Did the Founders Want Us to be a Democracy?

The American system is usually called a democracy. While this may be accurate, I think there is a better term for describing our nation's political structure. I call the United States a republic or a constitutional republic because it is more specific.


Let's define these terms and see what the difference is.

According to The Oxford English Dictionary, the word democracy comes from two Greek words that mean, "popular government," or the rule of the people. It may be further defined as ". . . that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them . . . or by officers elected by them. In mod. use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege." (Murray and Philological Society 3:183) According to an About.com article, there are two types of democracies. In a direct democracy, laws are voted on by the general population. In a representative democracy, an elected body, such as a congress or parliament, makes the laws. (Cline).

Republic means, "A state in which the supreme power rests in the people and their elected representatives or officers." (Murray and Philological Society 8:491)

At first glance, there seems to be little difference between these two definitions. In both, the people are sovereign and both may have legislative bodies. The key difference, by these definitions, is that a democracy does not have to have an elected governing body. Republics and representative democracies are basically the same thing, but a direct democracy stands in contrast to a republic.

The direct democracies of the Greeks were very unstable. When James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wrote The Federalist Papers, they called those early governments "petty republics" and said that "they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy." (71). The forward thinking political philosophies of the Greeks were marvelous experiments that that made great strides in the progression of liberty, but were flawed.

A direct democracy, or what The Federalist Papers call a "pure democracy" carries an unfortunate tendency to mob rule. Of these it is said, "such democracies have ever been spectacle of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." (Madison, Hamilton, and Jay 81).

Instability is inherent in this type of democracy. In practice, the people are not sovereign but rather the majority is sovereign. The minority is subject to the majority whim. If the majority decides to take away life, liberty or property from the minority, nothing stands in its way. As the saying goes, "majority rules."

According to The Federalist Papers, a republic can dodge this bullet because the representative body is like a sieve that refines the sentiments of the various factions of the populace into the laws that are beneficial for all (Madison, Hamilton, and Jay 82).

As a people who value liberty and equality, we do not want our type of government confused with one that tramples on the concerns of the minority. All men have equal rights. In a direct democracy there is a great danger that the will of the majority will overlook the universal good.

It is important to understand our governmental structure. If the government is to be of the people, they cannot govern themselves, either directly or through representatives, if they are not aware of different types of government, their benefits and detriments, and how those types of governments have worked (or not worked) in societies of the past.

By our definitions, America certainly can be called a democracy. However, while both terms have been used interchangeably, democracy is a broader term than republic. A republic may be thought of as a specific type of democracy that does not include the dangerous frailties of tyrannical majority rule. Saying "republic" gets right to the point. Republics are governments of free people who have given the power of legislation to their congress.

That sounds like the United States of America to me.




Works Cited

Cline, Austin. "democracy." About.com. About.com, 2009. Web. 5 Nov. 2009.

Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. The Federalist Papers. New

     Rochelle: Arlington House, n.d. Print.

"Democracy" The Oxford English Dictionary. 1961 ed. Print.

"Republic" The Oxford English Dictionary. 1961 ed. Print.