IDEAL DEMOCRACY’S IMPRACTICALITY: WHY REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY PREVAILS

INTRODUCTION

Founded in fifth-century BCE Athens, democracy was a novel form of government in which all male citizens, or demos, had equal political rights, the freedom of speech, and the ability to participate directly in the political decisions of their city-state. This revolutionary idea laid in stark contrast to the autocratic forms of government that most people lived under. Under Athenian democracy, an assembly would meet in a dedicated space that could accommodate around 6,000 citizens at least once a month. This form of government, known as direct democracy, enabled each citizen’s opinion to be heard and considered by all, as any male citizen had the opportunity to voice their opinions in front of the assembly, before a final vote by the demos was made (with the final decision determined by majority rule). As a result, Athenian direct democracy ensured that each member of the demos had the opportunity for equal say and political power.

In his 1998 book On Democracy, Robert Dahl, one of the leading American political scientists of the 20th century, likened this Athenian direct democracy to his own ideal of democracy. In Dahl’s ideal of democracy, political power would be equally distributed among all citizens, allowing them to have equal say, thus having a meaningful impact on the decisions affecting their lives. He explains that:

[I]n a small unit governed by its citizens gathered in a popular assembly, participants can discuss and debate the questions they think important; after hearing the pros and cons, they can make up their minds; they can vote directly on the matters before them; and as a consequence they do not have to delegate crucial decisions to representatives, who may well be influenced by their own aims and interests rather than those of their constituents.

However, in the modern age, most democracies contrast with the Athenian model by delegating crucial decisions to representatives. The form of democracy most seen today, known as representative democracy, is defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as a “political system in which citizens of a country or other political entity vote for representatives to handle legislation and otherwise rule that entity on their behalf.” However, in a 2023 survey of 30,861 people across 24 different countries, the Pew Research Center found that a median of 59% of people were dissatisfied with how their democracy was functioning. Amid growing discontent around representation in representative democracies, some might call for an implementation of Dahl’s ideal of democracy, which finds some precedent in Athenian democracy. This paper will discuss how, despite the allure of both Dahl’s ideal of democracy and Athenian direct democracy, this ideal is unattainable, and why, despite its flaws, representative democracy remains the best alternative in the modern world.

I. IS A REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY REALLY REPRESENTATIVE?

Although representative democracies endeavor to represent their citizens through elected public officials, in today's modern age, an increasing amount of people are becoming dissatisfied within their respective representative democracies. In a 2023 survey of 30,861 people across 24 different countries, the Pew Research Center found that a median of 59% of people were disgruntled with how their democracy was functioning. This is reinforced by a variety of factors, including the fact that 74% of respondents believed their elected officials did not care what the general public, like themselves, thought, and that 42% of respondents believed no political party in their country represented their views. These staggering figures point to the fact that although representative democracies strive to represent their citizens, paradoxically, a majority of people within representative democracies do not believe their elected officials properly care about their views, and nearly half do not feel adequately represented by their available political parties. This dissatisfaction with representation is further exacerbated in the United States in particular, as the Pew Research Center found that 80% of respondents believed that their elected officials did not care about their opinions. When a majority of the population within a representative democracy believes their elected officials do not care about their opinions, and nearly half don’t believe that political parties within their countries represent them, can that country truly be called representative? It’s no wonder that some argue for the ideal of democracy, where everyone has equal power in discussing and voting for the governing decisions that affect their lives.

A.    Money and Special Interest Groups

Part of the reason why the average American is becoming increasingly critical of the current political system is due to the belief that both their vote and interests play little-to-no role in which laws and policies are enacted. In another 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 80% of respondents stated that large donors had too much influence on the decisions made in Congress. This belief stems from the idea that in American politics, policy is shaped by the interests of extremely wealthy people or groups that influence policymakers. Furthermore, in his 1974 book Congress: The Electoral Connection, renowned political scientist David Mayhew argues that members of Congress are single-minded seekers of reelection. Therefore, it follows that policymakers within a representative democracy are incentivized to selfishly follow the desires of their largest donors, regardless of what their constituents want, to fund their re-election campaigns. Additionally, 81% of survey respondents believed that “members of Congress do a very or somewhat bad job of ‘keeping their personal financial interests separate from their work in Congress,’” further demonstrating how Americans believe their representatives sometimes disregard the needs of their constituencies, either for personal financial gain, to satisfy the large donors that fund their political ambitions, or both.

