Democracy in the United States
Ellie Boehm
Grand Canyon University
GOV-140
Professor Robert Mobley
August 23, 2023
In the United States Constitution, the word democracy is not used a single time. This is
interesting because a representative democracy is what the Constitution laid the foundations for. One of
the reasons that the word democracy was not used is because James Madison was afraid of using a
democratic system, which he expressed in the Federalist Paper number 10. He wrote, “A pure
democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and
administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.” Madison, J.
(1787). The Federalist Papers (10). A ‘faction’ was the name he assigned to mobs of people who were
just working for themselves in the country, who were against the rights of other people. Almost nowhere
in the world was using a democratic system at the time that the Constitution was written, yet it was still
seen as superior to the very common European monarchies. It may seem as though the founding of the
United States created democracy, but it originated in Greece. ‘Demos’ means ‘the people’ and ‘kratia’
means ‘power’ or ‘authority’. Put all together, democracy means power to the people.
Within the category of democracy, there are two main subcategories; direct democracy and
representative democracy. In direct democracy, the people have the power to vote directly on the
creation of laws and regulations, effectively making them the government in all aspects except enforcing
those laws. In representative democracy, the people vote on who gets to make the rules. They get to
choose a representative who will vote or create the laws and regulations. Representative democracy is
seen as a more efficient form of democracy, while direct is more controlled by those whom the laws
effect. Representative democracy is vulnerable to the representatives becoming biased and working after
their own interests over time, whereas that is not really an option in direct democracy. However, direct
democracy may be more difficult to work with depending on how many people are involved in the
voting.
The United States of America is governed by a representative democracy. There are several
reasons for this. The first is that the founders of our country were scared to implement a direct
democracy. It wasn’t their vision to have everyone making every law, and they saw danger in the future if
that ended up being the final decision. Therefore, they made the country a representative democracy as
well as a constitutional republic, which simply means a country where representatives are elected and
the rules are written in a constitution. This is shown by the fact that we have a Constitution in the first
place, as well as in Article 1, which describes the creation of Congress as the first branch of government.
Many people leave out the ‘republic’ portion of the description of the country, which is not a necessary
specification to make, but it clarifies even more what the government was formed to be. Take the Pledge
of Allegiance for example. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the
republic for which it stands.” I pledge allegiance to the constitutional republic that the flag stands for.
Most people would not realize they were saying that when they recited it at the beginning of their
school day in elementary, middle, and high school.
In conclusion, there was a lot of work and thinking that had to go into the creation and
implementation of the United States Constitution. The Founders had to look at the forms of government
around the world and decide what they were envisioning for the country they were trying to create.
They had to formulate every sentence in the document with enough clarity that people could not distort
the meaning of something that was meant to be taken a different way. Even so, some of the
amendments, such as the fourteenth, have started to be contorted to fit the meanings that people want
to read out of them rather than how they were originally intended. It is important to realize that the four
thousand, five hundred and forty-three words that made up the original Constitution were crafted
meticulously over one hundred and sixteen days and was meant to be exactly as it was written. With the
amendments, that is seven thousand, five hundred and ninety-one words that are supposed to be
followed. There is a very big difference between obeying the original meaning of something and obeying
the warped, modern meaning of something, and that is a distinction that this country needs to
understand.
References
(n.d.). What is a Democracy. [Link]. [Link]
(n.d.). Direct and representative democracy. Sketchplantations.
[Link]
(n.d.). Representative Democracy vs Direct Democracy - What's the Difference. Have Fun With
History. [Link]
(n.d.). Constitution of the United States. United States Senate.
[Link]
(n.d.). America is Living James Madison's Nightmare. The Atlantic.
[Link]
