Democracy Today Research Articles

Democracy Today: An Agenda for Students of Democracy: Lecture Given by the Winner of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, Uppsala, September 28, 1996

Democracy Today: An Agenda for Students of Democracy: Lecture Given by the Winner of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, Uppsala, September 28, 1996

Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy.

Something important occurred in early 19th century America that came to be called democracy. Since then hundreds of millions of people worldwide have operated on the assumption that democracy exists. Yet definitions of democracy are surprisingly vague and remarkably few reckon with its history. In this work, Robert Wiebe suggests that only in appreciating that history can we recognize how breathtaking democracy's arrival was, how extraordinary its spread has been, and how uncertain its prospects are. American democracy arrived abruptly in the 19th century and changed just as dramatically early in the 20th century. Hence, this book divides the history of American democracy into two halves: a 19th century half covering the 1820s to the present, and a 20th century half, with a major transition from the 1890s to the 1920s between them. As Wiebe explains why the original democracy of the early 19th century represented a sharp break from the past, he recreates the way European visitors contrasted the radical character of American democracy with their own societies. He then discusses the operation of various 19th century democratic publics, including a nationwide public, the People. Finally, he places democracy's white fraternal world of equals in a larger environment where other Americans who differed by class, race, and gender, developed their own relations to democracy. Wiebe then picks up the history of democracy in the 1920s and carries it to the present. Individualism, once integrated with collective self-governance in the 19th century, becomes the driving force behind 20th century democracy. During those same years, other ways of defining good government and sound public policy shunt majoritarian practices to one side. Late in the 20th century, these two great themes in the history of American democracy - individualism and majoritarianism - turn on one another in modern democracy's war on itself. Finally, this text assesses the polarized state of contemporary American democracy. Putting the judgments of over 60 commentators from Kevin Phillips and E.J. Dionne to Robert Bellah and Benjamin Barber to the test of history, Wiebe offers his own suggestions on the meaning and direction of today's democracy. This sweeping work explains how the history of American democracy has brought the country to its current position and how that same history could invite one to create a different future.

Beyond Sovereignty: Collectively Defending Democracy in the Americas (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond Sovereignty: Collectively Defending Democracy in the Americas Jacqueline Mazza Beyond Sovereignty: Collectively Defending Democracy in the Americas. Tom Farer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. 416 pp. $19.95/Paper. Multilateral institutions and national governments are embarking on assistance programs, economic sanctions, peacekeeping missions, and even military actions, with the stated objective of supporting democracy in Latin America. However, it is unclear which of these efforts have actually worked to promote democracy, or in which situations international pressure and support can be most helpful. This collection of essays reviews the experiences of international institutions in supporting democracy and offers recommendations for the future. Nonetheless, while it fills a large gap in the current literature, Beyond Sovereignty: Collectively Defending Democracy in the Americas does not claim to be an exhaustive analysis. Beyond Sovereignty is divided into four parts. Part One discusses the theoretical aspects of supporting democracy abroad, while the rest of the book is dedicated to the application of theories. Each author assumes two basic premises: that international actors play a secondary role to domestic actors in democratization efforts, and that they nonetheless make important contributions to democracy building. Which international actors support democracy in Latin America? The authors are careful to stress that they are reviewing only the role of international institutions and non-governmental organizations—not foreign governments. The book addresses the roles of the United Nations (UN), the Organization of American States (OAS), the multilateral development banks (World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank), international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the international donor community. In his chapter, Larry Diamond analyzes where Latin America stands today with respect to democracy. He skillfully lays to rest the popular rhetoric repeated by both Presidents Bush and Clinton, that all of Latin America save Haiti and Cuba has become democratic. Diamond highlights the anomaly of Mexico and creates a new category of “semi-democracy” to capture appropriately those [End Page 204] countries that appear democratic in structure but are authoritarian in practice. Moreover, Diamond describes the more complex problems of consolidating and deepening democracy, citing Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. He concludes, “if we take the definition and actual performance of democracy seriously, it is impossible to claim that the Americas are overwhelmingly democratic today, or that the broad political trend has been democratic in recent years.” The remaining chapters explore efforts of specific international institutions and groups to promote democracy. The authors thoroughly examine the range of activities in which these actors are involved. While this is an informative and important review, the reader may be left asking: how can activities among institutions be better coordinated, and can these institutions maximize their potential to promote democracy? In her chapter, Kathryn Sikkink describes the evolution of non-governmental organizations into an innovative force in democracy-building and human rights advocacy in the region. She traces the process from its origins during the period from 1973 to 1981, to consolidation from 1982 to 1990, and finally to retrenchment after 1990. Two issues should be kept in mind while reading Sikkink’s analysis. First, Sikkink’s discussion focuses only on human rights-based NGOs, neglecting the recent growth of smaller, US-based NGOs which specifically carry out democratization and electoral programs. As a result, Sikkink ignores some of the debates between NGOs that see democracy-building as competing with, or detracting from, an urgent human rights agenda and those that see it complementing human rights advocacy. Second, Sikkink clouds the distinction between NGOs that are external actors—the subject of the book—and those that work internally, domestic organizations. Internationally-based NGOs, such as Amnesty International, the Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights, and Americas Watch, often work best in partnership with domestically-based NGOs. These partnerships make it difficult to distinguish between the impact of domestic and external actors on the democratization process. This is an analytical challenge not only in this chapter but in others as well. External actors can influence domestic opinion and actors; therefore, in some ways, they become hidden catalysts in what appear to be exclusively domestically-determined agendas. [End Page 205] Joan Nelson and Stephanie Eglinton discuss how multilateral...

