Wanted (Maybe): A Democratic Republic

"A republic, if you can keep it," was what Benjamin Franklin supposedly said to Elizabeth Willing Powel to describe the form of government produced by the Constitutional Convention, which concluded on this day, Sepetember 17, in 1787 - 238 years ago today.

A "republic" was a recognizable political concept, and it certainly did not mean a "democracy," although it could include some democratic features. To the founders - rich men of property, fearful of the majority gaining power - "democracy" was a problematic concept. As a practical matter, while a New England Town Meeting maybe could function as a direct "democracy," that was obviously not possible on the continental scale that the new nation would encompass. As a philosophical matter, "democracy" had long been maligned - at least since Plato and Aristotle - as a degenerate form of government. What attracted the founders was some version of the classical idea of a "mixed constitution," as theorized by Aristotle and Polybius and as was exemplified, more or less, in the ancient Roman Republic.

Since then, as the idea of "democracy" has become more attractive to larger segments of American society - however incompatible with capitalism and limited by liberalism - a sporadic struggle has been undertaken over the centuries to come closer to "democracy," understood as a society in which the governed have increased agency in their government. America in the Jacksonian era, with its widening suffrage, was more democratic (if not necessarily better governed) than it had been before. The post-Civil War United States was more democratic than its pre-Civil War version. The 20th century saw several leaps toward greater democracy - the 17th Amendment, the 19th Amendment, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.

The 21st century, starting with the Supreme Court's usurpation of the election of 2000 and its subsequent attacks on the Voting Rights Act has seen a growing democratic deficit. There is no likelihood of any major changes in constitutional structure any time soon. But what would it mean for the U.S. to become more democratic? To become truly a "democratic republic" at last? As Tocqueville and others have always understood, "democracy" and some degree of equality go together. What does that mean for American capitalism, which has become more, not less, rapacious in this century? And what of other constraining American ideologies - like liberalism, the point of which is to set certain limits to what a democratic government may legally do?

Obviously, a large modern country can only be a "democracy" in a representational manner. so one obvious line of inquiry is: What current representational structures are fit for democratic purpose, and which are not? A larger (and much less gerrymandered) House of Representatives might be a good start. As for the absurdity that is the Senate, many of the founders themselves recognized the representational anomaly and undesirability of the Senate, but accepted it as a necessary compromise to get the smaller states to join the Union - just as they compromised on slavery to keep the southern states in the new country. As The Federalist 62 acknowledged: "it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but 'of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable'.'' Eventually, of course, the U.S. got rid of slavery, but we are still stuck with the Senate, which, with our larger modern population, is even more unfortunately absurd now than it was then.

One way to approach the issue of representation is to look at the example of other countries that are or aspire to be democratic, which would include almost all the modern European countries. The most successful at "democracy" are also monarchies, "mixed constitutions" in the best sense. (The survival of their monarchical institutions is in most cases a reflection of their being on the winning side of 20th-century wars and conflicts.) But even those that have lost their monarchies have mostly successfully developed institutions which enhance both stability and democracy. Apart from the anomalous and complicated case of Fifth Republic France, they are all parliamentary systems, which have proven more effective at representing their nations' diverse constituencies than our 18th-century presidential model. Many of them also employ some form of proportional representation, which typically produces a less distorted representation of competing parties and interests than our antiquated first-past-the post single-member district system does.

In any modern society, it is the executive power that undoubtedly matters most, that, to a large extent, sets the agenda and implements it. This is one of the anti-political (and, hence, anti-republican) consequences of modernity. Personally, I have no doubt that parliamentary systems, with their traditional ethos of "responsible government," that is, an executive that is accountable to the people through the legislature, is a far better system than our presidential model. For better or for worse, however, the U.S is stuck with a president-centered system.

That said, the founders feared most the ascent of a populist demagogue, a Caesar. Unlike some of our contemporaries who worry about the real and imagined excesses of "woke" professors, the founders feared not professors but the very real danger of despotism associated with executive power. Hence, they insulated the election of the president as much as possible from popular participation. Inevitably, this proved unworkable and, by the Jacksonian era, the electoral college had become a filter which reflected the popular vote, albeit in a very distorted way. Those distortions can claim credit for the character of our two-party system and the style of modern presidential campaigns. Those distortions have also - tragically twice in this century - resulted in the election of a president whose electoral opponent had won more popular votes than he did. The founders might not have minded, but most modern citizens find such a situation increasingly unacceptable. If we must have a presidential system (which we must assume), then the only viable option for a serious democratic republic would be to replace the present electoral college with a more modern, more honestly representational electoral system.

None of that, of course, can serve as a guarantee against despotism, which ironically the original conception of the electoral college was meant to protect us from. To protect against despotism, "democracy" must be constrained by liberalism, the ideology of limitations on government. Liberalism does not prescribe a weak government, but it limits government by taking certain subjects - such as speech, religion, and the rule of law - off the table and out of the political arena. Unfortunately, this is an area where the constitutional system exhibits such great weakness and fragility, since it depends so much on the mores of the demos.

All of which, of course, brings us back to our old friend Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), the great 19th-century observer and theorist of American democracy. Tocqueville worried about populist despotism and famously highlighted the important part played by American religion in holding society together. He also famously praised American associationism which, while quite characteristic of 19th-century American society, has since much diminished - as has religion. The result is now an American people who are more individualistic, isolated, and mutually suspicious, characteristics which Tocqueville and subsequent theorists have recognized as more conducive to populist despotism than to republican "democracy."

To Be Continued.