise of China and the transformation of work by information technology, very different challenges.

Yet some things remain the same. Human beings must act collectively as well as individually. Acting together, within a democracy, means acting and thinking as citizens. If we do not do so, democracy will fail. It is our generations duty to ensure it does not.

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Martin Wolf: 'Democracy will fail if we don't think as citizens' | Free to read - Financial Times

More than 500 political, civil leaders, nobel laureates and leading pro-democracy institutions from across the world, among them over sixty former heads of state and government, have signed ajoint statementwarning that democracy is under threat and must be defended.

The current pandemic represents a formidable global challenge to democracy. Authoritarian leaders around the world see the COVID-19 crisis as a new political battleground in their fight to stigmatize democracy as feeble and reverse its dramatic gains of the past few decades, the statement says.

While it is unsurprising that authoritarian regimes are using the crisis to tighten their grip on power, some democracies have also introduced emergency powers that restrict human rights and enhance state surveillance without the necessary safeguards to ensure measures can be rolled back, the statement says.

The statement is aimed at raising awareness and mobilizing citizens and policymakers to protect democracy, recognizing that this is the most effective system for handling global crises while protecting the rights of all citizens, particularly minorities and vulnerable groups.

The Call to Defend Democracy was initiated by the Stockholm-based organization International IDEA and the Washington-DC-based National Endowment for Democracy.

This unprecedented demonstration of global solidarity is a sign that democracy, while threatened, is also resilient, said Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Now is the time when all of us must stand up for democracy. We need to make it clear to everyone what is at stake and that we will not allow leaders with authoritarian tendencies to use this or other crises to increase their power and decrease our rights, said Kevin Casas-Zamora, Secretary-General of International IDEA.

Pro-democratic movements everywhere need to unite to confront the authoritarian challenge, said Andreas Bummel, Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders, one of the signatories of the statement.

To strengthen democracy, we believe it is urgent to expand parliamentary representation and democratic participation of citizens to global institutions such as the United Nations, he added.

This statement is endorsed by Citizens for Global Solutions.

Originally published: https://www.democracywithoutborders.org/13834/democracy-is-under-threat-and-must-be-defended-global-statement-warns/

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Democracy is Under Threat and Must Be Defended, Global Statement Warns - GlobalSolutions.org