Alexander Hamilton , one of the framers of the U.S. Constitution , was far from comfortable at the cerebration of instituting a majority rule . Democracy was , in Hamilton ’s opinion and those of many others at the time , equivalent to syndicate ruler . The idea of a large , divers group of people attempt to regulate itself invoked image of gangs tarring and feathering the localtaxcollector . That ’s not government , went the argumentation : That ’s lawlessness .
What Hamilton endorsed alternatively was a impregnable , centralized government escape for the benefit of the whole by an elite rule class [ source : Wright and MacGregor ] . That seems miles away from American republic , though it ’s pretty much how the United States operates . The U.S. system of governance is a democracy , a character of commonwealth in which elected officials conduct out the will of the hoi polloi . These officials , ring politico , should know more about issues that face the society and how the governing affair than the average citizen does . This means they ’re commit to speak on behalf of the people they comprise . The citizens bestow their corporate trust by vote officials into function .
A genuine democracy is slightly different . In a commonwealth , the will of the people serves as the basis for collective determination . It ’s also call off self - government . Each member of the population expresses his or her judgement on each consequence through voting . Since all votes are adequate , the judgement held by the most members is considered the will of the majority . That ’s what becomes law .
In this sense , the U.S. , which serves as the model for republic around the world , ca n’t expend its 250 years of existence as validation that majority rule works in practice session . Also keep the U.S. from serve as a lawful popular model is the argument that it has n’t been even a republican democracy for more than a duo of decades .
All of this is to say that the democratic experiment act by nations like the U.S. and others do n’t necessarily serve as true illustration of democracies . Those that do are still too young to act as any real proof of whether a true democracy bring . But what about theoretically ?
Can democracy work in theory?
On a modest scale , democracy has proven itself to be an efficacious means for a grouping to come to a consensus . Everyday examples are all around us : a group of co - workers vote on where to go to luncheon , a Parent - Teacher Association settle whether the school should sweep up a frock code .
The basic assumption of democracy , that the collective sapience of a telephone number of people can be employed to get at a reasonable decisiveness , has been show to work as well . In a 2005 record book , generator James Surowiecki describes a search for missingsubmarinethat choke down in 1968 . The naval commander assigned to find the miss hoagy adjoin a number of masses severally and asked for a best guess of where the sub might be . Each expert experience the same information , and each opinion was given equal weight .
No one expert right guessed where the sub was . But , the average of the pool guesses led the retrieval operation to less than 200 yards from where the sub was bump [ source : Card ] .
In this report , all the elements of a democracy are present . The experts were informed , their guesses were give equal exercising weight , and the individual dead reckoning were unite into a collective whole that process as the basis for action mechanism .
It worked on the sub convalescence , but can democracy form on a large scale ? It ’s too early to enjoin if it work in practice , but can it work in theory ? Back in the twenties , John Dewey and Walter Lippmann , a span of liberal political observers , engaged in a public debate about this very motion . Through the argumentation , the pair expose the cardinal vulnerability that could prevent any large democracy from working decently : the medium .
It ’s no coincidence that modernistic democracy began to emerge from Greek antiquity at the same time as the public at large was grow more and more educated . A democracy relies on an informed citizenry . Issues likeimmigration , healthcare and war are often Brobdingnagian and complex . It ’s the responsibility of an independent mass medium to properly educate the public about such issuance . The media must present all side of an issue so each citizen can choose the best line of activity .
At the vital centre of this education is the item-by-item citizen . Lippmann described an " omnicompetent " citizen , one adequate to of searching out info and making an informed conclusion that best served the country as the democratic ideal . Dewey reason that citizens need n’t be omnicompentent . Instead , they needed to have their born curio stoke by a media that could " concern the world in the public interest " [ source : Alterman ] .
All of this depends on the whimsey of an informed people , however , which both conclude was too open for cooption . If one mathematical group or interest held too much control over the media or the schools , the result was one - sided argument . Without diverse points of perspective on an issue delivered by the media , commonwealth fails to function properly .
The essential full stop raised ( unintentionally ) by the disputation was that the medium is far too vulnerable to control to allow for a large commonwealth to function in reality . Without mass medium , a large majority rule can not exist .
