Defining democracy

In my book I defined democracy in terms of three criteria: representation, majority rule, and effective legislative control of the executive. I proposed these criteria as part of an argument that the US government is not democratic: it fails my definition in that it does not operate by majority rule, and the legislature does not have effective control of the executive. The latter criterion is not really a characteristic exclusive to a democracy: in theory effective legislative control of the executive is necessary for any viable organization, whether a democracy or not.

In any case, subsequent reading has made me aware that many other theorists of democracy do not include the above criteria in their definitions. Specifically, many theorists do not insist on majority rule as the basic mod of decision making. They are willing to admit decision making by consensus, in other words by supermajorities. They do not seem to realize that requiring supermajorities leads only to paralysis—the case of the California government is perhaps the best example. More significantly, there is another group of writers on democratic theory that maintain that representation is by definition anti-democratic. Representatives are or become an elite, oligarchical group that by definition contradict the principles of democracy. Their position is that true democracy is government by the people, as a whole, or at least as much of the people as can be enlisted in the operation of the government. They advocate such things as selection of government officials by lot, or the creation of mini-assemblies as a way of involving more of the people.

If I am going to maintain my definition of democracy, I will have to deal with these objections.