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Why Democracy is the Best We've Got

Mar 12, 2019

Alexandra Mork

International Student Essay Contest Winner

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In response to the question " is it important to live in a democracy ", the following essay was selected as a winner of carnegie council's international student essay content..

Although the ongoing debate over the viability and efficacy of living in a democracy underwent a temporary pause after the conclusion of the Cold War and accompanying democratic revolutions, the international rise of authoritarian regimes and simultaneous decline of freedom in the geopolitical sphere makes discussions of democratic ideals and realities increasingly topical.

Democracy is a system of government in which the citizens of a nation determine its policies through elected representatives, direct voting, or in most cases, a combination of the two. Furthermore, in democratic elections, voters must have the capacity to replace political parties and leaders based off popular support. Finally, a democracy must allow the majority of residents to participate in political processes and not exclude certain groups of people from the political sphere on the basis on race, gender, class or sexual orientation.

First and foremost, democracies are a crucial step in achieving equality for oppressed groups by giving people who would otherwise be excluded from politics the ability to vote for the policies and people that they believe in. When given the right to vote, marginalized groups are naturally more likely to support politicians who will work to end the oppressive policies that are prevalent throughout the world. Some argue that democracy alone is insufficient in the pursuit of equality because the majority faction will still overpower minority factions. While this may be true, the importance of democracy should be viewed through a lens of the possible alternatives; other systems of government, such as autocracies, theocracies and monarchies are comparatively worse for achieving equality because they exclusively allow one person or group of people to make decisions for an entire population. Only democracy allows all groups, regardless of race, gender identity, class or sexual orientation, to participate in politics.

Not only does democracy allow all people to have an equal voice, but it is also inherently an extremely flexible system, which allows for the government to adapt according to changing ideologies. Because elected representatives have an incentive to maintain their positions of power, they appeal to public opinion to remain popular. Although many people critique democratic politicians for their inauthenticity, politicians mirroring the beliefs of the people is actually positive because it ensures that that the majority of citizens' beliefs are reflected in national policies. Furthermore, it functions as a crucial check on people in positions of power because if they act in an unpopular or unethical way, they will likely be voted out of office.

Finally, living in a democracy is important because democracies are the most statistically significant factor in reducing inter and intra state conflict. Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute David Cortright and his colleagues conducted a study to determine the validity of democratic peace theory and examine how regime type relates to violence. They concluded that democracies are much less likely to both engage in war with other states and to participate in civil wars. This is likely because war, in any form, is politically unpopular as it costs human lives, which thus incentivizes democracies to avoid it at all costs. Civil wars in particular are unlikely in democracies because democratic governments function as a safety valve for discontent; while disaffected civilians living in democracies can express their grievances in the form of free speech or exercising their right to vote, citizens living in autocracies have no choice other than violence if they hope for governmental change because they lack political power. Cortright also cites Rudolph Rummel's book Death By Government, in which Rummel finds that autocratic regimes are three and a half times more likely to commit genocide than democratic regimes. Cortright suggests this is a result of the prevalence of exclusionary ideology that is reinforced by authoritarian regimes in comparison with democratic ones.

Some may argue that autocratic governments are preferable to democracies because they are more efficient. It is true that autocratic regimes are able to pass and implement policies in a more timely manner. However, the power of democracy lies in its ability to gradually change. Complex issues should not be swiftly and unilaterally decided by one ruler; they should be debated upon by large groups of people examining both sides of the issue until the majority is able to find a consensus.

Another common criticism of democracy that proponents of autocracies present is the lack of expertise of voters. While every voter is certainly not an expert on every topic, democracies encourage citizens to learn more about the world around them by creating a mutual responsibility between each voter and his or her nation, and by extension, his or her world. Democracies motivate voters to do research on important candidates and policies, whereas non-democratic governments foster political apathy because one's opinions have no impact on the world around them.

The 2018 Varieties of Democracy Report concludes that one third of the world's population lives in a country in which democracy is declining. Even more frighteningly, the Freedom House reports that the global freedom index decreased for the twelfth successive year. Editor Gideon Rose grimly wrote in the May/June 2018 issue of Foreign Affairs, "Some say that global democracy is experiencing its worst setback since the 1930s and that it will continue to retreat unless rich countries find ways to reduce inequality and manage the information revolution. Those are the optimists. Pessimists fear the game is already over, that democratic dominance has ended for good."

I fall on the side of the optimists. In the face of the global decline of rule of law, freedom of the press, equal representation, separation of powers and freedom of speech, democracy will be resilient—but only if we fight for it. The time is now to advocate for a more democratic world, and many are taking up the cause. Countries such as Ethiopia are experiencing democratic reforms as the new prime minister has freed political prisoners and promised more fair elections. Even in democratic nations such as the United States, the effects of political movements such as the Women's March and March For Our Lives, which were only possible because of the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, are evident.

Although democracy is far from a perfect political system, it is undoubtedly an important tool in achieving equality, decreasing conflict, and increasing civic engagement, making it the best available system of government.

Alexandra Mork is a former winner of Carnegie Council's international student essay contest. In 2018, while a junior at Harvard-Westlake High School in Los Angeles, Mork drafted the winning student essay titled, "Why Democracy is the Best We've Got." Mork is currently a student at Brown University where she serves as managing editor for the Brown Political Review.

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Essay on Democracy in 100, 300 and 500 Words

Updated on
Jan 15, 2024

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!

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?

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The Top Ten Most-Read Essays of 2021

In 2021, democracy’s fortunes were tested, and a tumultuous world became even more turbulent. Democratic setbacks arose in places as far flung as Burma, El Salvador, Tunisia, and Sudan, and a 20-year experiment in Afghanistan collapsed in days. The world’s democracies were beset by rising polarization, and people watched in shock as an insurrection took place in the United States. In a year marked by high political drama, economic unrest, and rising assaults on democracy, we at the Journal of Democracy sought to provide insight and analysis of the forces that imperil freedom. Here are our 10 most-read essays of 2021:

Manuel Meléndez-Sánchez Nayib Bukele has developed a blend of political tactics that combines populist appeals and classic autocratic behavior with a polished social-media brand. It poses a dire threat to the country’s democratic institutions.

By the People: Essays on Democracy

Harvard Kennedy School faculty explore aspects of democracy in their own words—from increasing civic participation and decreasing extreme partisanship to strengthening democratic institutions and making them more fair.

Winter 2020

By Archon Fung , Nancy Gibbs , Tarek Masoud , Julia Minson , Cornell William Brooks , Jane Mansbridge , Arthur Brooks , Pippa Norris , Benjamin Schneer

The basic terms of democratic governance are shifting before our eyes, and we don’t know what the future holds. Some fear the rise of hateful populism and the collapse of democratic norms and practices. Others see opportunities for marginalized people and groups to exercise greater voice and influence. At the Kennedy School, we are striving to produce ideas and insights to meet these great uncertainties and to help make democratic governance successful in the future. In the pages that follow, you can read about the varied ways our faculty members think about facets of democracy and democratic institutions and making democracy better in practice.

Explore essays on democracy

Archon fung: we voted, nancy gibbs: truth and trust, tarek masoud: a fragile state, julia minson: just listen, cornell william brooks: democracy behind bars, jane mansbridge: a teachable skill, arthur brooks: healthy competition, pippa norris: kicking the sandcastle, benjamin schneer: drawing a line.

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423 Democracy Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best democracy topic ideas & essay examples, 🥇 most interesting democracy topics to write about, 👍 good essay topics on democracy, ✅ simple & easy democracy essay titles, 📌 democracy writing prompts, 🔍 good research topics about democracy, ❓ essay questions about democracy.

