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democratic theory is concerned with processes by which ordinary citizens exert a relatively high degree of control over leaders;
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Robert A. Dahl |
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As with the United States, so too in these other five countries federalism was not so much a free choice as a self-evident necessity imposed by history.
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Robert A. Dahl |
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Andrew Jackson did just that. In justifying his use of the veto against Congressional majorities, as the only national official who had been elected by all the people and not just by a small fraction, as were Senators and Representatives, Jackson insisted that he alone could claim to represent all the people. Thus Jackson began what I have called the myth of the presidential mandate: that by winning a majority of popular (and presumably ele..
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Robert A. Dahl |
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In short, just as happens in American presidential elections, majoritarianism often fails to produce a government that reflects the choices of a majority of voters. Second, the distortion between seats and votes in majoritarian systems sometimes creates a majority of seats for a party that has failed to win even a plurality of votes and thus has actually come in second. In these cases, the minority party among voters becomes the majority pa..
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Robert A. Dahl |
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The American constitutional system is not majoritarian.
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Robert A. Dahl |
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Thrasymachus's hypothesis that people deliberately seek to rule for reasons of self-interest has been restated many times. Hobbes, for example, held that people were impelled by their passions and guided by their reason. Passion is the wind that fills the sails, reason the hand on the rudder. A human being, to use another metaphor, is a chariot pulled by the wild horses of passion and steered by reason. Human desires are insatiable, but rea..
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Robert A. Dahl |
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Among the most influential of these was George Mason, who wrote the Virginia constitution and its Declaration of Rights. Responding to the insistent demands of Mason and several others, as well as to similar voices outside the Convention, Mason's fellow Virginian, James Madison, drafted ten amendments that were ratified in 1789-90 by eleven states, more than a sufficient number for their adoption.
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Robert A. Dahl |
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Both Caligula and Abraham Lincoln sought power, yet it is highly implausible to suppose that Caligula and Lincoln were driven by the same motives.
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Robert A. Dahl |
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It is difficult, indeed impossible, to fit the presidency into the simple categories of consensual or majoritarian. One obstacle to straightforward classification is the president's combination of roles. Most notably, whereas in the other older democracies the roles of prime minister and ceremonial head of state are separated, in our system they are blended, not only constitutionally but also in popular expectations. We expect our president..
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Robert A. Dahl |
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The Framers feared and detested factions, a view famously expressed by Madison in Federalist No. 10.31 Probably no statement has been so often cited to explain and justify the checks against popular majorities that the Framers attempted to build into the constitution. It is supremely ironic, therefore, that more than anyone except Jefferson, it was Madison who helped to create the Republican Party in order to defeat the Federalists.
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Robert A. Dahl |
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I'm going to invite you to contemplate a fictional scenario. Say that we are all citizens in a New England town with a traditional town meeting. As usual, a modest proportion of the citizens eligible to attend have actually turned out, let's say four or five hundred. After calling the meeting to order, the moderator announces: "We have established the following rules for this evening's discussion. After a motion has been properly made and s..
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Robert A. Dahl |
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Yet among the countries most comparable to the United States and where democratic institutions have long existed without breakdown, not one has adopted our American constitutional system. It would be fair to say that without a single exception they have all rejected it.
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Robert A. Dahl |
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Why should we feel bound today by a document produced more than two centuries ago by a group of fifty-five mortal men, actually signed by only thirty-nine, a fair number of whom were slaveholders, and adopted in only thirteen states by the votes of fewer than two thousand men, all of whom are long since dead and mainly forgotten?2
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Robert A. Dahl |