Is the Third Wave Over?

Is the Third Wave Over? Larry Diamond (bio) Since the overthrow of Portugal’s dictatorial regime in April 1974, the number of democracies in the world has multiplied dramatically. Before the start of this global trend toward democracy, there were roughly 40 countries that could be classified as more or less democratic. The number increased moderately through the late 1970s and early 1980s as a number of states experienced transitions from authoritarian (predominantly military) to democratic rule. In the mid-1980s, however, the pace of global democratic expansion accelerated markedly, and today there are between 76 and 117 democracies, depending on how one counts. How one counts is crucial, however, to thinking about whether democracy will continue to expand in the world, or even hold steady at its current level. In fact, it raises the fundamental question of what we mean by democracy. In a seminal formulation, Samuel Huntington has dubbed this post-1974 period the “third wave” of global democratic expansion. He defines a “wave of democratization” simply as “a group of transitions from nondemocratic to democratic regimes that occur within a specified period of time and that significantly outnumber transitions in the opposite direction during that period.” 1 He identifies two previous waves of democratization: a long, slow wave from 1828 to 1926 and a second wave from 1943 to 1964. Significantly, each of these ended with what he calls a “reverse wave” of democratic breakdowns (the first lasting from 1922 to 1942, the second from 1961 to 1975), in which some of the newly established (or reestablished) democracies failed. Overall, each [End Page 20] reverse wave reduced the number of democracies in the world significantly but still left more democracies in place than had existed prior to the start of the preceding democratic wave. Reverse waves do great harm to political freedom, human rights, and peace. Thus, as I will argue, preventing a reverse wave should be paramount among the policy goals of democratic actors and institutions around the world. Conceptualizing Democracy Essential to tracking the progress of democracy and understanding both its causes and its consequences is a high degree of conceptual clarity about the term “democracy.” Unfortunately, what prevails instead in the burgeoning empirical and theoretical literature on democracy is conceptual confusion and disarray so serious that David Collier and Steven Levitsky have identified more than 550 “subtypes” of democracy. 2 Some of these nominal subtypes merely identify specific institutional features or types of full democracy, but many denote “diminished” forms of democracy that overlap with one another in a variety of ways. Fortunately, most conceptions of democracy today (in contrast with the 1960s and 1970s, for example) do converge in defining democracy as a system of political authority, separate from any social and economic features. Where conceptions still diverge fundamentally (but not always very explicitly) is in the range and extent of political attributes encompassed by democracy. Minimalist definitions descend from Joseph Schumpeter, who defined democracy as a system “for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” 3 Huntington, among others, explicitly embraces Schumpeter’s emphasis on electoral competition as the essence of democracy. 4 Over time, however, Schumpeter’s appealingly concise definition has required periodic elaboration (or what Collier and Levitsky call “precising”) to avoid inclusion of cases that do not fit the implicit meaning. The most influential elaboration has been Robert Dahl’s concept of “polyarchy,” which requires not only extensive political competition and participation but also substantial levels of freedom (of speech, press, and the like) and pluralism that enable people to form and express their political preferences in a meaningful way. 5 Contemporary minimalist conceptions of democracy—what I term here electoral democracy, as opposed to liberal democracy—commonly acknowledge the need for minimal levels of civil freedom in order for competition and participation to be meaningful. Typically, however, they do not devote much attention to the basic freedoms involved, nor do they attempt to incorporate them into actual measures of democracy. Such Schumpeterian conceptions—particularly common among Western policy makers who track and celebrate the expansion of democracy—risk [End Page 21] exemplifying...