Democracy as the Best Form of Government The implication of this is that all the citizens have an equal voice in the way a nation is governed. This atmosphere, in turn, perpetuates the general growth of a nation.
Differences and Similarities Between Democracy and Authoritarian Government Essay This implies that the citizens have a way of participating in the formation of the rules and laws by which they are governed. The laws that govern the rights of people and the economy are […]
Democracy in the Philippines Our organizational policy we introduced in the Philippines is the same as the policies we introduced on other countries, i.e, we wanted to be a part in promoting tourism in the country by promoting the […]
What Is the Relationship Between Capitalism and Democracy? The importance of the roles played by the stock market in the capitalistic economy is related considerably to the aspects of democracy and free market.
How Development Leads to Democracy Change in the two sets of values is brought about by modernization and is seen to set the stage for modernization
Social Media and Democracy For example, in 2009, during the Iran elections, citizens were able to comment on Facebooks and Youtube, and the whole world was able to follow the election proceedings.
Does Democracy Require Equality of Income or Wealth? While wealth equality as the presence of equivalent opportunities to exert political power appears to be the essential factor in establishing democracy, income equality as the opportunity to build wealth is also a factor.
Leadership Styles: Democratic, Autocratic and Laissez-Faire According to McNichol and Hamer, the participative approach, compared to the other styles, enhances the productivity of employees for a prolonged period of time as it encourages cooperation and increases staff morale. As a democratic […]
Michelle Obama American Dream Speech Analysis – Michelle’s purpose was to introduce her husband as man who was more concerned about the common citizens’ concerns and who was willing and able to help everyone to realize his/her American dream because he himself […]
Democratic Governance Concept The United States proves to be a main player in the promotion of democratic governance in countries where conflict dictatorship and war is involved.
Plato and Aristotle: Criticisms of Democracy To speak of it in our present time, there are only a few people who are given the power of ‘sound judgement about what is right and what is wrong’ and should have the power […]
Concept of Democratic Education Theory The learners have greater voice on what to learn and are involved in discussing the content and the structure of their curriculum.
Democratic vs. Autocratic Leadership Styles Thus, one of the main advantages of the democratic model is that all individuals who are affected by a certain situation have an opportunity to outline their views and participate in decision-making.
Democracy and Dictatorship As a matter of fact, the paths above show some means that connect political and economic composition of a community to a political institution. The panorama of the existing democracy in this path is weak […]
Success or Failure of Democracy In terms of equality in democracy, Tocpeuville observes that this becomes the form of government in a democracy since no one becomes right than the other.
Descriptive Meaning of Democracy This term is however modified in meaning nowadays and it can be used in various applications; that is, it is used in a variety of ways depending on the time of use, the place where […]
The Democratic Peace Theory: Merits and Demerits Chioza et al.say that among the reasons that makes it possible to intertwine the democratic peace theory with the liberal theory is that many countries are in dire need of peace. There is a good […]
Importance of News in Democracy The journalists are always on the lookout for areas of socio political and economic importance with the aim of reporting to the people in order to attract the required responses which may alter the sociopolitical […]
Public Speaking in a Democracy Public speaking actually matters for a democracy, because it is a good and sometimes the only chance to save democracy that is eroding now, to improve communicative skills, and to underline the problems that prevent […]
Democratic Leadership Styles and Patient Outcomes Democratic leadership positively impacts patient outcomes as it influences nurses to participate in all processes of the organization and contribute to its development.
“Democracy for the Few” by Michael Parenti In order to consolidate their control over the information that is provided to the representatives of the general public, corporations also started to influence the context of the advertisements.
Similarities and Differences Between Communism and Democratic Socialism This is because, according to the proponents of both ideologies, in Capitalist countries, the majority of ordinary citizens are denied the right to have a fair share in the national wealth.
How Does Revolutionary Communism Compare With Democratic Socialism? Revolutionary communism holds it that the capitalism would never let go of their hold on community and political power and as such, only a violent revolution can result in the changes that communism calls for.
Leadership Styles: Democratic and Collective The difference between Democratic and Collective Participative styles, however, lies in the role of the leader in decision-making.
Democracy in Modern World All these events in the world history strengthened the thought that democracy is the only right and progressive form of authority in a state that will finally bring the overall population of the state to […]
The Taisho Democracy Period in Japanese History The dawn of the Taisho Democracy was marred with uncertainty because the previous emperor was one of the best that Japan has ever had.
Propaganda in the Democratic Society The article focuses on the effects of propaganda on the democracy. In the article, he focuses on his experiences in the media industry with respect to the past and the present news.
Characteristics of American Democracy Conversely, American democracy allows everyone and anybody to have the same opportunities regardless of the situation it is about, based on equal rights in the United States.
“American Democracy is Doomed” by Matthew Yglesias The author argues that the American constitution is ineffective in finding solutions to political disagreements that could lead to the collapse of the country’s political system.
History of Athenian Democracy There were three main bodies that governed the affairs of Athens and they were the assembly, the council and the courts all which were run by representatives of the people.
Democratic Society: Basic Values and Priorities Political equality is another concept that exists within the domain of democracy about the political rights that should be given to all members of a democratic society.
To What Extent Is Burma Democracy? This paper, therefore, examines the extent of democracy in Burma with the reference to the political engagement of pro-democratic leaders, the Burma political system, political history, political instability, the influence of the military on the […]
Becoming a Citizen in a Democratic Society The government has not helped the situation as it has denied the parents the opportunity to discipline the children by allowing children to report cases of punishment to the police.
Structures of Direct Democracy in California Others may argue that the proposition is a strength of direct democracy because it allows for the people’s will to be directly expressed and implemented.
A Dream Deferred and Democracy by Langston Hughes But if they over dry, they will become hard to chew and lose all the nutrition, This warns us of the consequences that may befall us if we sit there and wait for conditions to […]
What Is Democratic Consolidation? It is important to note that regimes in the ‘gray zone” are those that are in the third wave of democratization.
Three Important Features of our Democracy The system of governance is accountable to the people meaning that the leaders have to be concerned about the rule of law and defense of the fundamental rights of their citizens.
Modernization and Its Correlation With Democracy The thesis statement In order to understand modernization-democracy link, the advantages and disadvantages concerning the issues’ interdependence, it is necessary to analyze the reasons of the processes of modernization and the ways they transformed democratic […]
Organizational Theory: Democratic Leadership Taylorism is based on the theory of scientific management and the idea that output is linked to payment. Moreover, the framework implies the presence of a string hierarchy, which can be damaging to the morale […]
Types of Democracy Known to Modern Society In conclusion, some of the types of democracy are representative, participatory, and deliberative. Deliberative is a rather intriguing form of democracy, where people are randomly chosen to express views.
Stock Market Performance During Republican and Democratic Presidencies To compare the stock market performance during Republican and Democratic presidencies, the stock market data for the S&P 500 index over the past few decades were computed.
The Democrats and the Whigs of 1830-1840 The Jacksonian Democrats and the Wigs were interested in American society’s modernization and economic development. However, the parties had different views on achieving economic efficiency and prosperity and the role of government in the economy.
Democratic Development in Colombia vs. Peru After a downturn in 2015 and a boom in 2009 due to the global financial crisis of 2008, the country’s economy is back on track as of 2016 and is riding the rising tide that […]
Emerging Democracy and Education in South Africa In the process of education reformation, the example of South Africa can be used to demonstrate the ability to shape the democratic mindset of the population by increasing the focus on critical thinking and civic […]
American Democracy: Role of Anger The fact that the incident on January 6 was followed by a number of occasions where agents were seen engaged in sensitive operations makes it feasible to comprehend the explanation behind the public’s mistrust of […]
Populism and Its Influence on Democracy Essentially, it explores the connections shared between Populism and authoritarianism and the potential democratic setbacks that might arise from the rise of authoritarian Populism.
Women’s Rights: Democratic Perceptions Therefore, it is proper to claim that women would not be able to exercise their rights and freedoms as frequently without the efforts of Democrats.
The Work “Republic” by Plato: Arguments for Democracy The primary argument that democracy is worse than timarchy and oligarchy derives directly from the text of Republic, where Socrates agrees that only tyranny is worse than democracy.
Democracy: The Influence of Freedom Democracy is the basis of the political systems of the modern civilized world. Accordingly, the democracy of Athens was direct that is, without the choice of representatives, in contrast to how it is generated nowadays.
The Article “Plato on Democracy and Expertise” by R. W. Sharples The central message permeating the writing is that the rigidity of truth on which the conceptual model of democracy is built is a problem since any system needs to acknowledge the malleability of the underlying […]
Is a Secret Ballot a Basic Tenet of Democracy? The Supremacy Clause establishes that federal laws, constitutions, and regulations take precedence over state laws.”This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States…under the Authority of the United States, will be the supreme Law of […]
Encouraging Voter Participation in Democratic Election Process The voting process should be concerned with high voter turnout rather than trust since losing legislatures is responsible for the lack of trust among voters in the entire process.
Processes of Democratization in Spain, Portugal, and Greece Kornetis and Cavallaro claim that the processes of democratization resulted in the collapse of “the Francoist regime, the Salazar-Caetano regime of Estado Novo, and the Colonels’ military dictatorship in Greece “.
Democracy and Its Crucial Features The equality of income and wealth remain the central issue of democracy, since, though democratic societies strive to egalitarianism, they fall short of ensuring equal income and wealth to everyone.
Can the Democrats Win Back Rural Voters? The article used the Movement Lab approach to be able to win back the rural voters. The article relates to voting and election topic because it deals with voter turnout and strategies to be used […]
Threat of Cyber Operations to Democracy and National Security Among its most important characteristics include the recognition of individual’s dignity, respect for equality, faith in the rule of the majority, and respect for the rights of the minority.
Women’s Rights and the Advancement of Democracy The degree of citizen involvement in the political process, including the participation of various social groups in political parties and decision-making bodies, determines the quality of democracy in addition to the structure of current political […]
Aspects of Democratic Regimes In the textbook, Dickovick and Eastwood, democratic regimes are described as ones where people individually and groups have the ability to voice and contest their ideas, as well as the opportunity to shape political life […]
Democrats Caught in Election-Year Gambit With Bloated Gas Prices These Midterms would be one of the most consequential in history as they will likely decide the political gridlock and demonstrate the voter confidence in the party that wins the majority.
Abstracts for “Democracy: What’s It Good For?” and “The New Concert of Powers” The subject of the essay Democracy: What’s It Good For? is related to the issues of democracy in terms of its efficiency regarding the misinformation and irrationality of people’s choices.
Corruption in Infrastructure of the Democratic Republic of Congo The mining companies are negatively affected by rampant corruption and a culture of everyday transactions, which has resulted in the misappropriation of public funds.
Are Propositions, Recalls, and Referendums Democratic? According to this kind of leadership, a government is a social body retrieving its authority from the population and should always promote the will of the masses, especially the majority.
Corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo This is a comprehensive report published by the IMF that examines in tremendous detail the corruption, policy, and frameworks of governance and corruption in the DRC.
Struggles of Democracy: Social Insurance Programs There are always segments of people in the society who struggle more than the general population, and by taking measures, the government increases the economic growth and general well-being.
The UK Parliament and Democratic Legislature The critical point about the UK Parliament is the importance of tradition in its structure and functioning, affecting the selection process, the arrangement of power, and the communication between the members of the Parliament.
Jackson Democracy: Transformation of American Conservatism Andrew Jackson was the 7th president of the United States of America, his term of office lasted from 1829 to 1837.
The Meaning of Liberal Democracy in the US The establishment of diplomatic relations with the USSR during Roosevelt’s presidency was an important event in the history of the two states and the entire history of the world.
Democracy in Ancient Greece and Today From the lecture, I discovered that the word democracy partly originates from the word demes which means the small division of the bigger sections that Athens was divided into during the ancient time.
The Diplock Courts and the Democratic Society The legal definition of the term is still ambiguous, but the best definition is considered to be the achievement of ideological, political, economic, or religious goals by violent means.
“Korean Film: History, Resistance, and Democratic Imagination” by Min et al. The key message of the article in question is that Korean film culture is complex and heterogeneous, but it has yet to receive at the time of writing the attention it deserves from the progressive […]
Jury Service as an Essential Part of the Democracy A Jury Service is an integral part of the U.S.judicial branch, due to which people can make responsible decisions and understand that their opinion is essential to the state.
Democracy, Republicanism, and Liberalism in 19th Century Mexico and Colombia They emphasized the role of Mexico and its republican, democratic, and liberal principles in those changes. They started to imitate the political principles in Europe and the U.
The Democratic Radicals and Conservatives Struggle of American Government The roots of the American government can be traced back to the aftermath of the American civil war and the results of the American War of Independence.
Zinn’s and Schweikart’s Beliefs on American Democracy Namely, Zinn’s personal assumptions concerning the problem of racism and colonialism as the cornerstone of inequality in the U.S.are represented clearly in the book.
Trust and Democracy Overview It will create a status quo where the American model of democracy that has been recognized and revered in the world is no longer a democracy but merely an illusion of one.
Racial Democracy in Brazil Racial democracy in Brazil is a phenomenon connected to the idea that racial differences encourage individuals to look for a broad identity that would include every population presented in the country.
Democratic Republic of Congo’s Refugee Crisis The refugee crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo is one example of how refugees suffer because of poor healthcare access and the inability to provide for themselves.
Plato’s Views on Democracy Plato’s point of view appeared to me as a more appealing out of the two presented opinions on the best course for a political regime within a country.
How to Make People Who Support Democrats Believe in Aliens The ones who are convinced in their existence the way they trust the course of actions proposed by Democrats help overcome the threat for the stability of the government.
“After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy” by Coyne The reason for this is that the United States has used the excuse of protecting democracy when interfering in the internal affairs of different states.
“Engendering Democracy in Brazil” by Sonia Alvarez In addition, the review integrates information acquired from essays by Barbara Nelson and Saint-Germain regarding gender equality and the electoral participation of women in democratic processes.
Deliberative Democracy as an Improvement of Democratic Participation More specifically, the schools of a democratic system of most significant interest are deliberative democracy and democratic participation. At the same time, deliberative democracy realizes the political interest of every citizen in a thorough discussion.
America’s Voting Democracy: Failing After All Even though the United States did not start as a democracy and it took hundreds of years to ensure voting rights for the general populations in its entirety, these are still not the grounds to […]
Theories of Global Politics. Democracy Effectiveness In the classical theme of ancient Athenian society, it is the representation of the ‘will of the people’ and had to include the views of all citizens in the decision making matters.
Democratic Rule and Educated Citizenry They may think it is simply a matter of taxing big business in order to get something for the whole town, when, in reality, the higher tax will result in lower needed investment in the […]
How Social Media Could Threaten Democracy The next paragraph of this law will state that an organization must prove that it is based in the country to run a politically related ad on social media.
In a Democratic Britain, the Monarchy Is an Anachronism The presence of the queen as the head of state instils a sense of responsibility and ethics among the political leaders.
Russia’s Contemporary Political Regime not Democratic Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first president of the Russian Federation on the 12th in June 1991. Some argue that the idea of politics as a mean for […]
Robespierre From Democracy to Totalitarianism Consequently, as a result of the failure of the constitutional monarch and the foreign wars that threatened the French Jacobins, the Committee of Public Safety was constituted in part of the new Republic, on April […]
The Internet is a Democratic Technology As opposed to what in the media channels of communication where the information let out to the public is filtered and influenced by what the government want the people to know, the Internet is free […]
Democratic Principle: The Constitution of the US The two major democratic principles are closely interrelated and the parties involved into them can actually change places from time to time: the minority has the right to become the majority, thus the latter becomes […]
International Political Economy, Democratization, and Terrorism IPE describes the global power dynamics that control international trade and finance, fuel globalization, and wealth distribution across the globe. Sachs argues that globalization and the emergence of political economics have led to the increased […]
The New State of Israel: A Block to the Development of Democracy Since the infamous Palestine conflict is rooted deeply in political, cultural, social, and religious misconceptions between the Jewish and the Muslim residents of the area, the advocacy of the current Israeli strategy concerning the emphasis […]
Internet Function and Potential in a Democratic Society This situation is comparable to the Medieval Age before the introduction of printing in the 1440s. The church and the courts monopolized books, and the population had no chance to learn an alternative opinion on […]
Democracy, Political Power, and Public Policy Issues 1 Now, the question of balance between democracy and political power is as relevant as it was decades ago, being the center of the debate in the United States and the rest of the world.
Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City’ by Robert Dahl A political stratum is defined as a group of individuals who take an active position in the political life of the country.
Democratic Presidential Nominees for 2020 American society is a complex concept with many determinants, and the election of the President in the country is one of the most significant events because it shows the achieved progress and preferred values.
Truthful Information for Building a Democracy Democracy is defined as the rule of the people, by the people for the people. Greenberg and page argue that for a democratic government to be established, information is of the essence.
Francis Fukuyama: Can Liberal Democracy Survive the Decline of the Middle Class? Then, the author shifts to explaining the importance of the existence of a strong and abundantly represented in the society middle class layer as it is a foundation for all the democratic values in the […]
Democracy in Asia India and the Price of Peaceful Change In his last kick, Gandhi decided to encourage the Indians to make their own salt, which was the most taxed by the British government.
Israel as the Jewish and Democratic State: Can It Be Possible? However, the historical evaluation of the situation in Israel and the development of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that led to the Israel war of independence in 1948 and continues today shows that it is not an […]
Ancient Democracy: Review All of the Athenians were involved in the process of selecting the candidates for the positions of the Archons the advisors to the ruler of the city.
The Democratic Presidential Debate The part of the debate concerning the immigration policies and the candidate’s views of them is highly representative of the overall rhetorical strategies in use.
“Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment” by Downey Liam Downey examines in his work Inequality, democracy, and the environment, the nature of these problems and tries to explain the causes of their occurrence.
Organizational Culture: Democratic Leadership Democratic leadership would be an effective approach to leading others in the workplace because members of a group are allowed to offer their ideas that are applied to solve problems.
Differences Between the Democrats and Republicans The activin expression in a marrow stromal cells is however regulated by the incubation with the necrosis factor of the tumor and the interleukin 1 alpha.
Democracy Emergence in Ancient Greece and Why Plato Was Opposed to It The result of this war was the defeat of Athens by Sparta at the end of the fifth century which led to the overthrow of many democratic regimes.
Democracy: Forms, Requirements and Homosexuality Democracy exists in two major forms there is the liberal democracy which is a very capitalistic economic approach in nature while the other form is a socialist democracy that embraces economic aspects like subsidies and […]
Democratic Governance and Policy Networks The contribution of each of these actors was valuable for improving the quality of legislation which became the result of the collaborative work of the interested parties.
Rape as a Weapon of War: Democratic Republic of Congo While some researchers argue that the occurrence of wartime rape, with its frequency, savagery and systematic organization during these times, is inherently entwined with the nature of the conflicts, most of them emphasize that the […]
A Government and Basic Democratic Requirements to It In pluralism, the people who make policies are the top government officials and they do not involve the public. The relevance of involvement in the implementation of government policies is not clear to the citizens.
“Jihad Versus Mcworld” by Benjamen Barber: Tribalism and Globalism Threat to Democracy The forces of Jihad and the forces of McWorld are fighting for sovereignty and neither supports democracy. It is the decentralization of confederations that may save democracy, according to Barber.
Parliamentary Democracy: Will of the People Representation The party with the majority votes is sought to be representing the will of the people. In The will of the people: Notes towards a dialectical voluntarism, Peter Hallward states that the will of the […]
Terrorism and Liberal Democracy: What We Should Know When confronted with external coercion like global terrorism, democracies react like a pendulum by first of all providing security and then vacillating back in the direction of moderation, the quest of lenience, and the encouragement […]
Is the Constitution Supportive of Today’s Democracy? Additionally, one of the dominant elements in most constitutions is the principle of democracy which refers to the government by the people for the people themselves.
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Benjamin’s Concept of Democracy Against Bennett’s Propositions on News and Democracy However, what seems good to many seems to work better and much more acceptable, from this point of view it is fair to reiterate Churchill’s pronouncement that, the present democracy is the best of all […]
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The Sources of Leadership and Democracy in Britain Also, the powers of the British Government are derived from the appeal or iron authority of the British rulers to the party blocs rather than from the power of the influence of the leaders to […]
Democratization Theories at the Present Political Map The world history witnessed a great number of changes in the political state of countries, in the form of ruling and the change as well as the form of power in every state existing nowadays.
Democracy Is the Best Form of Government for All the World’s Inhabitants The challenge to the leaders, therefore, is to provide good leadership and governance to reciprocate the good work of the voters.
Democratic Empowerment via Village Elections During Imperial China The villager assembly oversees the progress of the VCs and ensures that the decisions they make are for the common good of the rest of the villagers.
Anti-Democratic Movement and Path of Democratization According to Lijphart, the Westminster model of democracy provides a throughout insight into the essence of democracy not only in the United Kingdom but in the rest of the world as well.
Democrats vs. Republicans: Who Is Superior? The differences between the democratic regimes and the republicans have been described using all sorts of criteria. Under democrats, the lower 20% of the population tends to match the income growth of the top 5%.
Study of Liberal Democracy In the true sense of liberal democracy, the government is chosen by the voters, and in this sense, the government should answer to the people.
Torture and Democratic Society 1948, United Nations General Assembly, after the second world war adopted the Universal declaration on human rights, which prohibits the use of torture or any other form of inhuman or demeaning treatment or punishment In […]
The State, Democracy and Globalization In order for people to understand the government there should be a system of communicating the state policies to the local individuals.
Ideology of Race and the New Democratic Nation His main argument in this matter is that whilst racism did not at first lead the colonists in enslaving the blacks, the concept of the native hereditary inferiority on the component of Africans and African […]
Ideology of the Democratic Party The Democratic Party of USA is the oldest political party in the world. Dilemma and destiny: the Democratic Party in America.
Comparing Democracy Effort Between Mali and the USA Abraham Lincoln defined it as a government of the people, for the people and by the people. The main function of the judiciary in Mali is the protection and guard of human rights and freedoms.
Venezuela: A Democracy Under Siege This essay will critically evaluate Venezuela in different aspects in the following order : democratic principles and the constitution, political systems, economic policies and institutions, the media, and civil societies to show how Chavez is […]
A Critique on Deliberative Democracy The belief that the United States of America is a democratic country automatically create the assumption that it is a government by the people, for the people, and of the people as laid down by […]
Will China Become Democratic in Near Future? China, being one of the countries yet truly to begin the process of democratization, stands on a point that future progress will be important not only for the people in China but also for the […]
Relationship Between Democracy and Violence in Colombia The escalating violence in the 1980s has in fact, watered-down Colombia’s democratic governance mainly because of the country’s incapacity to tame the violence.
Relationship Between Democracy and the State If leaders are not visionary and their ideas are not cohesive, the situation leads to the formation of splinter groups within the state, a condition that is unbefitting for the health of a democracy.
The Role of Education in Democracy Propaganda is in itself an aspect of education where the Public Information Committee provided some knowledge on the certain issues surrounding the war in order to win public support.
Democracy Threats in Australia Governance as the rule of the people by the people has been more subjected to the teachings of democracy that have been adopted as a form of governance.
Modern China – Is True Democracy Still a Dream? There is a dormant-volcano kind of “sub-terranean tensions” that seem to herald the beginning of the end for communism in China.
The Battle Over Democracy Within Burma However, the military government in Burma remained controlling the political affairs and economy of the country which made the condition of the people to get worse.
The Synergy Between Capitalism and Democracy Democracy and its success: Democracy refers to a political system in which the political part of the government is elected through adult suffrage.
The Nature of Democracy in the Period 1871-1914 Moreover, the doctrine emphasized the essence of human rights, such as treatment of every citizen equally notwithstanding gender, race or class, the essence of the rule of law and the essence of having a government, […]
Elitism and Democracy Relations Essentially the crux of the theory emphasizes the influence and role of a small elite percentage of the total population of a country in holding immense power in running the affairs of that state irrespective […]
American Imperialism and Democracy It comes with increased control as well as the subjection of the conquered to the rules and the demands of the conqueror.
Democrats and Rebuplicans Political Campaigns However, due to the fact that the American economy was at a dying point, Barrack Obama promised that if he was elected the president, he would consider various factors in the matter of taxation.
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Classical Political Thought. Democracy in Plato’s Republic During Plato’s life, the democratic constitution set the seal on the work of the tyranny, for it ensured the exclusion of the large landowner from a predominating influence on politics, and it put effective power […]
Elements of Democracy and Constitutionalism A country’s system of governance, which may be termed as democratic, should carry in its constitution the empowerment to reflect the freedom of the people to choose, as well as other issues, the rule of […]
Aspect of Democracy in Seattle The Seattle Convention Centre in the city was the setting of the final session of the World Trade Organization of the millennium.
Democracy and Dictatorship in Ancient Greece and Today Recalling the speech of Thucydides, democracy is when the power is in the hands of not a minority but of the whole people when all are equal before the law when political life is free […]
Habermas’s Theory of Democracy His views are widely regarded as crucial in such issues as economic and social development, the role of the responsible intellectual, the issues of the Holocaust, the roots of authoritarian power, and the prospects for […]
The Level of Democracy in Singapore and Thailand It is worth noting that since the collapse of Russia and seeming the end of the communism empire, most countries in East Asia like China and Vietnam have been slowly moving to more democratic governments […]
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Democracy Within the Realm of a Republic The two systems have been in conflict since antique times, and are of special evidence in the actual and in the philosophic histories of antique Greece, particularly in the writings of Plato and Aristotle.
Urban Democracy and Capitalism For example, surveys show that people increasingly identify with the planetary scale, the local scale, and a whole series of spaces in between.
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Public Opinion: The Image of Democracy by Lippmann He is of the opinion that America political writers and the political class deliberately blocks public opinion to serve their own interests; “The existence of a force called public opinion is in the main taken […]
Democracy and Freedom in Pakistan Pakistan lies in a region that has been a subject of worldwide attention and political tensions since 9/11. US influence in politics, foreign and internal policies of Pakistan has always been prominent.
Citizenship Education and Democracy In simple terms, the role of educators is to teach children to be true citizens who can contribute to the evolvement of their countries.
Failed Democracy in Pakistan and Nigeria
Success of Democracy in US: Comparative Approach for Explaining
Enemies of American Democracy
Democracy Development in the World up to 1500 CE
Greek Legacy in a Contemporary Democratic State
Republican Versus Democrat Political Beliefs
Strangers in the US Democracy
Is Democratization Leading to a More Secure World?
Federalists and Democrats in the 19th Century
“Terror and Democracy at the Age of Stalin” by Goldman
Globalization and Democratization Effects on Libya
Western Liberal and Democratic Values
UNDP and USAID: Source Evaluation
“Democracy and International Relations in Asia” by Acharya
Democratic Globalization and Its Benefits
‘Democrats, Republicans Agree on a Budget Deal’ by Silverleib and Cohen
Comparative Democratization and Dictatorships
Technology and Democratic Education
Democracy Promotion and Humanitarian Intervention
Media and Democracy: Free Press and Fake News
Empire and Democracy Conflict by Thucydides
Democracy: Perception and Application
Democracy and Oligarchy: the Meaning of Equality
Democracy in Sudan: Key Factors
Earth Democracy: Beyond Dead Democracy and Killing Economies
Democracy in Egypt: Key Factors
Politics of the Democratic Republic of Congo
Community Engagement in Democracy Building
Democratic Deficit in the European Union
Democracy Concerns and Exaggerated Challenges
Constitutional Amendments to Expand Democracy
Struggle for Democracy: President Interview
The United States of America and Its Democracy
Okuma Shigenobu and Modern Democracy in Japan
Federalists vs. Democratic-Republicans in the US
Ruling America: Wealth and Power in a Democracy
The United States Promoting Democracy in Africa
Democratic Leadership, Value System, Followership
Tunisian Transition to Democracy and Its Specificities
Kuwait’s Democratization and Its Challenges
Democratic Consolidation in Asia
Leader Selection in Liberal Democratic Minimalism
American Democracy’ History: Turner’s Thesis
Teaching Standards, Democracy and World Learning
Religious Fundamentalism’ and Democracy’ Comparison
American Democracy and Equality Criticism
Founding Fathers as Democratic Reformers
Egyptian Democracy and Citizens’ Readiness for It
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Democracy and Religion: Modern Theories
Democracy: Features and Impact on Peace
The Taliban Insurgency: Democracy in Dangerous Places
Human Development: Democratization and Economy’ Relations
US Promotion of Democracy: Tools and Approaches
Democracy in the United States System
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Sustainable Democracy in Developing Countries
Democracy Versus Other Forms of Government
The US’s Democracy Features
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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 .

