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to maximize freedom for the individuals who live under them. Although they generally make decisions through some sort of majority rule, democracies still provide procedural guarantees to preserve individual rights—usually protections of due process (guarantee of a fair trial, right to a lawyer, and so on) and minority rights. This means that if individuals living in a democracy feel their rights have been violated, they have the right to ask government to remedy the situation.

      democracy a government that vests power in the people

      Democracies are based on the principle of popular sovereignty; that is, there is no power higher than the people and, in the United States, the document establishing their authority, the Constitution. The central idea here is that no government is considered legitimate unless the governed consent to it, and people are not truly free unless they live under a law of their own making. Democratic narratives vary, however, in how much active control they give to individuals:

      popular sovereignty the concept that the citizens are the ultimate source of political power

       Theorists of elite democracy propose that democracy is merely a system of choosing among competing leaders; for the average citizen, input ends after the leader is chosen.⁷ In this view, elections are merely symbolic—to perpetuate the illusion that citizens have consented to their government.

       Advocates of pluralist democracy argue that what is important is not so much individual participation but rather membership in groups that participate in government decision making on their members’ behalf.⁸ As a way of trying to influence a system that gives them a limited voice, citizens join groups of people with whom they share an interest, such as labor unions, professional associations, and environmental or business groups.

       Supporters of participatory democracy claim that individuals have the right to control all the circumstances of their lives, and direct democratic participation should take place not only in government but in industry, education, and community affairs as well.⁹ For advocates of this view, democracy is more than a way to make decisions: it is a way of life, an end in itself.

      elite democracy a theory of democracy that limits the citizens’ role to choosing among competing leaders

      pluralist democracy a theory of democracy that holds that citizen membership in groups is the key to political power

      participatory democracy a theory of democracy that holds that citizens should actively and directly control all aspects of their lives

      These theories about how democracy should (or does) work locate the focus of power in elites, groups, and individuals, respectively. Real-world examples of democracy probably include elements of more than one of these theories; they are not mutually exclusive.

      The people of many Western countries have found the idea of democracy persuasive enough to found their governments on it. In recent years, especially since the mid-1980s, democracy has been spreading rapidly through the rest of the world as the preferred form of government. No longer the primary province of industrialized Western nations, attempts at democratic governance now extend into Asia, Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the republics of the former Soviet Union. There are many varieties of democracy other than our own. Some democracies make the legislature (the representatives of the people) the most important authority, some retain a monarch with limited powers, and some hold referenda at the national level to get direct feedback on how the people want the government to act on specific issues.

      Most democratic forms of government, because of their commitment to procedural values, practice a capitalist form of economics. Fledgling democracies may rely on a high degree of government economic regulation, but advanced industrial democracies combine a considerable amount of personal freedom with a free-market (though still usually regulated) economy. It is rare to find a country that is truly committed to individual political freedom that also tries to regulate the economy heavily. The economist Karl Marx believed that radical democracy would coexist with communally owned property in a form of communist democracy, but such a system has never existed, and most real-world systems fall somewhere along the horizontal continuum shown in Figure 1.3.

      advanced industrial democracy a system in which a democratic government allows citizens a considerable amount of personal freedom and maintains a free-market (though still usually regulated) economy

      communist democracy a utopian system in which property is communally owned and all decisions are made democratically

      The Role of the People

      What is important about the political and economic systems we have been sorting out here is that they have a direct impact on the lives of the people who live in them. So far we have given a good deal of attention to the latter parts of Lasswell’s definition of politics. But easily as important as the what and the how in Lasswell’s formulation is the who. Underlying the different political theories we have looked at are fundamental differences in the powers and opportunities possessed by everyday people.

      In authoritarian systems, the people are subjects of their government. They possess no rights that protect them from that government; they must do whatever the government says or face the consequences, without any other recourse. They have obligations to the state but no rights or privileges to offset those obligations. They may be winners or losers in government decisions, but they have very little control over which it may be.

      subjects individuals who are obliged to submit to a government authority against which they have no rights

      Everyday people in democratic systems have a potentially powerful role to play. They are more than mere subjects; they are citizens, or members of a political community with rights as well as obligations. Democratic theory says that power is drawn from the people—that the people are sovereign, that they must consent to be governed, and that their government must respond to their will. In practical terms, this may not seem to mean much, since not consenting doesn’t necessarily give us the right to disobey government. It does give us the option of leaving, however, and seeking a more congenial set of rules elsewhere. Subjects of authoritarian governments rarely have this freedom.

      citizens members of a political community having both rights and responsibilities

      Theoretically, democracies are ruled by “the people,” but different democracies have at times been very selective about whom they count as citizens. Beginning with our days as colonists, Americans have excluded many groups of people from citizenship: people of the “wrong” religion, income bracket, race, ethnic group, lifestyle, and gender have all been excluded from enjoying the full rights of colonial or U.S. citizenship at different times. In fact, American history is the story of those various groups fighting to be included as citizens. Just because a system is called a democracy is no guarantee that all or even most of its residents possess the status of citizen.

      Description

      Figure 1.3 Political and Economic Systems

      In democratic systems, the rules of government can provide for all sorts of different roles for those they designate as citizens. At a minimum, citizens possess certain rights, or powers to act, that government cannot limit. Just what these rights are varies in different democracies, but they usually include freedoms of speech and the press, the right to assemble, and certain legal protections guaranteeing fair treatment in the criminal justice system. Almost all of these rights are designed

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