The Elections in Israel—1992 (review)

116 SHOFAR Summer 1996 Vol. 14, No.4 BOOK REVIEWS The Elections in Israel-1992, edited by Asher Arian and Michal Shamir. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. 326 pp. $64.50 (c); $21.95 (P). This is a book that readers of this journal who are interested in Israeli elections .wiD want to have for their personal libraries. Period. The Elections in Israel-1992 is another in the outstanding series of studies of Israel's elections associated with the scholarship of Asher Arian that have appeared over the years, including in recent years The Elections in Israel1977 (Asher Arian, ed., Jerusalem Academic Press, 1980), The Elections in Israel-1981 (Asher Arian, ed., Transaction Press, 1983), The Elections in Israel-1984 (Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., Transaction Press, 1986), and The Elections in Israel-1988 (Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., Westview Press, 1990). While there have been other studies ofIsraeli voting and elections to appear over the years (such as Abraham Diskin's very impressive 1991 volume Elections and Voters in Israe!), Asher Arian's name has become closely associated with post-election studies of Israel, and Arian is at least partially responsible for the observation that Israeli elections must be among the most thoroughly studied and analyzed of elections in any democracy today. One of the real values of this volume is in the contribution it makes to our understanding of Israeli political history. How have Israeli voters changed over the years? Are their fundamental beliefs different today from the beliefs of the electorate ten, twenty, or thirty years ago? Is their behavior different? What does their collective behavior tell us about the fundamental characteristics of Israeli society today? These questions, and others, are addressed in this volume. This book, like many of its predecessors, is a collection of essays by a group of the very best scholars writing in the field today. The volume begins with a very good essay-that I wish were twice as long as it isdiscussing the setting and introducing some of the themes that are addressed by the authors whose work is included in the book. They suggest, among other things, that the election of 1992 was not a "critical" election (one indicating a permanent shift of voter identities in Israel) but rather was "transitional" in nature, showing that a fundamental realign- Book Reviews 117 ment from the Likud-dominated era (1977-1992) was beginning to take place, but the precise end result of which was still unclear. The election of 1992 was significant in a number of respects. Past elections had produced governments incapable of action, with coalitions dependent upon a large number of parties. This election sent a clear message and produced a government coalition capable of dramatic action, unlike governments destined to a state of immobilisme of past years. This election left the Labor party in a stronger position than predecessors had been for many years. This election was also much more personal than others had been in the past, with Yitzhak Rabin very properly claiming personal credit for the outcome of the election. After being led by Shimon Peres to electoral defeats on three occasions, Labor saw victory associated with the renewal of political leadership of Rabin. The volume is divided into several sections, each addressing a different theme. The first section focuses on political turnover. Here we find an outstanding essay by Arian and Shamir on "Why 1992 Was Not 1977," along with another very perceptive essay by Ron Shachar and Michal Shamir on "Modeling Victory in the 1992 Election." Both of these essays do a very good job of showing the similarities and differences in the 1977 and 1992 elections, both instances of "turnabouts" in electoral results. The second section of the book examines group influences in the electorate and includes some very useful contributions by Hanna Herzog ("The Politics of Collective Identities"), Yael Yishai ("The Gender Gap"), Aaron Willis ("Shas: Religious Movement and Political Power"), Majid A1Haj ("The Arabs in Israel. . . Integration versus Segregation"), and Aharon Fein ("Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union"). Each ofthese chapters fiUs in another piece of the jigsaw puzzle about who, exactly, the voters were, what they...