About the Author

Essays on Democracy

Democracy essay topics and outline examples, essay title 1: the evolution of democracy: historical origins, principles, and contemporary challenges.

Thesis Statement: This essay explores the historical roots of democracy, its foundational principles, and the contemporary challenges it faces in the context of modern societies.

Introduction
Origins of Democracy: Ancient Greece and Beyond
Democratic Principles: Rule of Law, Freedom, and Participation
Democracy in Practice: Case Studies of Democratic Nations
Challenges to Democracy: Populism, Authoritarianism, and Erosion of Institutions
Electoral Systems: Voting Methods and Representation
Media and Democracy: The Role of Information and Misinformation
Conclusion: Safeguarding Democracy in the 21st Century

Essay Title 2: The Democratic Experiment: Comparative Analysis of Democratic Systems Worldwide

Thesis Statement: This essay conducts a comparative analysis of democratic systems in different countries, highlighting variations in practices, governance structures, and outcomes.

Democratic Models: Presidential vs. Parliamentary Systems
Democratic Variations: Federalism and Unitarism
Elections and Representation: Proportional vs. First-Past-the-Post Systems
Citizen Participation: Direct Democracy and Referendums
Case Studies: Analyzing Democracies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas
Democratic Challenges: Corruption, Voter Suppression, and Civic Engagement
Conclusion: Lessons Learned from Global Democratic Experiences

Essay Title 3: The Digital Age and Democracy: Technology, Social Media, and the Shaping of Political Discourse

Thesis Statement: This essay examines the influence of technology and social media on democratic processes, including their impact on political communication, public opinion, and election outcomes.

The Digital Revolution: Internet Access and Political Engagement
Social Media Platforms: Their Role in Disseminating Information and Disinformation
Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers: The Polarization of Political Discourse
Online Activism: Grassroots Movements and Their Impact
Regulation and Ethics: Balancing Free Speech and Accountability Online
Case Studies: Examining Elections and Political Campaigns in the Digital Age
Conclusion: Navigating the Intersection of Technology and Democracy

Defending Privacy: a Pillar of Autonomy and Democracy

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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.

This entry focuses on issues in contemporary democratic theory. Although it mentions authors in the history of philosophy where relevant, it does not attempt to give a history of democratic theory. Readers interested in more in-depth discussions of historical figures important to the development of democratic theory are advised to look at the entries listed in the “Historical Figures” section towards the end of this entry.

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, 2.1.1.4 economic justifications of democracy, 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

4.2.6 sortition, 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, 8. historical figures, 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 Marsilius [DP]; 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.

There are a number of economic justifications of democratic institutions. They proceed from the idea that preferences are given and that institutions are justified in terms of how citizens, given their preferences, would rationally want their society to be organized. The two accounts we mention here are in a broadly contractarian tradition, which seeks to determine what persons would agree to as a framework for collective decision making. Probably the most famous of these efforts and the one that has led to the highly fruitful research program of public choice theory is that of James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock in their classic work The Calculus of Consent (1963). They argue that something like constitutional democracy could arise from a state of nature in which persons, with their basic natural and property rights protected, would agree to a collective decision procedure. The basic preference structure is self-interest in which persons attempt to maximize the stream of benefits to themselves. Individuals desire a collective decision-making apparatus in order to take care of problems that arise in the state of nature from uncontrolled external costs and public bads, which are costs that arise for everyone because no individual has incentive to limit them. External costs are costs that persons impose others without their consent. Hence, the purpose of the collective decision making is to take care of problems that arise when markets are inefficient because of externalities and public bads. The design of the decision procedure is meant to minimize two kinds of costs: external costs and decision costs. Decision costs are costs that arise from the difficulty of making collective decisions. Such decision making takes time and resources. Here is the basic calculation each person considers when choosing a collective decision procedure. On the one hand, they consider the external costs imposed on them if the decision procedure is not a unanimity procedure. Each person reflects that as the decision procedure approximates unanimity the chance of external costs imposed on them goes to zero. Taking the external costs of the procedure alone into account each prefers unanimity. On the other hand, each person considers the decision costs of a collective procedure. Here, as the decision procedure approaches unanimity the decision costs grow extremely large because of all the haggling such a procedure would generate. The procedure each person would choose under the circumstances would attempt to minimize the combination of these two costs. It would be a procedure that is close to majority rule, though there is no reason to suppose that majority rule itself would be chosen.

One objection is that the assumptions behind the argument are too strong. Buchanan and Tullock argue that this process would lead to unanimous agreement on a collective decision procedure under certain assumptions such as individuals cannot be divided into groups with strongly opposed interests and when individuals are sufficiently uncertain of their fates in the long term that their interests become more or less the same. They are in effect behind a veil of ignorance with regard to the future. These assumptions have been contested as descriptions of any plausible circumstances in which societies find themselves.

Another broadly economic approach can be found in Douglas Rae (1969). Rae argues that individuals with preferences over social states would generally prefer majority rule over the long run because majority rule maximizes the chances of the satisfaction of their preferences. The Rae-Taylor theorem states that if each individual has an equal prior probability of preferring each of the two alternatives, majority rule maximizes each individual’s expected utility (see the Section 2.4 of the entry on social choice theory ). Again the background assumption is that people don’t know how often they fall in the majority or minority and don’t have any special preference for the status quo. Under these circumstances, one gets what one wants more often from a collective decision procedure when it is majoritarian (see also Coleman [1989]).

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; see also Marsilius [DP]). 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:

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)
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?
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.

It has been argued that some of the core problems of electoral representative democracy can be solved by embracing the appointment of political officials by random selection, or sortition . Athenian democracy involved direct democracy for the making of laws and sortition for the choice of officials. Sortition is arguably consistent with the definition of democracy offered in section 1 because, in virtue of the fact that citizens have an equal chance of being selected, sortition is characterized by equality at a crucial stage of the decision-making process. Alex Guerrero (2014) argues that sortition can avoid the related problems of political ignorance, lack of representative accountability, and capture of the political process by elites. The problems are solved because the appointment of public officials does not depend on the input of ordinary citizens who are likely to be ignorant about political matters, nor does it leave space for the wealthy and powerful to influence official decision-making through funding electoral campaigns. One objection is that sortition ignores citizens’ interests in being part of the process of collective self-governance and rather than merely having an equal chance to be part of this process (Lafont 2019). Another objection is that the process of sortition does not allow for choosing representatives and political parties that have put together a conception of how all the interests in society are to fit together in a just and reasonable whole.

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).

Plato’s ethics and politics in The Republic
Aristotle’s political theory
Thomas Hobbes’s moral and political philosophy
John Locke’s political philosophy
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Immanuel Kant’s social and political philosophy
John Stuart Mill’s moral and political philosophy
Hannah Arendt
Jürgen Habermas
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How to write an argumentative essay | Examples & tips

How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An argumentative essay expresses an extended argument for a particular thesis statement . The author takes a clearly defined stance on their subject and builds up an evidence-based case for it.

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When do you write an argumentative essay, approaches to argumentative essays, introducing your argument, the body: developing your argument, concluding your argument, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about argumentative essays.

You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like “argue” or “argument.” It will frequently take the form of a question.

The prompt may also be more open-ended in terms of the possible arguments you could make.

Argumentative writing at college level

At university, the vast majority of essays or papers you write will involve some form of argumentation. For example, both rhetorical analysis and literary analysis essays involve making arguments about texts.

In this context, you won’t necessarily be told to write an argumentative essay—but making an evidence-based argument is an essential goal of most academic writing, and this should be your default approach unless you’re told otherwise.

Examples of argumentative essay prompts

At a university level, all the prompts below imply an argumentative essay as the appropriate response.

Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic. The essay then argues for that position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, evaluation and analysis.

Don’t just list all the effects you can think of.
Do develop a focused argument about the overall effect and why it matters, backed up by evidence from sources.
Don’t just provide a selection of data on the measures’ effectiveness.
Do build up your own argument about which kinds of measures have been most or least effective, and why.
Don’t just analyze a random selection of doppelgänger characters.
Do form an argument about specific texts, comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic concerns through doppelgänger characters.

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An argumentative essay should be objective in its approach; your arguments should rely on logic and evidence, not on exaggeration or appeals to emotion.

There are many possible approaches to argumentative essays, but there are two common models that can help you start outlining your arguments: The Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

Toulmin arguments

The Toulmin model consists of four steps, which may be repeated as many times as necessary for the argument:

Make a claim
Provide the grounds (evidence) for the claim
Explain the warrant (how the grounds support the claim)
Discuss possible rebuttals to the claim, identifying the limits of the argument and showing that you have considered alternative perspectives

The Toulmin model is a common approach in academic essays. You don’t have to use these specific terms (grounds, warrants, rebuttals), but establishing a clear connection between your claims and the evidence supporting them is crucial in an argumentative essay.

Say you’re making an argument about the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination measures. You might:

Claim that unconscious bias training does not have the desired results, and resources would be better spent on other approaches
Cite data to support your claim
Explain how the data indicates that the method is ineffective
Anticipate objections to your claim based on other data, indicating whether these objections are valid, and if not, why not.

Rogerian arguments

The Rogerian model also consists of four steps you might repeat throughout your essay:

Discuss what the opposing position gets right and why people might hold this position
Highlight the problems with this position
Present your own position , showing how it addresses these problems
Suggest a possible compromise —what elements of your position would proponents of the opposing position benefit from adopting?

This model builds up a clear picture of both sides of an argument and seeks a compromise. It is particularly useful when people tend to disagree strongly on the issue discussed, allowing you to approach opposing arguments in good faith.

Say you want to argue that the internet has had a positive impact on education. You might:

Acknowledge that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
Argue that teachers view Wikipedia as more unreliable than it really is
Suggest that Wikipedia’s system of citations can actually teach students about referencing
Suggest critical engagement with Wikipedia as a possible assignment for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.

You don’t necessarily have to pick one of these models—you may even use elements of both in different parts of your essay—but it’s worth considering them if you struggle to structure your arguments.

Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should always be structured using an introduction , a body , and a conclusion .

Like other academic essays, an argumentative essay begins with an introduction . The introduction serves to capture the reader’s interest, provide background information, present your thesis statement , and (in longer essays) to summarize the structure of the body.

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how a typical introduction works.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

The body of an argumentative essay is where you develop your arguments in detail. Here you’ll present evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis statement is true.

In the standard five-paragraph format for short essays, the body takes up three of your five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be more paragraphs, and might be divided into sections with headings.

Each paragraph covers its own topic, introduced with a topic sentence . Each of these topics must contribute to your overall argument; don’t include irrelevant information.

This example paragraph takes a Rogerian approach: It first acknowledges the merits of the opposing position and then highlights problems with that position.

Hover over different parts of the example to see how a body paragraph is constructed.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects on the arguments made in the body.

No new arguments or evidence appear here, but in longer essays you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your argument and suggest topics for future research. In all conclusions, you should stress the relevance and importance of your argument.

Hover over the following example to see the typical elements of a conclusion.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

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395 Democracy Essay Topics & Research Questions: Elections, American Democracy, and More

What is democracy? The word “democracy” has Greek roots. It combines two words: “demos,” which refers to people residing within a specific country, and “kratos,” which means power. Democracy ensures that all citizens have the same rights regardless of their background, race, religion, or sexual orientation. It also raises people’s sense of civic dignity.

In this article, we’ll explain how to write an essay on democracy and give some helpful tips. Keep reading to find out more.

🔝 Top Democracy Essay Topics

📝 Democracy Essay Prompts

💡 Democracy Research Questions
✍🏻 Democracy Essay Topics
🎤 Democracy Speech Topics
✅ Essay on Democracy: Outline

🔗 References

🔝 top 12 democracy essay topics.

Democracy as public justification.
Freedom and democratic authority.
What are the main problems with democratic governance?
The role of democracy in the modern world.
The development of democracy.
The influence of democracy on the young generation.
The connection between human rights and democracy.
What are the key features of democracy?
The value of democracy.
Democracy as collective self-rule.
The demands of democratic participation.
Limits to the authority of democracy.

The picture suggests topics for an essay about democracy.

Many students find writing a college essay on democracy to be a stressful task. For this reason, we’ve prepared some essay prompts and tips to help students improve their writing skills.

What Is Democracy: Essay Prompt

Democracy is a form of government that has played an essential role in reshaping societies from monarchical, imperial, and conquest-driven systems into ones founded on sovereignty and harmonious cohabitation principles. Here are some of the questions you can use for your essay:

What is the definition of democracy?
Why do we need democracy?
Where did democracy initially come into existence?
What distinguishes democracy from other forms of government?
Why is education important for democracy?
What is democracy’s primary flaw?
What poses the most significant risk to democracy?

Disadvantages of Democracy: Essay Prompt

One disadvantage of democracy is that it can sometimes lead to slow decision-making due to the need for consensus and majority agreement. There’s also a risk of overlooking the interests of the minority. Finally, democratic systems can be susceptible to manipulation and misinformation, potentially leading to uninformed or misguided decisions by the electorate. In your essay, you may focus on the following aspects:

The issue of corruption . A democratic leader is only in power for a limited time. As a result, there’s a tendency to make money through the use of authority.
Unfair business . Political leaders advocate unfair commercial practices to get support for political campaigns.
Misuse of media . Often, the media attempts to deceive the public to influence their voting behavior.

Democracy vs. Totalitarianism: Essay Prompt

Totalitarianism and democracy are opposing forms of government. Whereas democracy values equal rights and citizens’ participation in the government, in a totalitarian system, the leader’s word is the law, and the state has all the power. To compare totalitarianism and democracy in your essay, you may discuss these points:

Origin of totalitarianism and democracy;
Public opinion on these forms of governance;
Law and discretion;
Minority rights and their importance;
Internal enemies of totalitarianism and democracy.

Capitalism vs Democracy: Essay Prompt

Capitalism and democracy spread throughout the Western world during the 20th century. The fundamental distinction between the two concepts is that democracy is a form of government and a political system, while capitalism is an economic system.

