The Idea of Democracy and Congressional Government: The Reality and the Fiction

Establishing pragmatic democracies around the globe is a challenge. The reason for these difficulties, setting aside the possibility of establishing a “substantive” democracy, and simply focusing on a “procedural” democracy or a “thin” democracy is that special interests or “class” interests are not interested in seeing the general public or the majority of public rule over them. Americans have had a lengthy trial and error approach of getting a better grip on the process of trying to run elections. By aiming for better and better approximations of the People’s will is all we can hope. Hence, with any pragmatic democracy we can only hope to be more inclusive with each passing election. Tocqueville and Wilson may have learned from experience that the work of establishing a democracy is not an easy business. For Tocqueville may have realized that the New England town model might not be possible for an America that was opening up under the Jacksonian presidency. Wilson might have learned the lessons that theoretical textbooks, written by professors of democracy, may be an illusion once they step outside the academy and leave their armchair theorizing behind only to discover the brutal world that underpins political fights and requires getting their hands dirty by having to pull the guts out of their opponents—that might have been his transformation upon entering the political arena—his transformation of a political science professor to a politician. What is also clear and expected based on the more than a two hundred and a quarter years of American experience, with trying to make a go of democracy, is that special interests or entrenched interests have no interest in the democratic process. The American Founders set up the Electoral College, Bill of Rights, and many other poison pills to make sure that the “unwashed” masses stayed away from power as much as possible. We are here mostly talking about property interests that are going to be antithetical to a democratic system. The existence of democracy side by side with property interests is a contradiction of terms and antithetical to a majority of people controlling the property interests of the few. We identified property protection as the core of the American Constitution. So, any push towards democracy is bound to confront a Bill of Rights no matter where in the world a commoner lives that says: ‘your democracy better not touch my property’.