Estonia's Success Story

Estonia’s Success Story Mart Laar (bio) No one ever said that making the transition from communist totalitarianism to democracy would be easy. No guidelines were marked out; no textbooks were available. For countries, like Estonia, that made the change, it was truly a leap into the unknown and untried. Even though we landed on solid ground, we had no guarantee of success, while the costs we faced were certain. A mere four years ago, coming out from under a half-century of Russian occupation, Estonia was a land in ruins. Today, it is usually classed with Slovenia and the Czech Republic as having gone the farthest down the road away from socialist authoritarianism and toward democracy and a market-based economy. When we regained our independence, 92 percent of our trade was with Russia. Our industry and agriculture were a shambles, quite unable to compete on the world market. Inflation was running at the rate of 1,000 percent a year, and in 1992 alone our GDP fell by 30 percent. Basic goods like bread, milk, and fuel were strictly rationed. On top of all that, we faced challenges to our political stability from extremists of the right and left, while rising tensions between the native population and a largely Russian community (that immigrated during the period of Soviet occupation) seemed for a time as if they might spill over into open conflict. Today, all these problems are receding so rapidly that our troubles of just a few years ago seem like distant memories. It is hard to believe that they ever happened. Estonia has changed beyond recognition. We have reoriented our economy, going from dependence on the East to [End Page 96] trade with the West. Inflation has dropped, and exports are increasing at a clip of 60 percent per year. Our per-capita level of foreign investment is higher than that of Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria combined. Our state budget is balanced, and the official unemployment rate is a minuscule 2 percent. The International Monetary Fund expects our economy to show a 6 percent rate of GDP growth in 1995. Things have also changed greatly for the better on the political front. Extremists from both ends of the spectrum have been sidelined, and today democracy really is “the only game in town.” Ethnic tensions have greatly decreased, and a large majority of those residents who are not ethnically Estonian now supports Estonia’s independence. We deserve the moniker that Newsweek magazine gave us in one of its headlines: “The Little Country That Could.” The Primacy of Politics How did Estonia manage to accomplish all this? First, we tried to learn from the experiences of other countries that had undergone a similar transition. Two main lessons emerged. One was to take care of politics first, and then to proceed with economic reform. The other is summed up by the well-known advertising slogan: “Just do it.” In other words, be decisive about adopting reforms, and stick with them despite the short-term pain they bring. Politics has to be dealt with first, because to initiate and sustain radical reforms, there must first be a legitimately formed consensus for change. This is possible only through democracy, using regular, accountable institutional structures and free and fair elections. The first item on the political agenda was to devise a new constitution. The process was an open one. In September 1991, a 60-member Constitutional Assembly was chosen to do the work of drafting. The Assembly determined that the best route to stability lay in a shift away from presidentialism and toward a parliamentary form of government. The largely ceremonial president is directly elected, but in the event that no candidate gains a majority, the 101-member parliament chooses between the top two finishers. The president also nominates the premier, but a cabinet cannot form without majority support in parliament. The new election law laid down a 5 percent threshold for representation in parliament, which has helped to promote a workable two-party system. The constitution was ratified by popular vote in June 1992, and in September of that year Estonia held its first free and democratic elections...