In your essay, you can discuss the following questions:

What is the connection between capitalism and democracy?
What are the main goals and values of capitalism/democracy?
What does capitalism/democracy mean today?
What are the examples of capitalism/democracy?
Why is capitalism /democracy harmful?

💡 Research Questions about Democracy

How does a society’s education level impact the strength of its democratic institutions?
What role does media freedom play in promoting democratic values?
Relationship between economic development and political democratization.
How does income inequality affect the functioning of democratic systems?
What are the key factors that contribute to the stability of democratic governments?
How does the level of political participation among citizens influence the quality of democracy?
Researching the concept of democracy.
What is the role of political parties in shaping democratic governance?
How does the use of technology impact democratic processes and decision-making?
Asian economic development and democratization.
Does the presence of a strong judiciary contribute to the consolidation of democracy in a country?
How does the level of trust among citizens affect democratic practices?
What impact does gender equality have on the strength of democratic institutions?
The equality of income or wealth depending on democracy.
How does ethnic diversity influence the stability of democratic governments?
What role do non-governmental organizations play in promoting democratic values?
The democratic style of leadership.
How does government transparency impact citizens’ trust in democratic institutions?
How does the separation of powers principle contribute to democratic governance?
What impact do direct democratic mechanisms, such as referendums, have on decision-making processes?
How do political parties strengthen democracy?
How does the presence of independent media impact the accountability of political leaders in a democracy?
What is the role of civil society in ensuring the effectiveness of democratic governance?
Martin Luther Jr. “Jail Letter” and Aung San Kyi’s democracy excerpt.
How does the integration of minority communities impact the inclusiveness of democratic systems?
Does the involvement of citizens in local governance contribute to stronger democratic practices?
What role does the rule of law play in establishing a democratic society?
What are the impacts of social media on democracy ?
What factors contribute to the erosion of democratic norms and values?
What impact do international agreements have on the promotion and consolidation of democracy?
Democracy: pluralist theory and elite theory .
How does the role of money in politics influence the democratic decision-making process?
What impact do international human rights standards have on protecting citizens’ rights within a democracy?
What role does decentralization play in promoting democratic governance?
What is the impact of technology on democracy?
How does the level of government accountability impact the overall functioning of a democracy?
What is the relationship between economic development and the sustainability of democratic systems?
Comparison of democracy levels in Uruguay and Venezuela.
How does the level of political polarization impact the effectiveness of democratic governance?
What role do regional and international organizations play in supporting the nascent democracies?
How does the balance of power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches influence democratic decision-making ?
What are the key challenges faced by young democracies?
What role does public opinion play in shaping democratic policies?
Middle East democratization.
How does the level of political corruption impact the functioning of democratic institutions?
What impact does globalization have on the democratic governance of nation-states?
What are the consequences of restrictions on freedom of expression in democratic societies?
Social media regulation and future of democracy.
What role do international democracy promotion programs play in supporting democratic transitions?
How do different cultural and historical contexts shape the understanding and practice of democracy?
Democracy and Western cultural values worldwide.
What factors contribute to democratic backsliding in countries that have previously experienced democratic transitions?
How does the presence of proportional representation contribute to inclusive and representative democratic governance?
What role do civic education and political literacy play in a democracy?
How does the level of social media usage impact the spread of disinformation and its effect on democratic processes?
African political parties’ endeavour for the implementation of the democracy.
How do citizen participation mechanisms, such as participatory budgeting, impact democratic decision-making?
How does the level of political party system fragmentation impact the effectiveness of democratic governance?
What role does the protection of minority rights play in establishing and sustaining democratic societies?
How does the level of regional integration influence the democratic governance and decision-making of member states?
The Australian Labor Party and the American Democrats: similarities and differences .
What impact does income distribution have on citizens’ satisfaction with democratic systems?
How does the presence of a strong civil service impact the capacity and efficiency of democratic governance?
What factors contribute to successful democratic transitions in countries with a history of authoritarian rule?
How does the level of trust in key democratic institutions impact overall democratic stability?
What factors contribute to economic failure in democracies?
What role does political leadership play in establishing and maintaining strong democratic systems?

Democracy and Elections Research Paper Topics

The impact of voter ID laws on democratic participation.
The influence of campaign finance spending on electoral outcomes.
Political participation and voting as democracy features.
The role of social media in shaping public opinion during elections.
The effectiveness of electoral college systems in representing the will of the people.
The effectiveness of international election observation missions in ensuring electoral integrity.
The impact of electronic voting systems on election integrity.
The role of political advertising in shaping voter preferences.
Low voter participation in democratic countries.
The relationship between political polarization and voter turnout.
The effectiveness of voter education programs in promoting informed decision-making.
The effect of voter suppression tactics on democratic participation.
The influence of party endorsement on candidate success in elections.
The impact of gender and ethnicity on political representation in elected offices.
Voting: democracy, freedom, and political agency.
The effectiveness of campaign debates in informing voter choices.
The influence of social factors and peer networks on political affiliation and voting behavior.
The effect of negative campaigning on voter perceptions and candidate success.
The role of non-traditional media sources in shaping public opinion during elections.
The role of technology in enhancing election monitoring and ensuring transparent and secure voting processes.
Electoral systems in a democratic country.
The influence of disinformation campaigns on voter behavior and their implications for electoral integrity.
The challenges and opportunities of implementing online voting systems for improving accessibility and election integrity.
The impact of non-voters and their reasons for not participating in the democratic process.
The impact of campaign advertising on voter behavior in democratic elections.
The role of social media platforms in electoral outcomes in democratic societies.
“The Electoral College Is the Greatest Threat to Our Democracy” by Bouie.
Electoral reforms and their effects on voter turnout and representation in democracies.
The influence of demographic factors and socioeconomic status on voting patterns in democratic elections.
The challenges and opportunities of implementing electronic voting systems to enhance the integrity and efficiency of democratic elections.

E-Democracy Research Topics

Digital divide and its implications for e-democracy.
Role of social media in promoting online political engagement.
E-government and democracy.
Challenges and opportunities for e-petitions as a form of democratic expression.
Cybersecurity challenges in ensuring secure and reliable e-voting systems.
Role of e-democracy in improving representation and inclusivity in decision-making processes.
Ethical considerations in the collection and use of personal data for e-democracy purposes.
Use of blockchain technology in enhancing transparency and trustworthiness in e-democracy.
The use of technology in promoting transparency and accountability in government.
American e-government and public administration.
Influences of online political advertising on voter behavior.
The potential of online deliberative platforms in fostering inclusive public discourse.
The role of online communities in mobilizing citizens for political action.
Effects of online platforms on political campaign strategies and communication tactics.
Use of technology in expanding access to information and knowledge for informed citizenship.
Strategies for building trust in e-government.
Evaluation of online political education programs and their impact on citizen engagement.
Open government initiatives and their role in fostering e-democracy .
Digital activism and its effectiveness in driving social and political change.
Online tools for monitoring and preventing disinformation and fake news in political discourse.
Role of digital identity verification in ensuring the integrity of e-democracy processes.
Challenges and opportunities for e-democracy in authoritarian regimes.
Public trust and perceived legitimacy of e-democracy systems and processes.

✍🏻 Topics for Essays about Democracy

Democracy argumentative essay topics.

The role of public protests in strengthening democracy.
The role of youth engagement in shaping the future of democracy.
Is the Democratic Party the Labour Party of the US ?
Should there be limits on freedom of speech in a democracy to prevent hate speech?
The tensions between national security and civil liberties in a democratic context.
Is direct democracy a more effective form of governance than representative democracy?
The United States is not really a democracy.
The significance of an independent judiciary in upholding democratic principles.
The importance of a robust and unbiased public education system for a thriving democracy.
Compulsory voting: is it compatible with democracy?
The impact of income inequality on democratic participation and representation.
The significance of constitutional reforms in addressing the challenges faced by democracies .
Does the digital age pose a threat to the principles of democracy?
Should prisoners have a right to vote in a democratic system?
Are referendums effective tools for democratic decision-making?
Democracy vs. other types of government .
Does the media have a responsibility to promote democratic principles and accountability?
Can a democratic government effectively balance national security and civil liberties?
Should there be limitations on the freedom of peaceful assembly and protest in a democracy?
Democracy is the tyranny of the majority over the minority.
Is the rise of populist movements a threat to democratic values?
Does globalization undermine national sovereignty and democratic decision-making?
Democracy: Durbin’s, Duckworth’s, and Krishinamoorthi’s positions.
Should judges be elected or appointed in a democratic system?
Is a strong independent judiciary essential for a healthy democracy?
Is the EU an example of a successful democratic regional integration project?
How can we provide political representation for non-citizens in a democratic society?
Is democracy a universal value, or should different cultures be allowed to adopt different governance models?
Democracy in the US: is it real today?
Should democratic governments prioritize economic growth or social welfare policies?
Should there be restrictions on the power of political parties in a democracy?
Is there a tension between individual rights and collective decision-making in a democratic society?
The role of national identity and multiculturalism in shaping democratic societies.
The effectiveness of citizen initiatives and participatory democracy.
Federal system’s pros and cons from a democratic perspective.
The importance of accountability and transparency in ensuring the functioning of democracy.
Should religion play a role in political decision-making in a democracy?
Does a two-party system hinder the development of democracy?
The influence of corporate power on democratic decision-making processes.
The tension between individual rights and collective needs in democratic societies.
Has the US government become more of or less of a republic, a confederation, or a democracy?
The role of education in fostering active and informed citizenry in a democracy.
Is a multi-party system more conducive to a healthy and inclusive democracy?
Should there be restrictions on political advertising to ensure fairness and transparency in democratic elections?
Should corporations have the same rights as individuals in democratic legal systems?
Is it necessary to separate church and state in a democratic society?
How democratic was the new Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
Should there be mandatory civics education to promote democratic values and participation?
Should there be age restrictions on political officeholders in a democracy?
Should digital voting be implemented to increase participation and transparency in elections?

American Democracy Essay Topics

The historical development of American democracy: from the Founding Fathers to the present.
The significance of the American Constitution and its amendments in ensuring democratic governance in the United States.
Government: United States Constitution and democracy.
The impact of the American Revolution on the birth of American democracy.
The separation of powers and checks and balances in the US government.
The significance of the Bill of Rights in protecting individual freedoms within American democracy.
Democracy: the Unites States of America.
The challenges and opportunities of citizen participation in American democratic processes.
The contributions of influential figures such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton to the development of American democracy.
Dahl’s “How Democratic Is the American Constitution?”
The evolution of political parties in American democracy: from the Federalists and Anti-Federalists to the Democrats and Republicans.
The role of the Constitution in establishing and safeguarding American democracy.
The two-party system and democracy in the US.
The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on expanding democratic rights and equality in America.
The ways media influences public opinion and its impact on American democracy.
The influence of money in American politics and its effects on democratic processes.
American democracy v. the social democracy: the healthcare system.
The impact of the women’s suffrage movement on democratic participation and gender equality.
The role of activism and social movements in shaping American democracy .
The influence of third-party candidates on American democracy and election outcomes.
Advancing democracy in the United States.
The challenges and reforms associated with the electoral college system in American democracy.
The impact of the progressive movement on democratic governance and social welfare.
Democracy and tyranny in the United States.
The role of the American presidency in shaping and upholding democratic principles.
The historical relationship between religious freedom and American democracy.
The influence of the labor movement on workers’ rights and democratic policies.
Analysis of democracy in the USA.
The significance of the New Deal and Great Society programs in fostering economic fairness and democratic values.
The impact of the Cold War on American democracy and the preservation of democratic ideals abroad.
Democracy in the United States of America.
The challenges and reforms associated with campaign finance regulations in American democracy.
The impact of modern technology on American democracy, including social media, data privacy, and online political engagement.
Democracy in America: elites, interest groups, and average citizens.
The significance of presidential debates in shaping public opinion and democratic decision-making.
The role of state and local governments in American democracy and their relationship with the federal government.
The impact of the Electoral College on presidential elections and its implications for democratic representation.
Interest groups in the American democratic system.
The relationship between media bias and democratic discourse in American democracy.
The impact of the populist movement, both historically and in contemporary politics, on American democracy.
The role of the First Amendment in protecting and promoting free speech in American democracy.
“What Republicans and Democrats Are Doing in the States Where They Have Total Power”: analysis.
The influence of foreign policy decisions on American democracy and the balance between national security and democratic values.
American women’s historical struggles and triumphs in achieving suffrage and fighting for equal rights in American democracy.
The shifting nature of American democracy.
The impact of the Black Lives Matter movement on public discourse, democratic activism, and policy change.
The labor movement’s influence on workers’ rights, economic policies, and democratic representation.
The US democracy’s promotion in the Middle East.
The significance of federalism in the American democratic system and the balance of power between states and the federal government.
The importance of a free and independent press in American democracy.
Democratic traditions in early American colonies.
The influence of religious groups on American politics, democratic decision-making, and social policy.
The role of non-governmental organizations in promoting democratic values, human rights, and social justice in America.
Edmund Morgan: the views of American democracy.
The protection of minority rights and the principle of majority rule in American democracy.
The role of civil society organizations in promoting and strengthening American democracy.

Jacksonian Democracy Essay Topics

The main principles and goals of Jacksonian Democracy.
The impact of Jacksonian Democracy on expanding voting and political participation.
Andrew Jackson’s first inaugural address.
The role of populism in shaping Jacksonian Democracy.
The controversy surrounding Jackson’s Indian Removal policies.
The influence of Jacksonian Democracy on the development of the two-party system.
The impact of the “Kitchen Cabinet” and informal advisors on Jackson’s presidency.
The economic policies of Jacksonian Democracy and its effect on the national economy.
The antebellum capitalism and Jeffersonians and Jacksonians capitalist ideals.
The expansion of land ownership and westward expansion under Jacksonian Democracy.
The role of women in Jacksonian Democracy and the early suffrage movement.
The controversy surrounding Jackson’s veto of the Bank of the United States.
The impact of Jacksonian Democracy on Native American rights and sovereignty.
The legacy of Jacksonian Democracy and its influence on subsequent political movements.
The significance of the Democratic Party’s rise during the Jacksonian era.
Andrew Jackson presidency: society, politics, veto.
The impact of Jacksonian Democracy on the growth of economic opportunities for common people.
The relationship between Jacksonian Democracy and the rise of American nationalism.
The role of newspapers and media in promoting or opposing Jacksonian Democracy.
The controversies surrounding Jackson’s removal of government deposits from the Bank of the United States.
The response of marginalized groups, such as Native Americans and African Americans, to Jacksonian Democracy.
The impact of Jacksonian Democracy on the development of the American presidency and executive power.
The long-term effects of Jacksonian Democracy on American political and social identity.

Questions about Democracy for Essays

What are the key principles and values of democracy?
How does democracy promote individual freedoms and rights?
“Democracy and Collective Identity in the EU and the USA”: article analysis.
What are the different forms of democracy, and how do they vary?
How does democracy ensure accountability and transparency in governance?
Concepts of democracy and wealth.
What is the role of elections in a democratic system?
How does democracy promote political participation and citizen engagement?
Discussion of democracy assignment.
What are the main challenges to democracy in the modern world?
How does democracy protect minority rights and prevent majority tyranny?
What are the political concepts of democracy and nationalism?
How does the media influence democratic processes and outcomes?
What role do political parties play in a democratic system?
What are representative democracy and its constituents?
How does democracy address social and economic inequalities?
What is the relationship between democracy and human rights ?
What are the benefits and drawbacks of direct democracy?
How does democracy impact economic development and prosperity?
Democracy description as a political system.
What role does the judiciary play in a democratic system?
How does democracy address issues of social justice and equality?
What are the implications of globalization for democracy?
Can democracy exist without a well-informed citizenry and a free press?
Democratic and authoritarian states .
How does democracy respond to extremist ideologies and populism?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of representative democracy?
How does democracy promote peaceful transitions of power?
How does democracy foster social cohesion and national unity?
How does democracy ensure the protection of civil liberties?
What is the nature and performance of Indonesia’s new democracy?
How does democracy reconcile the tension between majority rule and minority rights?
What are the roles of civil society and non-governmental organizations in a democracy?
How does democracy deal with issues of environmental sustainability?
Democracy: evolution of the political thought.
What are the effects of money and lobbying on democratic processes?
How does democracy guarantee freedom of speech and expression?
What is the Canadian political culture and democracy?
What is the impact of education and civic education on democracy?
How does democracy address the challenges of pluralism and diversity?
What are the implications of digital technologies for democracy?
The French Revolution: failed democracy and Napoleon .
What role does international cooperation play in fostering democracy?
How does democracy address the power imbalance between different societal groups?
What are the reasons for the failure of democracy in South America?
What are the historical origins of democracy and its evolution over time?
How does democracy protect the rights of marginalized and vulnerable populations?
What are the political apathy and low voter turnout consequences in a democracy?
How does democracy handle situations of crisis and emergency?
Democracy as a socio-political phenomenon.
What is the role of public opinion in democratic decision-making?
How does democracy ensure fair representation and inclusivity ?
What are the mechanisms in place to hold elected officials accountable in a democracy?

