Mark Buchanan — Democracy? That WAS a nice experiment

The training of most graduate students in political science and public policy, Bartel’s points out, has historically been couched mostly in a theory of American politics which can be referred to as “Majoritarian Electoral Democracy,” emphasizing the broad importance of public opinion, elections and representation as the drivers of policy. Gilens’s and Page’s work makes this look like a naive perspective based mostly on wishful thinking. Our democracy would more correctly be called “Economic Elite Domination.”

The Physics of Finance
Democracy? That WAS a nice experiment
Mark Buchanan

 Harvey Mansfield, Jr. and Delba Winthrop on The American Experiment:

That America is an "experiment" is announced by Alexander Hamilton on the flat page of The Federalist, where he says that the American people are deciding for mankind whether self-government is possible; and it is repeated by James Madison in The Federalist, where he speaks of "that honorable determination . to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." These statements were not unique. Many other Americans, speaking just before The Federalist was written and long after, said the same, most memorably Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address. Tocqueville too looked to the New World to see the first and most complete modern democracy. He hoped the United States might be a model for Europe, not in the particulars of its laws, but as a more or less successful attempt at "the organization and establishment of democracy." 

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This "wholly popular government" is derived in all its parts from the people, on the one hand, but on the other, being wholly representative, it never allows the people to rule directly. Thus it gains the legitimacy of democratic consent while not sacrificing the advantages of aristocracy arising from the election of representatives who choose better than the people would choose on their own. B ut the advantages of aristocracy are not presented as such in The Federalist, for to do so would risk affronting the "republican genius" of the American people and hand a winning card to the Antifederalists who were already gravely suspicious of aristocracy in the new constitution. 

Therefore, The Federalist is much more careful in explaining the third great innovation of modem political science in the Constitution, the separation of powers. This cannot be so easily described as a republican remedy" to a republican disease, as can representation and extensive size, which cure faction by making government responsible to the people and by adding more people. It is indeed described as an "auxiliary precaution" (The Federalist No. 51) - auxiliary, that is, to representation; and it might more candidly be called. A nonrepublican auxiliary to republican government.

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 When Tocqueville came to America, its experiment was nearly a half-century old. By that time democracy, understood as the principle of equality of condition by contrast to aristocratic rank, was established, and could no longer be chosen or rejected by Americans or by Tocqueville's European audience; it could only be accepted. But whether such equality could be maintained in conjunction with liberty and human dignity was still an open question. 

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Democratic public opinion is egalitarian, individualistic, and materialistic [for Tocqueville]. In theory each citizen is equal in his ability to look after matters of his own exclusive concern. But Tocqueville points out that in fact we are often unable to provide for all our interests by our own efforts. Individualism intensifies our preoccupation with providing for our own material needs. Yet even the modest goal of providing for oneself is beyond the reach of some. Those who are incapable will hardly desire to discover that an "equal" might be more capable than they are, nor can they expect freely given assistance from other individuals. It is all too tempting to rely instead on a powerful and impersonal bureaucracy, first to do what we ask and then to tell us what can be done and therefore should be asked. Democratic citizens are soon relieved of the necessity and finally of the ability to make even the smallest choice.

For Tocqueville, America's experiment in republican government is endangered not only by imprudent popular willfulness, but especially by thoughtless, almost slavish affection for big government. In the face of this danger Tocqueville proposes his own remedies which are somewhat different from The Federalist's: freedom of association, local self-government, jury service, judicial protection of individual rights, and a general respect for legal and constitutional forms. These are the remedies needed to preserve liberty and dignity in American democracy.

A Summer Seminar on "The American Experiment"

Harvey Mansfield, Jr. and Delba Winthrop

John Dewey explored these themes in his social and political philosophy as a version of liberalism as social democracy — participatory and contextual, incorporating culture and institutions, liberal education in particular, in order to develop "the public."

Public purpose can only be accomplished though a cohesive public rather than factions as competing interest groups. Factionalism is the bane of democracy and antithetical to it since the most powerful factions determine the policy agenda and laws.