Believing that politicians use money for personal gain is not the only reason Americans believe elected officials do not consider their interests when forming public policy. They also believe that interest groups, defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as “any association of individuals or organizations, usually formally organized, that, on the basis of one or more shared concerns, attempts to influence public policy in its favour,” lock them out of the political conversation by spending large sums of money to influence politicians. The aforementioned Pew Research Center survey found that 73% of Americans believed lobbyists and interest groups “have too much influence on decisions made by members of Congress,” while 70% of respondents believed voters have too little influence in their own districts. Their beliefs are reinforced by the fact that, according to Statista, there were 12,937 registered lobbyists in the United States in 2023, which is more than 24 registered lobbyists per member of the 535-person US Congress. Furthermore, leading industries were spending exorbitant sums on lobbying; the Pharmaceutical/Health Products, Electronics Manufacturing & Equipment, and Insurance industries spent $378.59, $238.39, and $157.44 million dollars, respectively, on political lobbying in 2023 alone. The average citizen of the United States cannot compete with the amount of money, influence, and lobbying that industries and interest groups have on members of Congress. As a result, many believe that the policymaking of the United States is heavily determined by those who have the resources to spend influencing members of Congress at the expense of the average person.

B.    America’s Two Party Duopoly

One might argue that if politicians disregard what their constituents want, their constituents would just vote them out. However, this is not a feasible option due to how the American political system is organized. Because 85% of the Pew Research Center’s study respondents believe that “the cost of political campaigns makes it hard for good people to run for office,” Americans feel forced to pick between representatives that can afford expensive campaigns (i.e. those with large campaign donors) that may not adequately represent the needs of the general American public. Furthermore, due to the single member plurality voting system in America, a candidate “only needs to poll more votes than any other single opponent.” In the 1950s, French sociologist, Michael Durverger, hypothesized that this setup leads to a two-party system in which third parties are incredibly unlikely to win due to the winner-takes-all mentality of American politics. Therefore, the two largest parties dominate the political landscape, as voters are discouraged from voting for third-party candidates due to there being no reward for winning a smaller percentage (such as 15%, 20%, 25%) of the vote. Voters are further discouraged from voting for third-party candidates since splitting the vote can assist the candidate they like least to win the election. Therefore, many individuals vote for the “lesser of two evils,” picking a candidate they don’t necessarily believe represents their beliefs rather than a candidate that would be worse. Because Americans are restricted in their choice of candidates by the political system, it is no surprise that “more than 60% of Americans say that both political parties are out of touch with the country”, and that “57% say there is a need for a major third party.”

II. THE IMPRACTICALITIES OF THE IDEAL OF DEMOCRACY

After analyzing Americans' discontent with their current political system, Robert Dahl’s ideal of democracy, in which each citizen has equal power to meaningfully impact decisions that affect their lives, provides a seemingly prudent solution to the fundamental problems within representative democracies today.

A.    Scale and Practicality

However, as Dahl addresses in On Democracy, there is a fundamental difference in scale between the conditions for an ideal democracy and the conditions of the direct democracy seen in Greek city states and countries today. Dahl explains that in a village whose entire adult population is 100 individuals, his ideal of democracy could theoretically work. If each person were allotted ten minutes to speak in front of an assembly about a given policy, a feasible total of two eight-hour work days would be spent discussing and then voting on said policy. However, even when considering Greek city states such as Athens, which had 60,000 citizens in 450 BCE, Dahl explains that scholars stated “that Athens simply had too many citizens to function properly as a polis [a self-governing city-state].” In general, Greek city states numbered between 2,000 to 10,000 citizens, which some Greek political theorists believed was the ideal number. Even with the ideal polis of 10,000 citizens, let alone the 60,000 citizen population of Athens, still assuming that “[t]en minutes [are] allotted to each citizen… two hundred eight-hour working days” of assembly would be required. Considering that there is an average of 260 working days in a year, taking two hundred eight-hour working days of assembly to discuss and vote on policy would take over 75% of the year's working days. No government can function properly if each decision takes over 75% of a year. Similarly, no society could function if citizens had to spend over 75% of their working hours deciding on governmental policy. Therefore, Dahl argues that implementing his ideal of democracy in the ideal polis of 10,000 people would be both impractical and impossible. Considering that the population of the United States is over 30,000 times that figure, standing at 341,814,420, the amount of time required for citizens to participate if the United States implemented Dahl’s ideal of democracy is unfeasible. Because representative democracies provide citizens the ability to both influence policy making by electing representatives whose job it is to represent the people, and make policy decisions without the act of policy-making itself requiring an absurd amount of time from every individual citizen, representative democracies provide more realistic form of government than Dahl’s ideal of democracy. 