🎤 Topics about Democracy for Speeches

The importance of democracy in safeguarding individual freedoms and human rights.
The historical evolution of democracy: from ancient Athens to modern-day governance.
The essential concepts and principles of democracy.
Democratic revolutions and their impact on shaping the world.
The role of citizen participation in a thriving democracy.
Exploring the concept of direct democracy: can it work on a large scale?
Backsliding of democracy: examples and preventive measures.
The role of media in fostering accountability in a democracy.
Striving for gender equality and women’s empowerment within democratic frameworks.
Democracy and efforts to emphasize it.
The influence of money and campaign finance on democratic processes.
Democracy and social justice: addressing inequalities and discrimination.
The impact of education in building a democratic society.
The Republican and Democratic parties: issues, beliefs, and philosophy.
Democracy and the environment: Promoting sustainable practices .
The relation between democracy and economic development.
Mexico’s globalization and democratization.
The significance of a strong, independent judiciary in upholding the rule of law in a democracy.
The potential benefits and drawbacks of digital technology on democracy.
Youth engagement and the future of democracy.
Democracy: equality of income and egalitarianism.
Democracy in the face of political polarization and extremism.
Democracy and cultural diversity : balancing majority rule and minority rights.
Democratic society and the capitalist system.
The importance of civic education in nurturing active and informed citizens.
Democracy and peace: how democratic nations tend to avoid armed conflicts.
The role of international organizations in promoting democracy worldwide.
The struggle for democracy: bureaucracy.
Social media and democracy: examining their impact on political discourse.
Democracy and global governance: the need for collaborative decision-making.
Democratization processes that have reshaped societies.
The implications of demographic changes on democratic representation.
The challenges of ensuring democracy in times of crisis and emergency.
Democracy and immigration: the role of inclusive policies and integration.
Corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The responsibility of democratic nations in addressing global challenges (e.g., climate change, pandemics).
The effects of fake news and disinformation on democratic societies.
Democrats and communists in 1950.
Democratic reforms: lessons learned from successful transitions.
The role of intellectuals and artists in promoting democratic values and ideals.
Democracy and the future of work: navigating technological advancements and automation.
Safeguard of democracy is education.
The importance of strong civil society organizations to democracy.
Democracy and national security: striking the balance between safety and civil liberties.
Representing the democracy of Florida.
The significance of a robust social welfare system in ensuring democratic stability.
Democracy and accountability in the age of surveillance and privacy concerns .
The future prospects of democracy: challenges and opportunities in the 21st century.
Democratic regime and liberation movements.
The role of transitional justice in post-authoritarian democracies.
Democratic decision-making: weighing majority opinion against expert knowledge.
The topic of democracy in various speeches.
Democracy and educational policy: the need for equitable access to quality education.
The influence of cultural, religious, and ideological diversity on democratic governance.
Democracy and intergenerational justice: balancing present needs with future aspirations.
Biden warns of US peril from Trump’s ‘dagger’ at democracy.

Democracy Debate Topics

Is direct democracy a practical and effective form of governance?
Should there be term limits for political officeholders in a democracy?
Social democratic welfare state.
Is compulsory voting necessary for a thriving democratic system?
Is money in politics a threat to democratic integrity?
Should there be limits on campaign spending in democratic elections?
Social democracy vs. social policy.
Should felons have the right to vote in a democracy?
Can social media platforms ensure fair and unbiased political discourse in a democracy?
Why does democracy work and why doesn’t it?
Is proportional representation more democratic than a winner-takes-all electoral system?
Should there be stricter regulations on political lobbying in a democracy?
Is it necessary to establish a global democracy to tackle global challenges?
Is the concept of majority rule compatible with protecting minority rights in a democracy?
Is populism a threat or an asset to democracy?
The struggle for democracy: how politics captures people’s interest?
Should the voting age be lowered to increase youth participation in democracy?
Should corporations have a say in democratic decision-making processes?
Is a strong centralized government or decentralized governance better for democracy?
Should the internet be regulated to protect its users from misinformation?
Is democracy the best form of government ?
Should religious institutions have a role in democratic governance?
Is international intervention justified to promote democracy in authoritarian regimes ?
Is a multi-party democracy more representative than a two-party system?
Should immigration policies be determined through democratic processes?

✅ Outline for an Essay About Democracy

We’ve prepared a mini guide to help you structure your essay on democracy. You’ll also find some examples below.

Democracy Essay Introduction

Would you like to learn how to write a strong essay introduction? We are here for you! The introduction is the first paragraph of your essay, so it needs to provide context, capture the reader’s attention, and present the main topic or argument of an essay or paper. It also explains what readers can expect from the rest of the text. A good introduction should include:

Hook . A hook is a compelling, attention-grabbing opening sentence designed to engage the reader’s interest and curiosity. It aims to draw the reader into the essay or paper by presenting an intriguing fact, anecdote, question, or statement related to the topic.
Background information . Background information provides context and helps readers understand the subject matter before delving into the main discussion or argument.
Thesis statement . It’s a sentence in the introduction part of the essay. A thesis statement introduces the paper’s main point, argument, or purpose, guiding and informing the reader about the essay’s focus and direction.

Hook : “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” ― Winston S. Churchill.

Thesis statement : Democracy has endured the test of time, and although other forms of governance have failed, democracy has stayed firm.

Essay on Democracy: Body Paragraphs

Body paragraphs are critical in writing a great college essay. There are 5 main steps you can follow to write a compelling body paragraph:

Create a topic sentence.
Provide the evidence.
Explain how the evidence relates to the main points.
Explain why your arguments are relevant.
Add transition to the following paragraph.

Topic sentence : In a democratic system of governance, supreme authority rests with the people and is exercised through a framework of representation, often involving regular, unrestricted elections.

Supporting evidence : Democracy allows residents to participate in creating laws and public policies by electing their leaders; consequently, voters should be educated to select the best candidate for the ruling government.

Essay about Democracy: Conclusion

The conclusion is the final part of an academic essay. It should restate the thesis statement and briefly summarize the key points. Refrain from including new ideas or adding information to the conclusion.

There are 3 crucial components to the conclusion:

Rephrased thesis statement.
Summary of main points.
Thought-provoking or memorable closing statement.

Rephrased thesis statement : To conclude, democracy is a form of government that has proven its effectiveness and resilience in contrast to other governance systems.

We hope you’ve found our article interesting and learned some new information! If so, feel free to share it with your friends and leave a comment below.

Thesis Statements – The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
How to Write a Five-Paragraph Essay, With Examples | Grammarly
Creating a Thesis Statement, Thesis Statement Tips – Purdue OWL® – Purdue University
Paragraphs & Topic Sentences: Writing Guides: Writing Tutorial Services: Indiana University Bloomington
How to Write a Topic Sentence (With Examples and Tips) | Indeed.com

414 Proposal Essay Topics for Projects, Research, & Proposal Arguments

371 fun argumentative essay topics for 2024.

Democracy Is The Best Form Of Government: Arguments For And Against

Democracy is one of the most successful and popular forms of government in the world.

There are actually two types of democracy: direct democracy and indirect democracy.
Democracy was born in Athens, Greece in 5th century BC.
The 20th century was marked by an expansion in representative democracy.

What is democracy ? You probably hear this term in history or civics courses but take it for granted because it is such a common political system today. In 2013, it was reported that 123 countries in the world can be considered democracies. However, democracies were not always common. This governing system became more popular after World War I . Before the spread of democracy, colonial empires were commonplace. Colonial empires were systems of government that were ruled by kings, queens, or autocratic leaders. World War II was one of the only 20th century periods during which democracies did not expand, but many former colonies declared independence after World War II and shifted to democratic systems.

Ancient Greek Democracy

Democracy may have become a popular way for countries to govern themselves during the 20th century, but the ideas of democracy were born in Greece . Athens, Greece operated under a democratic system in the 5th century BC, and other Greek cities and towns did the same. The idea was to have a government by the people. Direct democracy, where people met in assemblies and made decisions, was once a popular form of democracy. Direct democracy was more appropriate for smaller communities. Most countries in the world today operate under indirect democracy. People choose representatives to protect their interests in government. In either case, there are arguments for and against democracy. Many people who are for democracy say that this prevents one person from gaining too much power and becoming a dangerous authoritarian. Even so, there are people who are critical of democracy and it is worthwhile to examine why some people feel this way.

Where We Stand Today

A Pew Research Survey found that most people are in favor of a democracy, but some people would be open to alternative modes of government. Their findings show that some people would prefer a direct democracy where people govern themselves directly. However, some people actually support autocratic governments, and many people say they would be open to having a government that is run by experts who are competent. People with different levels of education favor certain types of governments over others. A country’s economic position can also affect people's opinions. Feelings about democracy can change depending on economic circumstances.

Key Definitions

Here are some terms you should know:

Monarchy : rule by a single person, usually because they were born into the position.
Oligarchy : a government run by a few people.
Autocracy : a government with a singular head of state, usually with unlimited power.
Fascism : a type of autocracy that puts the interests of a nation or race above others.
Communism : a political theory that fights against the ownership of private property, and in which things are owned by the public and available for use whenever others need them.

Arguments for Democracy

Countries around the world embraced democracy in the 20th century, most notably after WWI and WWII. Prior to this shift, countries were ruled by oligarchies, monarchies, and self-appointed autocratic leaders. During World War II, the world saw the dangers of fascism and fascist leaders like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Democracy was supported because it allowed people to choose representatives with set term limits. Many citizens had seen how their countries were ravaged due to corruption and inequality caused by the rule of the few. Democracy was seen as a way to make sure no one person had too much power. Many democracies also wanted a free market. Before democracy, few people had control or say in the economy which allowed rulers and those in power to use their economic influence to silence critics or give large rewards to those who followed their lead. Democracies were seen as a way to decentralize the market, but many of the same forces that freed the market were imperative to the development of democracy. People need more resources and education in order to vote and make educated purchases or financial decisions. A free market allowed more people to improve their status, and the economic boom that occurred after WWII created favorable conditions for democracies that were born out of former dictatorships, autocracies, and monarchies.

Freedom of Speech

Experts and citizens often defend democracy because they say it allows people to speak freely and have the ability to criticize leaders they feel might not be doing what the public wants. In fascist regimes, people who criticized leaders were often punished, and many critics were tortured or executed. Philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn was a proponent of the link between democracy and free speech.

Respect for Human Rights

Pro-democracy arguments also include a greater likelihood of respect for human rights. That is because people must vote to make changes to laws or statutes. Democratic leaders cannot solely make unilateral decisions, and there are often other branches of government that can step in if this occurs. This is supposed to encourage democratic governments to be transparent about their work.

Checks on Power

Another common argument for democracy is that it allows citizens to be empowered to elect their representatives, which means that everyone is expected to compromise so that no one interest is considered more important. Elections are also a way to make sure leaders know there are limits to their power.

Debate and Exchange of Ideas

Democracies allow citizens to be exposed to various points of view before making their choice. This allows candidates, citizens, and stakeholders to have a proper debate about why they would better represent the people that elect them. Transparency in elections is also meant to promote peace because people are more likely to accept the results of a fairly-won election, even if the candidate that won is not the one they chose.

Arguments Against Democracy

There are also arguments against democracy. The Greek philosopher Socrates made some compelling arguments against democracy by birthright as early as 399 BC. It is important to consider the possible negatives when discussing democracy.

Charismatic, but Unqualified Leadership

Socrates argued that people need to be equipped to vote during elections instead of going about the process without the right information. Socrates felt that people need to be rational about who they vote for, not that they should not have the right to vote. He warned that people may be swayed by leaders who seem to provide all the right answers or know what to say. Basically, Socrates said that people might vote for someone because of how the candidate makes them feel, not because the candidate is able to do the job correctly.

Democracy Might Devolve into Tyranny

Another Greek philosopher, Plato, was also critical of democracy. He examined five existing government styles and looked at the pros and cons of these systems in his famous book The Republic . His argument is that people become tired of systems such as oligarchy and then succumb to democracy because they are hungry for power. He felt that crumbling democratic societies are more easily able to transition into tyranny once democracy becomes unsustainable.

There Might Be Reasonable Alternatives

At best, voting for the wrong person means that nothing gets done at the taxpayer’s expense. At worst, people are making an uninformed vote. Modern-day philosopher Jason Brennan echoes many of the warnings of Socrates, but he also created a new term to describe what he perceives as an ideal alternative to democracy: epistocracy. Brennan argues that people need to think about what they expect from the government and then become informed so they can choose representatives that accomplish the tasks their citizens want. He also argues for the “competence principle.” Voters should use their right and power to vote to the best of their ability in order to maintain their right to vote. Brennan also says that Singapore is a modern-day example of a technocracy . In a technocracy, experts run the government.

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Arguments for freedom: the many reasons why free speech is essential.

David Hudson

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

“The matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other freedom”— that’s how Justice Benjamin Cardozo referred to freedom of speech.

This eminent Justice is far from alone in his assessment of the lofty perch that free speech holds in the United States of America. Others have called it our blueprint for personal liberty and the cornerstone of a free society. Without freedom of speech, individuals could not criticize government officials, test their theories against those of others, counter negative expression with a different viewpoint, or express their individuality and autonomy.

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” This freedom represents the essence of personal freedom and individual liberty. It remains vitally important, because freedom of speech is inextricably intertwined with freedom of thought.

Freedom of speech is closely connected to freedom of thought, an essential tool for democratic self-governance.

“First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end,” warned Justice Anthony Kennedy in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002). “The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”

There are numerous reasons why the First Amendment has a preferred position in our pantheon of constitutional values. Here are six.

Self-governance and a check against governmental abuse

Free speech theorists and scholars have advanced a number of reasons why freedom of speech is important. Philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn famously offered that freedom of speech is essential for individuals to freely engage in debate so that they can make informed choices about self-government. Justice Louis Brandeis expressed this sentiment in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California (1927): “[F]reedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.”

In other words, freedom of speech is important for the proper functioning of a constitutional democracy. Meiklejohn advocated these ideas in his seminal 1948 work, “ Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government .” Closely related to this is the idea that freedom of speech serves as a check against abuse by government officials. Professor Vincent Blasi referred to this as “the checking value” of free speech.

Liberty and self-fulfillment

The self-governance rationale is only one of many reasons why freedom of speech is considered so important. Another reason is that freedom of speech is key to individual fulfillment. Some refer to this as the “liberty theory” of the First Amendment.

Free-speech theorist C. Edwin Baker writes that “speech or other self-expressive conduct is protected not as a means to achieve a collective good but because of its value to the individual.” Justice Thurgood Marshall eloquently advanced the individual fulfillment theory of freedom of speech in his concurring opinion in the prisoner rights case Procunier v. Martinez (1974) when he wrote: “The First Amendment serves not only the needs of the polity, but also those of the human spirit—a spirit that demands self-expression. Such expression is an integral part of the development of ideas and a sense of identity. To suppress expression is to reject the basic human desire for recognition and affront the individual’s worth and dignity.”

The search for truth and the ‘marketplace of ideas’ metaphor

Still another reason for elevating freedom of speech to a prominent place in our constitutional values is that it ensures a search for truth.

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FIRE has distributed more than 138,000 print and online copies of its Guide to Free Speech on Campus.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes expressed this idea in his “Great Dissent” in Abrams v. United States (1919) when he wrote that “the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade of ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” This language from Holmes led to one of the most pervasive metaphors in First Amendment jurisprudence—that of the “marketplace of ideas.”

This concept did not originate with Holmes, as John Milton in the 17th century and John Stuart Mill in the 19th century advanced the idea that speech is essential in the search for truth in their respective works, “Areopagitica” (1644) and “On Liberty” (1859). Milton famously wrote: “Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple, whoever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” For his part, Mill warned of the “peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion” explaining that “[i]f the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

Informational theory

The marketplace metaphor is helpful but incomplete. Critics point out that over the course of history, truth may not always prevail over false ideas. For example, Mill warned that truth sometimes doesn’t triumph over “persecution.” Furthermore, more powerful individuals may have greater access to the marketplace and devalue the contributions of others. Another critique comes from those who advocate the informational theory of free speech.

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“If finding objective truth were the only value of freedom of expression, there would be little value to studying history,” explains Greg Lukianoff of FIRE . “ Most of human thought in history has been mistaken about its assumptions and beliefs about the world and each other; nevertheless, understanding things like superstitions, folk medicine, and apocryphal family histories has significance and value.”

Under this theory, there is great value in learning and appreciating what people believe and how they process information. Lukianoff calls the metaphor for the informational theory of free speech “the lab in the looking glass.” The ultimate goal is “to know as much about us and our world as we can,” because it is vitally “important to know what people really believe, especially when the belief is perplexing or troubling.”