On democracy, legitimacy and the context for elections in Asia

This note provides a framework for most of the articles that follow. The subtext of discussion, and empirical analyses of elections and media, concerns democracy in its various manifestations as practice, process, and value. Chua sees ‘democracy’ as the pivotal term in post‐cold war global hegemony. All participate; even the ‘failures’, and perhaps especially the ‘failures’ expose the meanings of democracy today, and thus the premise upon which the role of media and elections is based.

Advancing Democratic Leadership through Critical Theory

Critical interpretation of leadership and democracy in today's society and educational institutions has created conflict and division concerning empowerment, social justice and the credibility of a leader's moral practice. Democracy needs to be redefined, especially by those educational institutions that approach leadership through traditional models of hierarchical oppression. It is through critical theory that democratic leaders have begun the task of self-reflection in order to uncover immoral procedures in an effort to reconstruct the social drama of human decency. Democratic leaders, as public servants, have a moral obligation to the people they represent, and that only as a collective unit can they aspire to. We are challenged then, as transformative intellectuals, to continue the struggle for democracy in institutions of education for justice of all people, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or class.

The Key Role of the Working Class

The Key Role of the Working Class Jack A. Goldstone (bio) Capitalist Development and Democracy. By Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 398 pp. This sweeping study tackles one of the biggest questions facing students of democracy today: does the demise of state socialism—and the resulting window of opportunity for liberal capitalism—necessarily mean that democratic development will follow? The authors grant that there is a significant and well-established correlation between capitalist development and democracy. In their studies of democratic development, however, they find numerous exceptions, and argue that this correlation often obscures more than it reveals. They offer as an alternative a more complex and contingent view of democratic development. While political theorists from Karl Marx to Seymour Martin Lipset have assigned a key role to the bourgeoisie and professional classes in the building and consolidation of democracies, Rueschemeyer and his coauthors argue that these groups have played a more ambiguous role. While generally favoring private property, liberal freedoms, and their own political participation, the middle classes have opposed universal suffrage and political inclusion as often as they have promoted them. Adopting the protection of property and business prosperity as its top priority, the bourgeoisie has sometimes sought to expand, and at other times to curtail, the scope of democracy, depending on whether it most feared the depredations of a conservative, landlord-dominated state or the demands of radicalized workers and peasants. This study distinguishes merely "liberal" states—which meet basic [End Page 150] standards regarding the rule of law, protection of private property, and certain political freedoms—from genuinely democratic states that feature universal suffrage and broad access to political institutions. A variety of states—from England's eighteenth-century oligarchy to the apartheid regime in South Africa—have built political institutions that appear liberal and democratic. Yet only small numbers of people in these nations enjoyed access to those institutions; true democracy was far from being attained. The authors argue that real democracy has developed only in cases where the working classes or small independent farmers have pushed for it in conjunction with liberal politicians and elements of the bourgeoisie. This critical role of the working classes explains both the general correlation between capitalism and democracy and the uneven and oft-reversed pattern of democratization in so many countries. On the one hand, capitalism tends to foster democracy because its demand for free labor creates a powerful base of support for democratic movements, and because the growing complexity and autonomy of the state tend to reduce the sway of traditional elites. Gradually, as the direct power of conservative landowners over both labor and the state is reduced, the initial seeds of democracy can take root. On the other hand, capitalism also creates conflicts among elites and between classes that can render democracy unstable. Once democracy is more or less attained, increasingly radical economic demands from the working classes tend to push the bourgeoisie in a conservative direction, leading it to seek alliances with the military, church, or other conservative organizations to enforce social control. If sufficiently frightened, the middle classes may even support military intervention to "restore order." In short, it "was neither capitalists nor capitalism as such . . . that advanced the cause of political equality" (p. 302); rather, it is the "contradictions" of capitalism, involving the creation and exploitation of a large free laboring class, that explain both the increased incidence of efforts at democratization and their frequent reversal. The authors realize that the historical paths of different countries and regions vary markedly. They are also aware that their account raises the question of how it is possible for any capitalist democracy to achieve stability. In response to these concerns, they provide case studies drawn from three regions: Western Europe and Britain's former colonies in North America, Australia, and New Zealand; South America and Mexico; and Central America and the Caribbean. These case studies all reveal that two things are crucial to the rise of democracy: the impact of international forces—including economic dependence, military intervention, and colonialism—and the rise of political parties. In examining Western Europe, North America, and the English-speaking Antipodes...

