Thursday, June 06, 2013

We seem to need a broader word than "democracy"

The word "democracy" means rule by the people. I suppose that we could define an indicator, such as the portion of a country's population that has the vote to describe an aspect of democracy. When the United States was created, slaves and Indians were not citizens, women and children didn't have the vote, and people without property were not voters. By this kind of count, the USA in 1790 was not very democratic.

I have been reading about Russia under Stalin. There lots of people voted, but ballots only had a single candidate specified by the Party. Moreover, the elected bodies had little power to govern as compared with Stalin and his close associates. So the percentage of people voting is not a good indicator of the political power of the voters.

Assume that a party obtains a majority of the votes and takes power over the government. How much power does it really have? In the United States the Bill of Rights and other amendments of the Constitution define rights that the individual and the states have that the federal government may not transgress, no matter who is elected. We also have institutionalized things like the filibuster that allow a minority to block legislation desired by the majority party. We also seem to like to divide our votes, electing a president of one party and majorities in one or both bodies of the Congress of the other party. What do we call a system that has checks and balances such as those which protects the citizen and the minority in many ways from the power of the majority.

We also have a rule of law. A third branch of government provides protection of the citizens against the actions of elected officials. Indeed, it provides a conflict resolution system that protects citizens from each other.

I think we need a word that describes a complex set of institutions that give governing power to the people, but that protect the individual and the minority from excessive exercise of power by the government.

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