Safety valve theory

Another reason why freedom of speech is important relates to what has been termed the “safety valve” theory. This perspective advances the idea that it is good to allow individuals to express themselves fully and blow off steam.

If individuals are deprived of the ability to express themselves, they may undertake violent means as a way to draw attention to their causes or protests. Justice Brandeis advanced the safety valve theory of free speech in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California (1927) when he wrote:

Those who won our independence believed . . . that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies.

Tolerance theory

Free speech has also been construed to promote the virtue of tolerance: If we tolerate a wide range of speech and ideas, this will promote greater acceptance, self-restraint, and a diversity of ideas.

Lee Bollinger advanced this theory in his 1986 work “The Tolerant Society.” This theory helps explain why we should tolerate even extremist speech. As Justice Holmes wrote in his dissent in United States v. Schwimmer (1929), freedom of speech means “freedom for the thought that we hate.” This means that we often must tolerate extremist speech. As Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. wrote in Snyder v. Phelps (2011), we don’t punish the extremist speaker; instead “we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

Freedom of speech holds a special place in American law and society for many good reasons.

As Rodney Smolla writes in “Free Speech in an Open Society,” “[t]here is no logical reason . . . why the preferred position of freedom of speech might not be buttressed by multiple rationales.” Freedom of speech is closely connected to freedom of thought, an essential tool for democratic self-governance; it leads to a search for truth; it helps people express their individuality; and it promotes a tolerant society open to different viewpoints.

In sum, it captures the essence of a free and open society.

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Argumentative Essay On Democracy Is Better Than Military Rule

The debate between democracy and military rule has long been a topic of contention in discussions about governance. In this essay, we will explore the advantages of democracy over military rule, focusing on representation, human rights, the rule of law, economic development, and peaceful transitions of power. Democracy, with its emphasis on citizen participation and protection of individual rights, has proven to be a better path to progress and prosperity for nations worldwide.

Table of Contents

Reasons Why Democracy Is Better Than Military Rule Essay

Representation and participation.

One of the fundamental pillars of democracy is representation and participation. In democratic societies, citizens have the opportunity to elect their leaders, granting them a voice in shaping policies that impact their lives. Elected representatives, who are accountable to the people, advocate for the interests of their constituents and secure various perspectives, are considered in decision-making processes. In contrast, military rule often leaves citizens without a voice, as a select group makes decisions of military leaders without the consent of the governed.

Protection of Human Rights

Democracies are characterized by a commitment to protecting individual rights and freedoms. Constitutional frameworks and independent judiciary systems in democratic nations ensure that basic human rights, such as freedom of speech, assembly, and expression, are upheld. These rights are essential for fostering an environment of open dialogue, debate, and progress. In contrast, military rule may impose restrictions on civil liberties, leading to censorship and oppression, stifling societal growth and development.

Rule of Law

The rule of law is a cornerstone of democratic governance. In a democracy, laws apply to all citizens equally, regardless of their social or political standing. This principle ensures that those in power are held accountable for their actions, promoting transparency and fairness. In military rule, the rule of law may be undermined, leading to arbitrary decision-making and a lack of checks and balances, which can result in abuse of power.

Economic Development

Empirical evidence suggests that democracies tend to experience higher levels of economic development compared to countries under military rule. The stability and predictability of democratic systems create a favorable environment for investment, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Additionally, democratic governments prioritize policies that foster economic growth, social welfare, and education, leading to better economic outcomes and improved living standards for citizens.

Peaceful Transitions of Power

One of the significant advantages of democracy is its ability to facilitate peaceful transitions of power through regular elections. In democratic nations, leaders are elected for a fixed term, and power is peacefully transferred to the winning candidate after each election cycle. This ensures political stability and reduces the risk of violent conflicts that can arise from power struggles in military regimes.

Challenges and Counterarguments

While democracy offers numerous benefits, it is essential to acknowledge its challenges and consider counterarguments. Democracies can face issues such as political polarization, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and the influence of money in politics. Furthermore, some argue that military rule can bring stability and decisive action in times of crisis. However, it is crucial to recognize that military rule often comes at the cost of human rights and undermines the principles of democratic governance.

In conclusion, democracy has proven to be a superior form of governance when compared to military rule. It ensures representation and citizen participation, protects human rights, upholds the rule of law, fosters economic development, and facilitates peaceful transitions of power. While it may face challenges, democracy remains the best path to progress and prosperity for nations worldwide. Embracing democracy’s core principles of inclusion, transparency, and accountability will continue to lead societies toward a brighter and more equitable future.

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

Paragraph About Democracy In 100 To 150 Words

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If you are a teacher searching for essay topics to assign to your U.S. government or civics class or looking for ideas, do not fret. It is easy to integrate debates and discussions into the classroom environment. These topic suggestions provide a wealth of ideas for written assignments such as position papers , compare-and-contrast essays , and argumentative essays . Scan the following 25 question topics and ideas to find just the right one. You'll soon be reading interesting papers from your students after they grapple with these challenging and important issues.

Compare and contrast what is a direct democracy versus representative democracy.
React to the following statement: Democratic decision-making should be extended to all areas of life including schools, the workplace, and the government.
Compare and contrast the Virginia and New Jersey plans. Explain how these led to the Great Compromise .
Pick one thing about the U.S. Constitution including its amendments that you think should be changed. What modifications would you make? Explain your reasons for making this change.
What did Thomas Jefferson mean when he said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants?" Do you think that this statement still applies to today's world?
Compare and contrast mandates and conditions of aid regarding the federal government's relationship with states. For example, how has the Federal Emergency Management Agency delivered support to states and commonwealths that have experienced natural disasters?
Should individual states have more or less power compared to the federal government when implementing laws dealing with topics such as the legalization of marijuana and abortion ?
Outline a program that would get more people to vote in presidential elections or local elections.
What are the dangers of gerrymandering when it comes to voting and presidential elections?
Compare and contrast the major political parties in the United States. What policies are they preparing for upcoming elections?
Why would voters choose to vote for a third party, even though they know that their candidate has virtually no chance of winning?
Describe the major sources of money that are donated to political campaigns. Check out the Federal Election Regulatory Commission's website for information.
Should corporations be treated as individuals regarding being allowed to donate to political campaigns? Look at the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC ruling on the issue. Defend your answer.
Explain the role of social media in connecting interest groups that have grown stronger as the major political parties have grown weaker.
Explain why the media has been called the fourth branch of government. Include your opinion on whether this is an accurate portrayal.
Compare and contrast the campaigns of U.S. Senate and House of Representatives candidates.
Should term limits be instituted for members of Congress? Explain your answer.
Should members of Congress vote their conscience or follow the will of the people who elected them into office? Explain your answer.
Explain how executive orders have been used by presidents throughout the history of the U.S. What is the number of executive orders issued by the current president?
In your opinion, which of the three branches of the federal government has the most power? Defend your answer.
Which of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment do you consider the most important? Explain your answer.
Should a school be required to get a warrant before searching a student's property? Defend your answer.
Why did the Equal Rights Amendment fail? What kind of campaign could be run to see it passed?
Explain how the 14th Amendment has affected civil liberties in the United States from the time of its passage at the end of the Civil War.
Do you think that the federal government has enough, too much or just the right amount of power? Defend your answer.
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Essay on Democracy vs Dictatorship for Students and Children

Essay on democracy vs dictatorship.

Democracy is a form of government in which the citizen is eligible to choose their representative in the government. In addition, it enables the citizen to give their voice in legislation. While on the other hand, dictatorship is a form of government in which the entire power resides in the hand of a single person that is the dictator. Since the 19th and 20th century both democracy and dictatorship emerged as a major form of government in the world.

What is Democracy?

Democracy is a form of government in which the majority of people elect the government. Furthermore, the general public takes interest in this form of government as they have the right to elect their representatives.

Moreover, public participation is very important in a democratic system also the citizen of the country participate and are aware of social issues and their right to vote. Furthermore, there is a sense of responsibility in the people.

Besides, the representatives are elected by means of elections and they are monitored impartially to ensure system integrity.

Characteristics of Democracy

There are some basic qualities or characteristics of democracy that are equality, political freedom , and the rule of law. Moreover, democracy runs over the principle of majority rule. Furthermore, the eligible people have access to the legislative and are equal before the law.

In addition, every eligible citizen vote has equal weight and value. Also, the constitution protects the liberties and right of the citizen of the country. Moreover, the constitution protects human rights through coordination and co-operation. And it offers to represent the diversity of all communities. Besides, equality is the heart of democracy.

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What is a Dictatorship?

It is a form of government in which absolute power is in the hands of the dictator. Also, the dictator exercises this power in his self-interest. Furthermore, the dictator acts like the whole nation itself.

Characteristics of Dictatorship

The main characteristics of dictatorship are the suspension of the election, rule by decree, lack of civil liberties, repression of political opponents, and proclamation of the state of emergency without acting in harmony with the rule of law.

Furthermore, dictators take advantage of their position. They do so by restraining the freedom of speech of the citizen. Also, they do so to maintain their political and social supremacy.

Also, people do not have the right to voice against the ways by which they are governed. In addition, there are no elections and people do not have the right to choose their representatives. All the rules and regulations are made by a single person (dictator).

Moreover, a single person (dictator) makes the law so at times they become brutal for the masses. Most noteworthy, the dictator pays fewer regards to the rights of the people.

In conclusion, the Democratic form of government is enjoyed by the people and it gives a great deal of liberty to people and the power is in the hand of masses. On the other hand, dictatorship takes away all those rights and liberty. Furthermore, power is in the hand of a single person.

In a democracy, development happens to fulfill the need of people. On the other hand, in dictatorship development happens according to the dictator. Above all, democracy is the best form of government that most of the nation of the world love and practice.

FAQs on Democracy vs Dictatorship

Q.1 Name some countries where dictatorship is practiced. A.1 In today’s world countries like North Korea, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe practice dictatorship.

Q.2 Which is the largest democracy in the world? A.2 India is the largest democracy in the world.

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The New York Times

Magazine | america wasn’t a democracy, until black americans made it one, america wasn’t a democracy, until black americans made it one.

By NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES AUG. 14, 2019

Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written. For generations, black Americans have fought to make them true.

Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.

By Nikole Hannah-Jones AUG. 14, 2019

My dad always flew an American flag in our front yard. The blue paint on our two-story house was perennially chipping; the fence, or the rail by the stairs, or the front door, existed in a perpetual state of disrepair, but that flag always flew pristine. Our corner lot, which had been redlined by the federal government, was along the river that divided the black side from the white side of our Iowa town. At the edge of our lawn, high on an aluminum pole, soared the flag, which my dad would replace as soon as it showed the slightest tatter.

My dad was born into a family of sharecroppers on a white plantation in Greenwood, Miss., where black people bent over cotton from can’t-see-in-the-morning to can’t-see-at-night, just as their enslaved ancestors had done not long before. The Mississippi of my dad’s youth was an apartheid state that subjugated its near-majority black population through breathtaking acts of violence. White residents in Mississippi lynched more black people than those in any other state in the country, and the white people in my dad’s home county lynched more black residents than those in any other county in Mississippi, often for such “crimes” as entering a room occupied by white women, bumping into a white girl or trying to start a sharecroppers union. My dad’s mother, like all the black people in Greenwood, could not vote, use the public library or find work other than toiling in the cotton fields or toiling in white people’s houses. So in the 1940s, she packed up her few belongings and her three small children and joined the flood of black Southerners fleeing North. She got off the Illinois Central Railroad in Waterloo, Iowa, only to have her hopes of the mythical Promised Land shattered when she learned that Jim Crow did not end at the Mason-Dixon line.

Grandmama, as we called her, found a house in a segregated black neighborhood on the city’s east side and then found the work that was considered black women’s work no matter where black women lived — cleaning white people’s houses. Dad, too, struggled to find promise in this land. In 1962, at age 17, he signed up for the Army. Like many young men, he joined in hopes of escaping poverty. But he went into the military for another reason as well, a reason common to black men: Dad hoped that if he served his country, his country might finally treat him as an American.

The Army did not end up being his way out. He was passed over for opportunities, his ambition stunted. He would be discharged under murky circumstances and then labor in a series of service jobs for the rest of his life. Like all the black men and women in my family, he believed in hard work, but like all the black men and women in my family, no matter how hard he worked, he never got ahead.

So when I was young, that flag outside our home never made sense to me. How could this black man, having seen firsthand the way his country abused black Americans, how it refused to treat us as full citizens, proudly fly its banner? I didn’t understand his patriotism. It deeply embarrassed me.

I had been taught, in school, through cultural osmosis, that the flag wasn’t really ours, that our history as a people began with enslavement and that we had contributed little to this great nation. It seemed that the closest thing black Americans could have to cultural pride was to be found in our vague connection to Africa, a place we had never been. That my dad felt so much honor in being an American felt like a marker of his degradation, his acceptance of our subordination.

Like most young people, I thought I understood so much, when in fact I understood so little. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag. He knew that our people’s contributions to building the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible, that the United States simply would not exist without us.

In August 1619, just 12 years after the English settled Jamestown, Va., one year before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock and some 157 years before the English colonists even decided they wanted to form their own country, the Jamestown colonists bought 20 to 30 enslaved Africans from English pirates. The pirates had stolen them from a Portuguese slave ship that had forcibly taken them from what is now the country of Angola. Those men and women who came ashore on that August day were the beginning of American slavery. They were among the 12.5 million Africans who would be kidnapped from their homes and brought in chains across the Atlantic Ocean in the largest forced migration in human history until the Second World War. Almost two million did not survive the grueling journey, known as the Middle Passage.

Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire. Through backbreaking labor, they cleared the land across the Southeast. They taught the colonists to grow rice. They grew and picked the cotton that at the height of slavery was the nation’s most valuable commodity, accounting for half of all American exports and 66 percent of the world’s supply. They built the plantations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, sprawling properties that today attract thousands of visitors from across the globe captivated by the history of the world’s greatest democracy. They laid the foundations of the White House and the Capitol, even placing with their unfree hands the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome. They lugged the heavy wooden tracks of the railroads that crisscrossed the South and that helped take the cotton they picked to the Northern textile mills, fueling the Industrial Revolution. They built vast fortunes for white people North and South — at one time, the second-richest man in the nation was a Rhode Island “slave trader.” Profits from black people’s stolen labor helped the young nation pay off its war debts and financed some of our most prestigious universities. It was the relentless buying, selling, insuring and financing of their bodies and the products of their labor that made Wall Street a thriving banking, insurance and trading sector and New York City the financial capital of the world.

But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.

The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4, 1776, proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country. Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.

Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all.

The very first person to die for this country in the American Revolution was a black man who himself was not free. Crispus Attucks was a fugitive from slavery, yet he gave his life for a new nation in which his own people would not enjoy the liberties laid out in the Declaration for another century. In every war this nation has waged since that first one, black Americans have fought — today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military.

My father, one of those many black Americans who answered the call, knew what it would take me years to understand: that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776. That black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true “founding fathers.” And that no people has a greater claim to that flag than us.

In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson sat at his portable writing desk in a rented room in Philadelphia and penned these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For the last 243 years, this fierce assertion of the fundamental and natural rights of humankind to freedom and self-governance has defined our global reputation as a land of liberty. As Jefferson composed his inspiring words, however, a teenage boy who would enjoy none of those rights and liberties waited nearby to serve at his master’s beck and call. His name was Robert Hemings, and he was the half brother of Jefferson’s wife, born to Martha Jefferson’s father and a woman he owned. It was common for white enslavers to keep their half-black children in slavery. Jefferson had chosen Hemings, from among about 130 enslaved people that worked on the forced-labor camp he called Monticello, to accompany him to Philadelphia and ensure his every comfort as he drafted the text making the case for a new democratic republic based on the individual rights of men.

At the time, one-fifth of the population within the 13 colonies struggled under a brutal system of slavery unlike anything that had existed in the world before. Chattel slavery was not conditional but racial. It was heritable and permanent, not temporary, meaning generations of black people were born into it and passed their enslaved status onto their children. Enslaved people were not recognized as human beings but as property that could be mortgaged, traded, bought, sold, used as collateral, given as a gift and disposed of violently. Jefferson’s fellow white colonists knew that black people were human beings, but they created a network of laws and customs, astounding for both their precision and cruelty, that ensured that enslaved people would never be treated as such. As the abolitionist William Goodell wrote in 1853, “If any thing founded on falsehood might be called a science, we might add the system of American slavery to the list of the strict sciences.”