B.    With Scale, Assembly Democracies Become de Facto Representative Democracies

One could argue that not every citizen would want to speak in this ideal of democracy. Indeed, Dahl points out that “anyone with the slightest familiarity with town meetings knows [that] typically a few persons do most of the talking,” while the rest listen and vote. Therefore, not everyone would need a designated ten minutes to speak, greatly lowering the amount of time required for assemblies and theoretically making assembly-based democracy feasible. However, although everyone has the opportunity to speak in an assembly democracy, “the maximum number of participants in a single meeting who are likely to be able to express themselves in speech is very small—probably considerably less than a hundred.” Assembly democracies would then become similar to representative democracies in that a minority speaks for the majority, and, in essence, these fully participatory members in the assembly discussion start representing the others. Because “[o]pportunities for participation rapidly diminish with the size of the citizen body,” nothing ensures that these fully participating members accurately represent the rest of the group. In effect, such participation in assembly democracies biases decision-making towards the most vocal and influential, which undermines Dahl’s ideal of democracy in which everyone has equal say. Considering this, practically speaking, representative democracies may in actuality represent people far more than an assembly democracy because citizens get to “elect their representatives in free and fair elections.” In representative democracies, people elect who they want speaking for them when policies are being made, as opposed to how, in an assembly democracy, a few unelected fully participating members represent everyone with no method to ensure these unelected fully participating members accurately represent the opinions of the people. Therefore, representative democracies effectively represent the public’s opinions far better than those in large assembly democracies. 

III. DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN THE MODERN AGE

As previously discussed, the size of modern countries may limit the number of citizens who can participate and be represented in policy discussions in assembly democracies. On the other hand, representative democracies give the people a more equal say by ensuring the representatives speaking for them in policy discussions are elected freely. However, a representative’s job in a representative democracy is not solely discussing policy, but also voting and deciding on policy that directly affects the lives of citizens. In the past, an argument similar to Dahl’s could have been made that following his ideal form of democracy would be impractical due to the scale of countries today. Having to hold a national election on every policy that a government theoretically wanted to pass would be incredibly inefficient due to each citizen both having to assemble to vote and the amount of time it would take to count each ballot. However, with an expansion of early voting and mail-in ballots, an increase in centralized counting locations for mail-in ballots, as well as the advent of modern technologies such as optical scanners, electronic voting systems, and real-time reporting systems enabling more efficient counting, ballots are being counted more efficiently than ever before. With these innovations, the previous logistical issues that strengthened having a representative democracy over a direct democracy can be properly addressed. Dahl’s ideal of democracy, where each citizen has a direct say through national election on potential policy, appears to be practically feasible. One of the fundamental problems many citizens have with representative democracies is the belief that their vote is insignificant and policy is not considerate of the interests of the people. Therefore, being able to vote directly on a policy would address this fundamental problem and grant each citizen a meaningful impact on the policies being passed.

A.    Tyranny of the Majority

The question of direct versus representative democracy is by no means a new one. In fact, one of America’s founding fathers, James Madison, argued in favor of a representative democracy in Federalist No. 10. Madison argued that “[a]s long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed,” so it is inherent in human nature that differences in opinion, interests, ideologies, and property arise when able to express them. Due to these differences, Madison argued that factions, which he defines as “a number of citizens… united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens” arise. One needs only to look at history to prove how differences in opinion, ideology, and even property disputes can both lead to people banding together in factions against each other and bring about dangerous results. One of the primary reasons for the bloody French Wars of Religion, for example, was religious conflict between factions of Catholics and Protestants, and an estimated four million people died as a result. The Holocaust, in which six million Jews and five million others were systematically murdered, was conducted by Hitler and his Nazi faction; they were driven by the extreme ideology of German/Aryan racial superiority, nationalism, and anti-semitism. Although these atrocities took place in a fascist government, Hitler was voted into power by abusing the German democratic system with his Nazi faction. While these extreme examples occurred in different political systems, they illustrate that people can naturally act under the influence of certain ideologies. These form factions are incredibly dangerous and harmful to others (precisely what Madison feared could dominate direct democracies).