Radical Democracy or Stable Democracy?

Zhang Bingjiu (hereafter Zhang): The new authoritarianism is a strategic consideration for the process of modernization in China. Because it is only one strategic option, its advocates do not exclude other possibilities and choices from consideration. The distinction between the new authoritarianism and certain known radical propositions is not whether or not China should develop a market economy and establish a system of democratic politics; the difference lies only in the way this end is achieved. If we were to say that the battle cry for democracy made ten years ago by a few courageous and heroic souls as they fought against the Gang of Four was loud enough to wake the dead and arouse people from their slumber in the midst of a dark period, then, by comparison, to speak generally of democracy today, when all of these requirements have become common requirements known to everyone and even written into the party's charter and the Constitution of the Republic, then it would resemble an incompetent physici...

The theory of democratic development

Theories of democratic development address themselves to two distinct though related questions: What are the common pathways that all of today's democracies have had to pursue to emerge out of nondemocratic feudalisms into democracy? And, what conditions must be met by newly emergent democracies if they are to endure and achieve stability? Political histories of democracies typically pursue the question of emergence whereas modern analytic studies tend to focus on the conditions of stabilization.' Of all the recent theoretical works in the field, Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy2 stands out as the major effort to answer both sets of questions. In a generally laudatory review, Ronald Dore says of Moore's work that "anyone who has harbored the fantasy of spending some years licking the recent social and political history of the world into some sort of intelligible shape ... will read Barrington Moore's book with envy."3 Even Moore's most acerbic critics have acknowledged that his work is the predominant one in the field. One of them, Joseph Femia, states that Moore's book "has been the most challenging, influential and highly touted of all the writing examining the prerequisites of democracy."4 Another, Stanley Rothman, notes that "it is not hard to find reasons why Barrington Moore's Social Origins has had such widespread influence. ... Its approach, that of comparative historical sociology, seeks clues to the present in the past, and Moore demonstrates mastery of a wide range of historical materials."5

American Democracy today.

American Democracy today.

American Democracy today.

American Democracy today.

Law in the Control of Terrorism and Insurrection: The British Laboratory Experience

Abraham Lincoln said in 1864, It has long been a grave question whether any Government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies.' The question still remains in doubt, although Great Britain and the United States have so far maintained their existence without abolishing the liberties of their people. Many less durable democracies have failed the test, often when the only emergency was a threat that their present rulers might fall from power by democratic processes. Lincoln spoke toward the end of the most formidable insurrection ever faced and overcome by a constitutional democracy, in which he had had constantly to balance the needs of national survival against the liberties of the citizen. He had taken many drastic actions, sometimes without the authority of Congress, including suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and military arrest, internment, and trial of civilians.2 But the United States emerged from the Civil War, as it did from subsequent foreign wars, still a constitutional democracy, with the citizen's rights pretty much intact. No democracy today faces an internal crisis of such magnitude as the American Civil War. But many of them, including England, France, West Germany, Italy, Israel, and Japan, are plagued by terrorists calling themselves urban guerrillas, or freedom fighters, or People's Armies, or whatever menacing and grandiloquent title happens to please their fevered fancies. The violent dissidents are, of course, an enormously diverse group; some have more or less definite, in a few cases arguably just, political goals; most of them profess some sort of Marxist philosophy, often of a highly idiosyncratic variety that would startle Marx, Engels, or even Mao, as much as Anabaptism startled Luther; some seem hardly more than bands of homicidal maniacs, reminiscent

The Comprehensive High School: The Challenge of an Ideal

"The widely comprehensive high school as an instrument of democracy today, as never previ ously, stands before educators and laymen as a challenging ideal."