[Listen to a new podcast with Nikole Hannah-Jones that tells the story of slavery and its legacy like you’ve never heard it before. ]

Enslaved people could not legally marry. They were barred from learning to read and restricted from meeting privately in groups. They had no claim to their own children, who could be bought, sold and traded away from them on auction blocks alongside furniture and cattle or behind storefronts that advertised “Negroes for Sale.” Enslavers and the courts did not honor kinship ties to mothers, siblings, cousins. In most courts, they had no legal standing. Enslavers could rape or murder their property without legal consequence. Enslaved people could own nothing, will nothing and inherit nothing. They were legally tortured, including by those working for Jefferson himself. They could be worked to death, and often were, in order to produce the highest profits for the white people who owned them.

Yet in making the argument against Britain’s tyranny, one of the colonists’ favorite rhetorical devices was to claim that they were the slaves — to Britain. For this duplicity, they faced burning criticism both at home and abroad. As Samuel Johnson, an English writer and Tory opposed to American independence, quipped, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons some of the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. In London, there were growing calls to abolish the slave trade. This would have upended the economy of the colonies, in both the North and the South. The wealth and prominence that allowed Jefferson, at just 33, and the other founding fathers to believe they could successfully break off from one of the mightiest empires in the world came from the dizzying profits generated by chattel slavery. In other words, we may never have revolted against Britain if some of the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue. It is not incidental that 10 of this nation’s first 12 presidents were enslavers, and some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.

Jefferson and the other founders were keenly aware of this hypocrisy. And so in Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence, he tried to argue that it wasn’t the colonists’ fault. Instead, he blamed the king of England for forcing the institution of slavery on the unwilling colonists and called the trafficking in human beings a crime. Yet neither Jefferson nor most of the founders intended to abolish slavery, and in the end, they struck the passage.

There is no mention of slavery in the final Declaration of Independence. Similarly, 11 years later, when it came time to draft the Constitution, the framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word. In the texts in which they were making the case for freedom to the world, they did not want to explicitly enshrine their hypocrisy, so they sought to hide it. The Constitution contains 84 clauses. Six deal directly with the enslaved and their enslavement, as the historian David Waldstreicher has written, and five more hold implications for slavery. The Constitution protected the “property” of those who enslaved black people, prohibited the federal government from intervening to end the importation of enslaved Africans for a term of 20 years, allowed Congress to mobilize the militia to put down insurrections by the enslaved and forced states that had outlawed slavery to turn over enslaved people who had run away seeking refuge. Like many others, the writer and abolitionist Samuel Bryan called out the deceit, saying of the Constitution, “The words are dark and ambiguous; such as no plain man of common sense would have used, [and] are evidently chosen to conceal from Europe, that in this enlightened country, the practice of slavery has its advocates among men in the highest stations.”

With independence, the founding fathers could no longer blame slavery on Britain. The sin became this nation’s own, and so, too, the need to cleanse it. The shameful paradox of continuing chattel slavery in a nation founded on individual freedom, scholars today assert, led to a hardening of the racial caste system. This ideology, reinforced not just by laws but by racist science and literature, maintained that black people were subhuman, a belief that allowed white Americans to live with their betrayal. By the early 1800s, according to the legal historians Leland B. Ware, Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, white Americans, whether they engaged in slavery or not, “had a considerable psychological as well as economic investment in the doctrine of black inferiority.” While liberty was the inalienable right of the people who would be considered white, enslavement and subjugation became the natural station of people who had any discernible drop of “black” blood.

The Supreme Court enshrined this thinking in the law in its 1857 Dred Scott decision, ruling that black people, whether enslaved or free, came from a “slave” race. This made them inferior to white people and, therefore, incompatible with American democracy. Democracy was for citizens, and the “Negro race,” the court ruled, was “a separate class of persons,” which the founders had “not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government” and had “no rights which a white man was bound to respect.” This belief, that black people were not merely enslaved but were a slave race, became the root of the endemic racism that we still cannot purge from this nation to this day. If black people could not ever be citizens, if they were a caste apart from all other humans, then they did not require the rights bestowed by the Constitution, and the “we” in the “We the People” was not a lie.

On Aug. 14, 1862, a mere five years after the nation’s highest courts declared that no black person could be an American citizen, President Abraham Lincoln called a group of five esteemed free black men to the White House for a meeting. It was one of the few times that black people had ever been invited to the White House as guests. The Civil War had been raging for more than a year, and black abolitionists, who had been increasingly pressuring Lincoln to end slavery, must have felt a sense of great anticipation and pride.

The war was not going well for Lincoln. Britain was contemplating whether to intervene on the Confederacy’s behalf, and Lincoln, unable to draw enough new white volunteers for the war, was forced to reconsider his opposition to allowing black Americans to fight for their own liberation. The president was weighing a proclamation that threatened to emancipate all enslaved people in the states that had seceded from the Union if the states did not end the rebellion. The proclamation would also allow the formerly enslaved to join the Union army and fight against their former “masters.” But Lincoln worried about what the consequences of this radical step would be. Like many white Americans, he opposed slavery as a cruel system at odds with American ideals, but he also opposed black equality. He believed that free black people were a “troublesome presence” incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people. “Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals?” he had said four years earlier. “My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.”

That August day, as the men arrived at the White House, they were greeted by the towering Lincoln and a man named James Mitchell, who eight days before had been given the title of a newly created position called the commissioner of emigration. This was to be his first assignment. After exchanging a few niceties, Lincoln got right to it. He informed his guests that he had gotten Congress to appropriate funds to ship black people, once freed, to another country.

“Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration,” Lincoln told them. “You and we are different races. ... Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side.”

You can imagine the heavy silence in that room, as the weight of what the president said momentarily stole the breath of these five black men. It was 243 years to the month since the first of their ancestors had arrived on these shores, before Lincoln’s family, long before most of the white people insisting that this was not their country. The Union had not entered the war to end slavery but to keep the South from splitting off, yet black men had signed up to fight. Enslaved people were fleeing their forced-labor camps, which we like to call plantations, trying to join the effort, serving as spies, sabotaging confederates, taking up arms for his cause as well as their own. And now Lincoln was blaming them for the war. “Although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other ... without the institution of slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence,” the president told them. “It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”

As Lincoln closed the remarks, Edward Thomas, the delegation’s chairman, informed the president, perhaps curtly, that they would consult on his proposition. “Take your full time,” Lincoln said. “No hurry at all.”

Nearly three years after that White House meeting, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. By summer, the Civil War was over, and four million black Americans were suddenly free. Contrary to Lincoln’s view, most were not inclined to leave, agreeing with the sentiment of a resolution against black colonization put forward at a convention of black leaders in New York some decades before: “This is our home, and this our country. Beneath its sod lie the bones of our fathers. ... Here we were born, and here we will die.”

That the formerly enslaved did not take up Lincoln’s offer to abandon these lands is an astounding testament to their belief in this nation’s founding ideals. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “Few men ever worshiped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.” Black Americans had long called for universal equality and believed, as the abolitionist Martin Delany said, “that God has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth.” Liberated by war, then, they did not seek vengeance on their oppressors as Lincoln and so many other white Americans feared. They did the opposite. During this nation’s brief period of Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, formerly enslaved people zealously engaged with the democratic process. With federal troops tempering widespread white violence, black Southerners started branches of the Equal Rights League — one of the nation’s first human rights organizations — to fight discrimination and organize voters; they headed in droves to the polls, where they placed other formerly enslaved people into seats that their enslavers had once held. The South, for the first time in the history of this country, began to resemble a democracy, with black Americans elected to local, state and federal offices. Some 16 black men served in Congress — including Hiram Revels of Mississippi, who became the first black man elected to the Senate. (Demonstrating just how brief this period would be, Revels, along with Blanche Bruce, would go from being the first black man elected to the last for nearly a hundred years, until Edward Brooke of Massachusetts took office in 1967.) More than 600 black men served in Southern state legislatures and hundreds more in local positions.

These black officials joined with white Republicans, some of whom came down from the North, to write the most egalitarian state constitutions the South had ever seen. They helped pass more equitable tax legislation and laws that prohibited discrimination in public transportation, accommodation and housing. Perhaps their biggest achievement was the establishment of that most democratic of American institutions: the public school. Public education effectively did not exist in the South before Reconstruction. The white elite sent their children to private schools, while poor white children went without an education. But newly freed black people, who had been prohibited from learning to read and write during slavery, were desperate for an education. So black legislators successfully pushed for a universal, state-funded system of schools — not just for their own children but for white children, too. Black legislators also helped pass the first compulsory education laws in the region. Southern children, black and white, were now required to attend schools like their Northern counterparts. Just five years into Reconstruction, every Southern state had enshrined the right to a public education for all children into its constitution. In some states, like Louisiana and South Carolina, small numbers of black and white children, briefly, attended schools together.

Led by black activists and a Republican Party pushed left by the blatant recalcitrance of white Southerners, the years directly after slavery saw the greatest expansion of human and civil rights this nation would ever see. In 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, making the United States one of the last nations in the Americas to outlaw slavery. The following year, black Americans, exerting their new political power, pushed white legislators to pass the Civil Rights Act, the nation’s first such law and one of the most expansive pieces of civil rights legislation Congress has ever passed. It codified black American citizenship for the first time, prohibited housing discrimination and gave all Americans the right to buy and inherit property, make and enforce contracts and seek redress from courts. In 1868, Congress ratified the 14th Amendment, ensuring citizenship to any person born in the United States. Today, thanks to this amendment, every child born here to a European, Asian, African, Latin American or Middle Eastern immigrant gains automatic citizenship. The 14th Amendment also, for the first time, constitutionally guaranteed equal protection under the law. Ever since, nearly all other marginalized groups have used the 14th Amendment in their fights for equality (including the recent successful arguments before the Supreme Court on behalf of same-sex marriage). Finally, in 1870, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the most critical aspect of democracy and citizenship — the right to vote — to all men regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

For this fleeting moment known as Reconstruction, the majority in Congress seemed to embrace the idea that out of the ashes of the Civil War, we could create the multiracial democracy that black Americans envisioned even if our founding fathers did not.

But it would not last.

Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country, as does the belief, so well articulated by Lincoln, that black people are the obstacle to national unity. The many gains of Reconstruction were met with fierce white resistance throughout the South , including unthinkable violence against the formerly enslaved, wide-scale voter suppression, electoral fraud and even, in some extreme cases, the overthrow of democratically elected biracial governments. Faced with this unrest, the federal government decided that black people were the cause of the problem and that for unity’s sake, it would leave the white South to its own devices. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes, in order to secure a compromise with Southern Democrats that would grant him the presidency in a contested election, agreed to pull federal troops from the South. With the troops gone, white Southerners quickly went about eradicating the gains of Reconstruction. The systemic white suppression of black life was so severe that this period between the 1880s and the 1920 and ’30s became known as the Great Nadir, or the second slavery. Democracy would not return to the South for nearly a century.

White Southerners of all economic classes, on the other hand, thanks in significant part to the progressive policies and laws black people had championed, experienced substantial improvement in their lives even as they forced black people back into a quasi slavery. As Waters McIntosh, who had been enslaved in South Carolina, lamented, “It was the poor white man who was freed by the war, not the Negroes.”

Georgia pines flew past the windows of the Greyhound bus carrying Isaac Woodard home to Winnsboro, S.C. After serving four years in the Army in World War II, where Woodard had earned a battle star, he was given an honorable discharge earlier that day at Camp Gordon and was headed home to meet his wife. When the bus stopped at a small drugstore an hour outside Atlanta, Woodard got into a brief argument with the white driver after asking if he could use the restroom. About half an hour later, the driver stopped again and told Woodard to get off the bus. Crisp in his uniform, Woodard stepped from the stairs and saw the police waiting for him. Before he could speak, one of the officers struck him in his head with a billy club, beating him so badly that he fell unconscious. The blows to Woodard’s head were so severe that when he woke in a jail cell the next day, he could not see. The beating occurred just 4½ hours after his military discharge. At 26, Woodard would never see again.

There was nothing unusual about Woodard’s horrific maiming. It was part of a wave of systemic violence deployed against black Americans after Reconstruction, in both the North and the South. As the egalitarian spirit of post-Civil War America evaporated under the desire for national reunification, black Americans, simply by existing, served as a problematic reminder of this nation’s failings. White America dealt with this inconvenience by constructing a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid that excluded black people almost entirely from mainstream American life — a system so grotesque that Nazi Germany would later take inspiration from it for its own racist policies.

Despite the guarantees of equality in the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court’s landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 declared that the racial segregation of black Americans was constitutional. With the blessing of the nation’s highest court and no federal will to vindicate black rights, starting in the late 1800s, Southern states passed a series of laws and codes meant to make slavery’s racial caste system permanent by denying black people political power, social equality and basic dignity. They passed literacy tests to keep black people from voting and created all-white primaries for elections. Black people were prohibited from serving on juries or testifying in court against a white person. South Carolina prohibited white and black textile workers from using the same doors. Oklahoma forced phone companies to segregate phone booths. Memphis had separate parking spaces for black and white drivers. Baltimore passed an ordinance outlawing black people from moving onto a block more than half white and white people from moving onto a block more than half black. Georgia made it illegal for black and white people to be buried next to one another in the same cemetery. Alabama barred black people from using public libraries that their own tax dollars were paying for. Black people were expected to jump off the sidewalk to let white people pass and call all white people by an honorific, though they received none no matter how old they were. In the North, white politicians implemented policies that segregated black people into slum neighborhoods and into inferior all-black schools, operated whites-only public pools and held white and “colored” days at the country fair, and white businesses regularly denied black people service, placing “Whites Only” signs in their windows. States like California joined Southern states in barring black people from marrying white people, while local school boards in Illinois and New Jersey mandated segregated schools for black and white children.

This caste system was maintained through wanton racial terrorism. And black veterans like Woodard, especially those with the audacity to wear their uniform, had since the Civil War been the target of a particular violence. This intensified during the two world wars because white people understood that once black men had gone abroad and experienced life outside the suffocating racial oppression of America, they were unlikely to quietly return to their subjugation at home. As Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi said on the Senate floor during World War I, black servicemen returning to the South would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Giving a black man “military airs” and sending him to defend the flag would bring him “to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.”

Many white Americans saw black men in the uniforms of America’s armed services not as patriotic but as exhibiting a dangerous pride. Hundreds of black veterans were beaten, maimed, shot and lynched. We like to call those who lived during World War II the Greatest Generation, but that allows us to ignore the fact that many of this generation fought for democracy abroad while brutally suppressing democracy for millions of American citizens. During the height of racial terror in this country, black Americans were not merely killed but castrated, burned alive and dismembered with their body parts displayed in storefronts. This violence was meant to terrify and control black people, but perhaps just as important, it served as a psychological balm for white supremacy: You would not treat human beings this way. The extremity of the violence was a symptom of the psychological mechanism necessary to absolve white Americans of their country’s original sin. To answer the question of how they could prize liberty abroad while simultaneously denying liberty to an entire race back home, white Americans resorted to the same racist ideology that Jefferson and the framers had used at the nation’s founding.

This ideology — that black people belonged to an inferior, subhuman race — did not simply disappear once slavery ended. If the formerly enslaved and their descendants became educated, if we thrived in the jobs white people did, if we excelled in the sciences and arts, then the entire justification for how this nation allowed slavery would collapse. Free black people posed a danger to the country’s idea of itself as exceptional; we held up the mirror in which the nation preferred not to peer. And so the inhumanity visited on black people by every generation of white America justified the inhumanity of the past.

Just as white Americans feared, World War II ignited what became black Americans’ second sustained effort to make democracy real. As the editorial board of the black newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier wrote, “We wage a two-pronged attack against our enslavers at home and those abroad who will enslave us.” Woodard’s blinding is largely seen as one of the catalysts for the decades-long rebellion we have come to call the civil rights movement. But it is useful to pause and remember that this was the second mass movement for black civil rights, the first being Reconstruction. As the centennial of slavery’s end neared, black people were still seeking the rights they had fought for and won after the Civil War: the right to be treated equally by public institutions, which was guaranteed in 1866 with the Civil Rights Act; the right to be treated as full citizens before the law, which was guaranteed in 1868 by the 14th Amendment; and the right to vote, which was guaranteed in 1870 by the 15th Amendment. In response to black demands for these rights, white Americans strung them from trees, beat them and dumped their bodies in muddy rivers, assassinated them in their front yards, firebombed them on buses, mauled them with dogs, peeled back their skin with fire hoses and murdered their children with explosives set off inside a church.

For the most part, black Americans fought back alone. Yet we never fought only for ourselves. The bloody freedom struggles of the civil rights movement laid the foundation for every other modern rights struggle. This nation’s white founders set up a decidedly undemocratic Constitution that excluded women, Native Americans and black people, and did not provide the vote or equality for most Americans. But the laws born out of black resistance guarantee the franchise for all and ban discrimination based not just on race but on gender, nationality, religion and ability. It was the civil rights movement that led to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which upended the racist immigration quota system intended to keep this country white. Because of black Americans, black and brown immigrants from across the globe are able to come to the United States and live in a country in which legal discrimination is no longer allowed. It is a truly American irony that some Asian-Americans, among the groups able to immigrate to the United States because of the black civil rights struggle, are now suing universities to end programs designed to help the descendants of the enslaved.

