[Peace-discuss] USA a Democracy?

[David Johnson]

Yes !

Great article Ron.

David J.

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Subject: [Peace-discuss] USA a Democracy?

USA a Democracy?

The United States is more of an oligarchy than a democracy, and policy
decisions don't reflect what a majority of citizens want.
By Malka Older
Dr. Older is a sociologist and science fiction author. 
NYT  Oct. 24, 2019

Between impeachment inquiries, questions about the security of our elections
and the proliferation of books and articles announcing that democracy is
dead, it's clear that many people in the United States are disillusioned
with democracy.

But it's hard to claim that the United States, at any point in its history,
has been a democracy in the rigorous sense of the word. This is partly by
design. The foundations of the United States were defined by a struggle over
how much democracy should be mitigated. It was terrifyingly radical to
suggest that the people - even a very restricted group of people - might
have a say in government, and the founders cautiously padded the rails to
limit the power of the masses. This was still a huge step forward from
dynastic monarchy, but it was not a place to stop.

And we didn't stop.
Over the two and a half centuries since, we've grown more democratic,
expanding the franchise to women and people of color and instituting the
direct election of senators by popular vote (the 17th amendment, ratified in
1913). But we've also taken steps away from pure democracy; initiatives
making it more difficult for people to vote and gerrymandering are good
examples of this. We've watched the role of money in politics grow and seen
the proportion of our representation drop because of the cap on the number
of members in the House of Representatives.

In the past 20 years, we've had two presidential elections in which the
candidate with the most votes did not take office. But presidential
elections are only the tip of the undemocratic iceberg. 

In 2014, a Princeton study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page found that
the United States is an oligarchy, not a democracy, with policy driven by
the economic elite and business interests. Furthermore, studies and polls
show that majority public opinion on many of the key issues of the day -
abortion, gun control, universal health care - is nowhere near reflected in
public policy decisions.

IT'S HARDLY SURPRISING THAT WE HAVEN'T YET PERFECTED OUR SYSTEM OF
GOVERNMENT. SOCIETIES HAVE BEEN PRACTICING DEMOCRACY FOR A VERY SHORT TIME
RELATIVE TO HUMAN HISTORY, AND WE'RE STILL WORKING OUT THE BUGS AND
PERSUADING OURSELVES TO COMMIT TO THE DIFFICULTIES. AND DEMOCRACY IS STILL A
TERRIFYINGLY RADICAL IDEA - AS MUCH AS WE RHAPSODIZE ABOUT GOVERNMENT BY THE
PEOPLE, WE ARE AFRAID TO TRUST OURSELVES AND MUCH MORE AFRAID TO TRUST
ANYONE ELSE.
MOREOVER, DEMOCRACY WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE A PERFECT CLOCKWORK MECHANISM,
FUNCTIONING ON ITS OWN WHILE CITIZENS WENT ABOUT THEIR LIVES, MITIGATING
WITH PRETERNATURAL PRECISION EVERY FAILURE OF HUMAN NATURE. DEMOCRACY IS
ABOUT PEOPLE ACTIVELY ENGAGING WITH THE DECISIONS OF THEIR GOVERNMENT AT
EVERY LEVEL. IT REQUIRES CREATING THE SPACE AND PROCESSES FOR THAT TO
HAPPEN, PROVIDING EDUCATION TO ENABLE AN INFORMED CITIZENRY AND PUTTING IN
PLACE SAFEGUARDS TO PREVENT OPPRESSION BY THE MAJORITY - AND THEN
CONTINUOUSLY IMPROVING AND ADJUSTING THOSE COMPONENTS AS SOCIETY CHANGES.