In a direct democracy with no checks, whatever the majority votes for becomes law. While this can be seen as a positive in the ideal of democracy, when factions arise, which Madison argued is inherent in human nature, the rights of minorities can be threatened. Madison explained that in an assembly democracy (or, as he calls it, a pure democracy “consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person,”) if a majority faction arises to persecute or infringe upon the rights of a minority group, there is nothing that minority groups can do to prevent their rights being infringed upon by governmental policy voted into law. “A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.” It is after explaining how factions can lead to minorities within a direct democracy being oppressed that Madison directly critiques the ideal of democracy itself stating that “[t]heoretic politicians… have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.” The fundamental flaw of direct democracy is that while individuals may have equal political say, their human rights could be infringed upon by a tyranny of the majority. 

B. Madison’s Solution

In Madison’s foundational document, he explains that, in order to cure factionalism, one can either remove the causes or reduce its effects. First, he eliminates the possibility of removing factionalism’s causes, as that would entail either “destroying the liberty which is essential to [democracy’s] existence,” or “every citizen [having] the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.” The former is worse than factions themselves, and the latter is impossible as factions arise from disagreements, which is an essential part of human nature. Therefore, Madison argues that the only way to deal with factions is to mitigate their effects, which a pure democracy fails to do and actually works against. 

Representative governments on the other hand provide a cure to factionalism because, according to Madison, in contrast to pure democracies, republics (representative democracies) refine the views of the people by “passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial consideration.” These representatives would provide a check on the impulses of the majority, which at their worst could be dangerous, as Madison believed that the representative, or public voice “will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.”  Madison concedes that there is a danger that representatives could be prejudiced, evil, and betray the interests of the common people. However, he argues that with the size of a large republic, a large number of representatives, and the nature of elections themselves, it is unlikely these bad characters would be elected and more likely that “men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters” would be elected. 

Additionally, Madison argues that in a small direct democracy, such as the small assembly democracies prevalent in Ancient Greece, factions are much more dangerous as there are fewer distinct and competing parties, so a certain faction is more likely to get a majority and, in turn, oppress minorities within it. However, in a large republic with “a greater variety of parties and interests… it [is] less probable that a majority… will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens [and], if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.” Additionally, in large countries, factions looking to oppress a minority within a country would have to gain majorities in many different countries and states. Madison argues that these factions would “be unable to spread” in a large republic. Therefore, Madison concludes that representative democracies are a superior method of government than assembly democracies due to their ability to control factions by electing representatives who check on the people's impulses, and through their large size and structure, which dilute the dangers of oppressive factions.

CONCLUSION

Dahl’s ideal of democracy, in which political power is equally distributed among citizens, granting them each an equal say and meaningful impact on the policy decisions affecting their lives, has become increasingly more relevant due to the discontent of many within their current representative democracies. Although many feel disenfranchised with modern representative democracies, specifically the United States, due to money, special interest groups, and the two party system, after analyzing Robert Dahl’s argument’s in On Democracy, it becomes evident that the alternative ideal of democracy is impossible to implement due to the scale and large population of countries today. One could argue that even if Dahl’s ideal of democracy isn’t feasible, giving people direct influence would still be preferable by implementing a direct democracy, where the people vote on every policy. However, after analyzing James Madison’s arguments in Federalist No. 10, because of the danger factions pose in direct democracies, it can be concluded that representative democracies are far superior due to their ability to mitigate factions through elected representatives. The role that money, special interest groups, and the two-party system play in disenfranchising voters within representative democracies must be confronted for citizens to have a more meaningful say in the policies that affect their lives. However, although not perfect, representative democracies provide a more practical and ultimately superior alternative to direct democracies and the ideal of democracy.