No one cherishes freedom more than those who have not had it. And to this day, black Americans, more than any other group, embrace the democratic ideals of a common good. We are the most likely to support programs like universal health care and a higher minimum wage, and to oppose programs that harm the most vulnerable. For instance, black Americans suffer the most from violent crime, yet we are the most opposed to capital punishment. Our unemployment rate is nearly twice that of white Americans, yet we are still the most likely of all groups to say this nation should take in refugees.

The truth is that as much democracy as this nation has today, it has been borne on the backs of black resistance. Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused, but black people did. As one scholar, Joe R. Feagin, put it, “Enslaved African-Americans have been among the foremost freedom-fighters this country has produced.” For generations, we have believed in this country with a faith it did not deserve. Black people have seen the worst of America, yet, somehow, we still believe in its best.

They say our people were born on the water.

When it occurred, no one can say for certain. Perhaps it was in the second week, or the third, but surely by the fourth, when they had not seen their land or any land for so many days that they lost count. It was after fear had turned to despair, and despair to resignation, and resignation to an abiding understanding. The teal eternity of the Atlantic Ocean had severed them so completely from what had once been their home that it was as if nothing had ever existed before, as if everything and everyone they cherished had simply vanished from the earth. They were no longer Mbundu or Akan or Fulani. These men and women from many different nations, all shackled together in the suffocating hull of the ship, they were one people now.

Just a few months earlier, they had families, and farms, and lives and dreams. They were free. They had names, of course, but their enslavers did not bother to record them. They had been made black by those people who believed that they were white, and where they were heading, black equaled “slave,” and slavery in America required turning human beings into property by stripping them of every element that made them individuals. This process was called seasoning, in which people stolen from western and central Africa were forced, often through torture, to stop speaking their native tongues and practicing their native religions.

But as the sociologist Glenn Bracey wrote, “Out of the ashes of white denigration, we gave birth to ourselves.” For as much as white people tried to pretend, black people were not chattel. And so the process of seasoning, instead of erasing identity, served an opposite purpose: In the void, we forged a new culture all our own.

Today, our very manner of speaking recalls the Creole languages that enslaved people innovated in order to communicate both with Africans speaking various dialects and the English-speaking people who enslaved them. Our style of dress, the extra flair, stems back to the desires of enslaved people — shorn of all individuality — to exert their own identity. Enslaved people would wear their hat in a jaunty manner or knot their head scarves intricately. Today’s avant-garde nature of black hairstyles and fashion displays a vibrant reflection of enslaved people’s determination to feel fully human through self-expression. The improvisational quality of black art and music comes from a culture that because of constant disruption could not cling to convention. Black naming practices, so often impugned by mainstream society, are themselves an act of resistance. Our last names belong to the white people who once owned us. That is why the insistence of many black Americans, particularly those most marginalized, to give our children names that we create, that are neither European nor from Africa, a place we have never been, is an act of self-determination. When the world listens to quintessential American music, it is our voice they hear. The sorrow songs we sang in the fields to soothe our physical pain and find hope in a freedom we did not expect to know until we died became American gospel. Amid the devastating violence and poverty of the Mississippi Delta, we birthed jazz and blues. And it was in the deeply impoverished and segregated neighborhoods where white Americans forced the descendants of the enslaved to live that teenagers too poor to buy instruments used old records to create a new music known as hip-hop.

Our speech and fashion and the drum of our music echoes Africa but is not African. Out of our unique isolation, both from our native cultures and from white America, we forged this nation’s most significant original culture. In turn, “mainstream” society has coveted our style, our slang and our song, seeking to appropriate the one truly American culture as its own. As Langston Hughes wrote in 1926, “They’ll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed —/I, too, am America.”

For centuries, white Americans have been trying to solve the “Negro problem.” They have dedicated thousands of pages to this endeavor. It is common, still, to point to rates of black poverty, out-of-wedlock births, crime and college attendance, as if these conditions in a country built on a racial caste system are not utterly predictable. But crucially, you cannot view those statistics while ignoring another: that black people were enslaved here longer than we have been free.

At 43, I am part of the first generation of black Americans in the history of the United States to be born into a society in which black people had full rights of citizenship. Black people suffered under slavery for 250 years; we have been legally “free” for just 50. Yet in that briefest of spans, despite continuing to face rampant discrimination, and despite there never having been a genuine effort to redress the wrongs of slavery and the century of racial apartheid that followed, black Americans have made astounding progress, not only for ourselves but also for all Americans.

What if America understood, finally, in this 400th year, that we have never been the problem but the solution?

When I was a child — I must have been in fifth or sixth grade — a teacher gave our class an assignment intended to celebrate the diversity of the great American melting pot. She instructed each of us to write a short report on our ancestral land and then draw that nation’s flag. As she turned to write the assignment on the board, the other black girl in class locked eyes with me. Slavery had erased any connection we had to an African country, and even if we tried to claim the whole continent, there was no “African” flag. It was hard enough being one of two black kids in the class, and this assignment would just be another reminder of the distance between the white kids and us. In the end, I walked over to the globe near my teacher’s desk, picked a random African country and claimed it as my own.

I wish, now, that I could go back to the younger me and tell her that her people’s ancestry started here, on these lands, and to boldly, proudly, draw the stars and those stripes of the American flag.

We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American. But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all.

Correction August 15, 2019

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was approved on July 4, 1776, not signed by Congress on that date. The article also misspelled the surname of a Revolutionary War-era writer. He was Samuel Bryan, not Byron.

Editors’ Note March 11, 2020

A passage has been adjusted to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them. Read more .

Nikole Hannah-Jones is a staff writer for the magazine. A 2017 MacArthur fellow, she has won a National Magazine Award, a Peabody Award and a George Polk Award. Adam Pendleton is an artist known for conceptually rigorous and formally inventive paintings, collages, videos and installations that address history and contemporary culture.

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Free Voting or Not Voting Argumentative Essay Example

Deciding not to vote is a tough decision to make given that in the modern world, voting is the sole way of realizing democracy. It is through voting that society gets leaders who represent the society’s interests to the executive. Society further gives the voted in representational power to make decisions on their behalf (read society). Challenges arise when the elected representatives leave the people who elected them to live in the city. In no time, would have been detached from the electorate to the extent that they barely know the needs of the people they purport to represent.

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Undeniably, school uniforms have been in existence for a good number of years now. Initially, they were common in private grade schools as well as high schools. However, the number of public schools implementing the policy of school uniforms has been increasing gradually. The issue of school uniforms can be a very contentious topic particularly among learners who are not ready to lose their freedom of choosing their own clothing. Nevertheless, once this policy is implemented even the learners come to appreciate the advantages of uniforms.

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Benevolent despot refers to an authoritarian rule which is characterized by kindness and generosity. It also refers to enlightened absolutism which is a situation when rulers are influenced by enlightenment. Enlightened monarchs tended to allow religious toleration, freedom of speech and the press and right to hold private property. Most of them fostered arts, sciences and education.

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Each and every education system in the world is designed to suit the explicit desires of the ruling class and regimes. Evidently, there are nations whose major goals that shape their education towards the pious person. This scenario could be the opposite for other nations whose main goal of education is geared to war-like informed individuals and graduates. Other governments concentrate their systems to produce the industrious man who loves quality in all dimensions that is, taste, character and knowledge.

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This paper will discuss the argument of why a country should be ruled by Monarchy. The first section of this paper will discuss how patriotism is better in case of a monarchy from the citizens. The second section of this paper will discuss the advantage of civilization in case of monarch rule. The third section of this paper will discuss the advantage of the qualification in case of monarchy. The final section of this paper will discuss the disadvantage of corruption that comes with monarch rule.

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Rhetoric in martin Luther king Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech.

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Dobbs and Democracy

Harvard Law Review, Vol. 137, No. 3, p. 738, 2024

U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 24-41

80 Pages Posted: 9 Aug 2024

Katherine Shaw

University of Pennsylvania - Carey Law School; Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Melissa Murray

New York University School of Law

Date Written: January 11, 2024

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Alito justified the decision to overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey with an appeal to democracy. He insisted that it was “time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” This invocation of democracy had undeniable rhetorical power: it allowed the Dobbs majority to lay waste to decades’ worth of precedent, while rebutting charges of judicial imperialism and purporting to restore the people’s voices. This Article interrogates Dobbs’s claim to vindicate principles of democracy, examining both the intellectual pedigree of this claim and its substantive vision of democracy. In grounding its decision in democracy, the Dobbs majority relied on a well-worn but dubious narrative: that Roe, and later Casey, disrupted ongoing democratic deliberation on the abortion issue, wresting this contested question from the people and imposing the Court’s own will. The majority insisted that this critique had always attended Roe. However, in tracing the provenance of the democratic deliberation argument, this Article finds more complicated intellectual origins. In fact, the argument did not surface in Roe’s immediate aftermath, but rather emerged years later. And it did so not organically, but through a series of interconnected legal, movement, and political efforts designed to undermine and ultimately topple Roe and Casey. The product of these efforts, the Dobbs majority’s claim that democracy demanded overruling Roe and Casey, was deployed to overcome the force of stare decisis in Dobbs — and may ultimately reshape the scope and substance of the Court’s stare decisis analysis in future cases. Having identified the intellectual origins of the democratic deliberation argument and its contemporary consequences, this Article examines the contours of the Dobbs majority’s vision of democratic deliberation. We show that although Dobbs trafficked in the rhetoric of democracy, its conception of democracy was both internally inconsistent and extraordinarily limited, even myopic. The opinion misapprehended the processes and institutions that are constitutive of democracy, focusing on state legislatures while overlooking a range of other federal, state, and local constitutional actors. As troublingly, it reflected a distorted understanding of political power and representation — one that makes political power reducible to voting, entirely overlooking metrics like representation in electoral office and in the ecosystem of campaign finance. The opinion was also willfully blind to the antidemocratic implications of its “history and tradition” interpretive method, which binds the recognition of constitutional rights to a past in which very few Americans were meaningful participants in the production of law and legal meaning. The deficits of the Dobbs majority’s conception of democracy appear even more pronounced when considered alongside the Court’s recent and active interventions to distort and disrupt the functioning of the electoral process. Indeed, Dobbs purported to “return” the abortion question to the people and to democratic deliberation at the precise moment when the Court’s own actions have ensured that the extant system is unlikely either to produce genuine deliberation or to yield widely desired outcomes. Ultimately, a close examination of the Dobbs majority’s invocation of democracy suggests that the majority may have employed the values and vernacular of democracy as a means to a different end. As we explain, the majority’s embrace of democracy and democratic deliberation allowed it to shield its actions from claims of judicial activism and overreach. More profoundly, and perhaps paradoxically, the opinion may lay the groundwork for the eventual vindication and protection of particular minority interests — those of the fetus. With this in mind, the Dobbs majority’s settlement of the abortion question is unlikely to be a lasting one. Indeed, aspects of the opinion suggest that this settlement is merely a way station en route to a more permanent resolution — the recognition of fetal personhood and the total abolition of legal abortion in the United States.

Keywords: abortion, democracy, reproductive rights, reproductive justice, stare decisis

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

University of Pennsylvania - Carey Law School ( email )

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Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law ( email )

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Melissa Murray (Contact Author)

New york university school of law ( email ).

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No risk is too small to avoid for Labor. Just don't call them cowards

Ask any ex-prime minister about mistakes or cowardice in their time and you'll get spirited denial.

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The very suggestion of fallibility invites long-rehearsed accounts of how media depictions were unfair, colleagues lost their nerve, and officials failed to account for changing circumstances.

The only arbiter that matters in the end, rejection at the ballot box or peremptorily in the party room, is rarely reviewed as personal failure but rather, the result of betrayal or an inability of electors and colleagues to see the bigger picture.

Malcolm Turnbull's government began in August 2015 with enormous public relief after the quirky right-wing fantasies of Tony Abbott (slashing health and education, knighting royals, sabotaging marriage equality, climate denialism, 'Bishop-gate' and more).

Yet Turnbull squandered that goodwill by showing little of the reformist purpose for which he was recognised (emissions trading, marriage equality, republicanism) and by drifting for 10 months before holding an election in July 2016.

Years later, when I pressed Turnbull on his abundant caution, election timing was the only area he came close to conceding, but even here, he explained that he had no choice because the Liberal party in 2015 was broke and couldn't mount a campaign.

Caution, not boldness, did Kevin Rudd in, too. He lost the prime ministership in 2010 primarily through his unwillingness to legislate an emissions trading scheme or go to an election if denied by the Senate.

I had these, and many instances like them ringing in my ears last Tuesday as I attended a symposium in the Museum of Australian Democracy on the 50 th anniversary of the only joint sitting of Australia's Federal Parliament .

As foregrounded last week , the joint sitting followed a May 1974, double dissolution election called by Gough Whitlam, who at that stage had been in The Lodge for just 18 months - Labor's first breakthrough since 1946.

Anthony Albanese could lead nation-changing reform, if he'd only take a risk. Picture by David Bellamy

Against the tremulous incrementalism of today's poll-driven practice, Whitlam's all-or-nothing gamble of putting the government's existence in the hands of voters seems reckless.

Imagine what first-term marginal seat MPs were thinking.

Labor had been in the wilderness for so long that even some within its ranks struggled to conceptualise their party as equipped to govern.

This imagination gap was understandable. Senior public servants had spent their entire careers advising Coalition ministers and had little familiarity with Labor's internal policymaking structures, culture and processes.

And the conservatives themselves? They saw Whitlam as an imposter, his mandate as illegitimate, and their own 1972 defeat as an aberration. This ruling class arrogance would prove their undoing in '74.

As I listened on the green leather benches to brilliant papers and the discussions they provoked, a deeper appreciation formed of Whitlam's intellectual predominance, his constitutional and parliamentary mastery, burning social democratic values, and sheer derring-do.

John Howard's magnanimous observation to Laura Tingle was still fresh from its 7.30 airing the night before: "I don't mind saying that of all the people I've seen in Parliament, he was the best overall parliamentarian I have ever seen in the flesh."

I wondered, would a government be as bold and purposeful now? Could a civilised figure from the institutional centre-ground emerge in the fragmented vitriol of the shouty-belligerent age - an age which views moderate language as weak and promotes division over inclusion?

Would a governing party armed with all the real-time metrics of voter surveys and focus groups, trust the strategic and theatrical judgement of a progressive reformer like Whitlam?

It is often said in defence of subsequent Labor governments more pedestrian ambitions that the big reform achievements and legislative agendas of the Whitlam and Hawke-Keating periods have left less to do. You can only float the dollar, deregulate finance, and scrap trade tariffs once, the argument goes.

But this is a managerialist apologia. The two biggest challenges of the age are democratic decline relative to growing authoritarianism and environmental destruction. Both have complex global drivers but solutions which must begin at the national level. Last week the Irish Taoiseach (PM) Simon Harris flagged intentions to apply financial sanctions and personal liabilities on tech-titans for anti-social and extreme content on their platforms. The EU has embarked on ambitious laws for regulation of digital platforms also .

Progress looks hopeless, until you take a quick glance back
If the US media stands up to this test, only one candidate can win
In a culture so strongly tied to deception, are these depths in the US a surprise?

Addressing this is about imagination, political will. Opportunity and purpose. Where Bob Hawke and Paul Keating built their 13-year brand around economic transformations including universal health insurance and superannuation, the majesty of ambition required to decarbonise Australia's economy could (and should) sit at the very core of everything the Albanese-Chalmers government does.

These call for urgent nation-saving reforms.

And there are countless retail issues on which to muscle up also.

When Parliament returns this week, political financing and gambling reform will be on the agenda. As the Nine papers reported on Saturday, even Howard now wants to see a ban on the scourge of ubiquitous gambling advertising . He joins a raft of both conservative and progressive figures who back the far-sighted work of the late Labor MP Peta Murphy .

With such cross-party agreement, banning all advertising of this gormless and socially destructive industry is a no brainer.

If a Labor government cannot even take the gamble with unpopular gambling ads, what hope tougher structural reform?

Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast.

Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast. He writes a column every Sunday.

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1. Democracy Defined

4.2.5 The Division of Democratic Labor

2. The Justification of Democracy

2.1 Instrumentalism

2.2 Non-instrumentalism

3. The Authority of Democracy

3.2 Intrinsic Conceptions of Democratic Authority

3.3 Limits to the Authority of Democracy

4. The Demands of Democratic Participation

4.2 Proposed Solutions to the Problem of Democratic Participation

4.2.4 The self-interest assumption

4.3 The Moral Duties of Democratic Citizens

5. Democratic Representation

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