Political Equality: I

Abstract

It has long been a commonplace that the formal guarantee of equality of political rights can be distorted or even wholly vitiated by inequalities in the distribution of economic power. Yet upholders of democracy have generally asserted that it is a political system which, among other things, incorporates the idea of political equality. Thus in a typical short description of democracy Henry B. Mayo says: ‘A democratic political system is one in which public policies are made, on a majority basis, by representatives subject to effective popular control at periodic elections which are conducted on the principle of political equality and under conditions of political freedom.’1