American Democracy
What is it
The simplest definition(1) is that America (with apologies to the rest of the countries in the Americas, especially Canada, I will use “America” as synonymous with the United States of America, just to keep things simple) has a representative democracy, with a strong constitution aimed at avoiding the “tyranny of the majority”, ensuring the separation of powers (judicial, legislative and executive), and guaranteeing certain freedoms (political thought and speech, freedom of the press) deemed to be “ .. essential so that citizens are informed and able to vote in their personal interests”.
I read a quote somewhere, which summarizes it beautifully, but I can’t for the life of me remember where:
“Democracy is for people who are not sure they are right”
What makes it tick
We all know these basics from our social studies or civics classes, or in my case from the preparation for my naturalization tests. More importantly, however, what does this translate to in practice, how has democracy evolved since the writing of the constitution, and what has changed to cause the demise of American democracy?
A book by Robert Alan Dahl, On Democracy(2), presents an excellent discussion of the history, evolution, criteria for and current status of democracy in the world. I shall use that book here to establish a common frame of reference for the purpose of my discussion.
Dahl established the following criteria for an (ideal) democratic process:
“Effective Participation: Before a policy is adopted...,all members must have equal and effective opportunities for making their views known ...as to what the policy should be.
Voting equality: When the moment arrives at which the decision about the policy will finally be made every member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote, and all votes must be counted equal.
Enlightened understanding: Within reasonable limits as to time, each member must have equal and effective opportunities for learning about the relevant alternative policies and their likely consequences.
Control of the Agenda: The members must have ... the opportunity to decide... what matters are to be placed on the agenda.
Inclusion of adults: All adult... permanent residents should have the full rights of citizens”.
When Dahl turns his attention from “ideal” democracy to real large scale democracy, he defines the following “political institutions” as being vital to a functioning democracy:
Elected officials: all modern large scale democracies are representative.
Free, fair, and frequent elections, comparatively free of coercion.
Freedom of expression, including criticism of the socioeconomic order and prevailing ideology (“love it or leave it”?; liberalism = socialism = communism?)
Access to alternative sources of information
Associational Autonomy, including the ability to form and join new political parties and interest groups (lobbies?).
Inclusive citizenship
From a different perspective, that of media communications, Robert W. McChesney in Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy(3), (as quoted in http://www.zcommunications.org/reflections-on-a-largely-forgotten-book-herbert-schillers-the-mind-managers-1973-by-paul-street) states:
Meaningful participatory democracy requires three interrelated things:
rough equality in wealth, income, and property ownership, since large class and socioeconomic disparities undercut the ability of citizens to act as equals and confer disproportionate political, policy, and cultural influence on those with superior resources
a sense of community between individuals - a sense that each individual's well-being is positively connected to the common good
an effective system of communications that accurately informs and engages the citizenry, encouraging their intelligent participation in political life.
Returning to Dahl, he points out that representative democracy (the only kind feasible for large groupings such as a nation state) has a potentially fatal flaw: citizens need to delegate authority to their elected representatives, and the delegated authority is virtually all inclusive between election cycles. This requires a huge reliance on and trust in the integrity and reliability of those we elect to be our representatives -- the politicians. I will have much more to say about this later on.
Equality
All of the above cited discussions of what makes a democracy work have, in one way or another, “equality” as a central criterium.
One of the early observers of American democracy in action was the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. Writing in the early 19th century (1835-1840), his observations are still amazingly relevant today. He observed American democracy against the history of it’s evolution from European Enlightenment and the French Revolution and contrasted it to the European feudal system from which it evolved. De Tocqueville comes right to the point at the beginning of his Introduction
“Among the new things that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more forcefully than the equality of conditions”.
Thus, the first distinguishing characteristic of American democracy to keep in mind is equality. In practice, of course, equality is constantly evolving. It is stated as an absolute guiding principle in the Declaration of Independence, and it was obviously noticeable to de Tocqueville that the people of America are more equal than his contemporaries in Europe, even after the French Revolution.
As a philosophical concept equality, as in “...all men are created equal...” is very simple and appealing(4). However, there are many dimensions of equality and not all of these are accepted on an equal basis (pun intended): political equality, equality before the law, equal opportunity, equality of outcome or (economic) condition, gender equality, racial equality and so on.
In early America equality was not equal along all of these dimensions. Even in the dimension of political equality not all people in America were able to participate in the political process, certainly not women and certainly not slaves, not even propertyless men. However, one of the distinguishing characteristics of American democracy which made it the model for and the envy of most of the rest of the world was its steady progress towards more and more equality in most, if not all of these dimensions.
De Tocqueville seems to have anticipated this inexorable progressions towards more and more equality:
“I quickly recognized that the influence of this same fact [equality of condition] extends well beyond political mores and laws and that it holds no less sway over civil society than over government. It creates opinions, engenders feelings, suggests customs and modifies evereything it does not produce”. [my emphasis]
Very quickly the vote was given to all men. Not so quickly, and with much resistance, women were given equal political rights. Although the Civil War in theory freed the slaves (and thus made them “equal”), their actual attainment of political and legal equality took much longer, and had to overcome tremendous opposition. More recently legal equality has been extended to other minority groups who were explicitly or implicitly discriminated against; just recently the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy in the armed forces was repealed.
Interestingly, and to me tellingly, the one dimension of equality, equality of outcome or (economic) condition, has not continued to advance over the years, actually reversing its trend to less equality in the past 30 or more years.
Referring again to Dahl’s On Democracy, he notes the interesting empirical fact that “... all modern democracies have market economies...”. A few paragraphs further Dahl states that
“Yet if the affiliation between democracy and market economies had advantages for both, we cannot overlook an important cost that market economies impose on democracy. Because a market economy generates economic inequality, it can also diminish the prospects for attaining full political equality among the citizens of a democratic country”.
Footnotes:
(1) My source for many overview definitions of terms and concepts is Wikipedia. Used with care, I have found it to be a reliable source of largely factual and unbiased information. It represents a cooperative effort among many contributors and is thus less likely to be biased in one direction or the other.
(2) Robert Dahl, On Democracy, Yale University Press, 1998
(3) Robert W. McChesney, Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy, Seven Stories Press, 2003
(4) Dahl reminds us that “equality” is by no means a “self-evident truth”, that empirical evidence and observation would more likely suggest the opposite. However, for our purpose, American democracy is axiomatically, declareationally if you will, linked to equality, so we do not need to delve into Dahl’s arguments as to why, even it not self evident, equality is still a vital precondition for democracy. We can safely require of American democracy to continually strive to enhance equality at all levels.
The next chapter in this series is located here.
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