American Politics and the End of Ideology

tN A COLLECTION of essays written over a ten-year period, | Daniel Belll hails the end of ideology. In a similar volume of Spreviously published essays, Seymour Martin Lipset2 joins Bell in the apotheosis of a non-committed scientism, or what amounts to pragmatism leached of all its passion for meaningful social reform. This growing litany in the United States, on the European Continent, and in England, in praise of the status quo continues to remain, in its own image, inherently liberal. It is convinced that democracy today has solved all the major problems of industrial society, and that those which do remain are of a second order magnitude involving merely technical adjustments within a now prevailing consensus gentium. If modern liberalism has thus been recast into a less critical mould, it is because of its conviction that modern democracy is the good society. Lipset makes this very clear in the epilogue to his book. 'Democracy', he writes, 'is not only or even primarily a means through which different groups can attain their ends or seek the good society; it is the good society itself in operation.' 3 More explicitly, we are told by Lipset that within the Western democracies 'serious intellectual conflicts among groups representing different values have declined sharply'; that 'the ideological issues dividing left and right [have] been reduced to a little more or a little less government ownership and economic planning'; and that it really makes little difference 'which political party controls the domestic policies of individual nations'. All this, according to Lipset, 'reflects the fact that the fundamental political problems of the industrial revolution have been solved: the workers have achieved industrial and political citizenship; the conservatives have accepted the welfare state; and the democratic left has recognized that an increase in over-all state power carries with it more dangers to freedom than solutions for economic problems'.4 In this milieu intellectuals functioning as critics of society have become disaffected, according to Lipset, because 'domestic politics, even 347

Tripartitism and Regional War Labor Boards

The essentials of modern democratic government, like the essentials of learning, include three Rs representation, responsibility, and responsiveness. The formal American constitution today provides for direct representation in the House and Senate and indirect representation in the Presidency. It provides for responsibility to the electorate and to the collateral organs of government (under threat of refusal to seat, expulsion, or impeachment and conviction). It results in the responsiveness of the President and Congress to changing social pressures. The constitutional offices alone cannot provide representation, responsibility, and responsiveness to the extent necessary for the survival of democracy today. The complexities of modern society make it not only necessary but also wise that most Congressional legislation be broad in scope. Yet broad legislation can mirror only the general public temper. And a vote at the polls cannot reflect opinion on all rules and regulations that daily affect individuals and socio-economic groups. Neither can executive orders keep detailed pace with the constantly developing social institutions that they affect. If American government is to use adequately the beneficence of the trinity of R's, active reflection of group opinion and of regional variations in the national pattern must be encouraged. Administration is dynamic, but constitutional elections come at most every two years. Through the administrative officialdom, as well as through the constitutional offices, government may provide representation, responsibility, and responsiveness. To a limited extent, the administrative hierarchy now permits the actual representation of economic groups and of geographic areas. It provides for responsibility by the chain of command culminating in the President and Congress, by established legal procedures, by a critical free press. It results in a restricted responsiveness to group and regional needs.

American Youth in Today's Democracy

American Youth in Today's Democracy

Democracy To-Day and To-Morrow

Democracy To-Day and To-Morrow

Democracy Today and Tomorrow. Eduard Beneš

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsDemocracy Today and Tomorrow. Eduard Beneš Rodney L. MottRodney L. Mott Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 12, Number 2Jun., 1940 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/236483 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1940 The University of Chicago PressPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.