IN OUR TECHNOLOGY-RICH WORLD, WITH A SURPLUS OF WEALTH AND LEISURE TIME, WE
SHOULD HAVE MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO FACILITATE AND EXTEND DEMOCRACY THAN EVER
BEFORE. AND WE DO. MUNICIPALITIES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES AND COUNTRIES
AROUND THE WORLD ARE EXPERIMENTING WITH DIFFERENT TYPES OF DEMOCRACY,
LEVERAGING DIGITAL AND NONDIGITAL INNOVATIONS TO BETTER INVOLVE CITIZENS.
SOME COUNTRIES HAVE MANDATORY VOTING; SOME HAVE INSTITUTED E-VOTING. SOME
LOCALITIES WITHIN THE UNITED STATES ARE EXPERIMENTING WITH RANKED- CHOICE
VOTING OR QUADRATIC VOTING. SOME COUNTRIES ARE EXPANDING THE POTENTIAL OF
DIRECT DEMOCRACY, IN WHICH PEOPLE VOTE ON POLICIES OR LAWS RATHER THAN ON
REPRESENTATIVES; SOME ARE LOOKING FOR WAYS TO ENGAGE PEOPLE BEYOND VOTING,
INTO BROADER ENGAGEMENT IN GOVERNANCE AND COMMUNITY. THERE ARE MYRIAD WAYS
THAT WE CAN MAKE OUR SYSTEM MORE REPRESENTATIVE, MORE ACCOUNTABLE, MORE
REFLECTIVE OF WHAT PEOPLE WANT.
AND YET MOST OF THE DISCOURSE IN THE UNITED STATES TREATS DEMOCRACY AS A
DONE DEAL, AN ACHIEVEMENT TO TRUMPET AND SPREAD AROUND THE WORLD, AN
ENVIABLE AND UNCHANGEABLE STATUS QUO. THERE'S AN IMMENSE KIND OF HUBRIS IN
THE SUGGESTION THAT THE WAY WE DO DEMOCRACY IS THE END-ALL AND BE-ALL OF
GOVERNANCE, AND THAT IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT MUST BE DEMOCRACY'S FAULT RATHER
THAN OUR OWN.

 IT'S TELLING THAT MANY OF THE ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE END OF DEMOCRACY SUGGEST
IT'S BECAUSE WE'VE GIVEN TOO MUCH POWER TO THE MASSES, THAT WE'VE BECOME TOO
DEMOCRATIC. A PAPER BY SHAWN ROSENBERG, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE, CLAIMS THAT
THE PROBLEM IS SOCIAL MEDIA AND THAT OTHER TECHNOLOGIES HAVE DISRUPTED THE
ROLE OF ELITES IN GUIDING THE MASSES THROUGH THE INTRICACIES OF POLICY AND
ECONOMICS. OTHER COMMENTERS SUGGEST THAT THE ABYSMAL STATE OF POLITICAL
LITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES MEANS THE PEOPLE CAN'T BE TRUSTED TO MAKE
DECISIONS ABOUT THEIR GOVERNMENT.

But how many of the recent "failures of democracy" have come about not
because "institutions eroded" but because those institutions either were
never intended to be democratic or have recently been adjusted to be
exclusionary?

That the Electoral College system should result in a president who did not
win the popular vote is not a failure of democracy; rather, it's the
expected effect of a system that was always supposed to be undemocratic, and
it's functioning as intended (if not quite as designed). If the checks and
balances of our tripartite system have failed, it's not only because of bad
people acting in venal and unethical ways; it's because those people were
elected through undemocratic means of gerrymandering, party politics, voter
suppression and intense injections of money, and they know where their
incentives lie. If voter turnout is low, maybe it's not because people don't
believe in democracy any more, but because the system they live in has shown
them time and again that their vote doesn't count the way it's supposed to
count and their representatives don't need to care about representing them.

Our recent stumbles are reminders that we still have work to do on our
system of government. Democracy is not a unitary state that can be achieved,
but a continuous process. We need to keep reinventing and refining
government, to keep up with changes in society and technology and to keep it
from being too easy for elites with resources to exploit. And it is worth
fighting for. Not because of the founders, or because it sounds good, but
because while democracy may be far from perfect, it is still the best system
we've got.

At least so far.

Malka Older is an affiliated research fellow with the Center for the
Sociology of Organizations at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and
the author of "The Centenal Cycle" trilogy. Her new collection of short
stories, " ... And Other Disasters," will be published on Nov. 16.
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