Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Does American Democracy Have to Be Saved from the People or By the People?

Does American Democracy Have to Be Saved from the People or By the People?

The American Flag tangled in a knot.

Getty Images / Rob Dobi

It is hard enough to promote or save democracy when the public is relatively united in its desire to do so. The experience of the “color revolutions” in former Soviet Republics offers powerful evidence for that proposition. It may seem almost impossible to do so when much of the public is disillusioned with the democratic system in which they live or when they are, at best, indifferent.

Sadly, it looks like this is the situation now facing the United States.


We are in a moment when, at first glance, it seems that democracy must be saved from the people, not by them. We have seen such moments before.

Only this time, in our era, it is not clear that there is anyone but the people who can save democracy. This might seem an impossible dream, given the many stories that suggest they are not ready to take on that task.

On Saturday, for example, the New York Times published the results of an Ipsos poll that found widespread dissatisfaction with the performance of our political system. Its topline finding: 88% of Americans believe it is “broken”; 59% think it has been broken “for decades.”

In a politically polarized era, the views of members of the two political parties were quite similar. 89% of Democrats and 91% of Republicans think the system is broken.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Other findings about the public’s view of our governmental system were almost as gloomy. 60% agree with the statement that “The government is almost always wasteful and inefficient.” 72% say that “The government is mostly working to benefit itself and the elites.”

Only 30% believe that “The economic system in this country is generally fair to most Americans.”

And, at the start of President Trump’s term, the Times reports that 51% of people are either pessimistic, worried, or both, as they contemplate the next four years.

Other polls have found similar dissatisfaction and pessimism. For example, a June 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center reports a steep decline in satisfaction with American democracy since 2021. In that study, 68% of the respondents said they were dissatisfied with the way democracy is currently working.

None of this suggests that the American public will be easily mobilized in the cause of saving democracy in this country. That would not have surprised the people who founded our Constitutional Republic. In fact, they thought that democracy needed to be saved from the people, with its preservation entrusted to a cadre of their betters.

Writing about the democracies of the ancient world, James Madison said they were “spectacles of turbulence and contention…incompatible with personal security or the rights of property….” Representative democracy, in contrast, would “refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”

“Under such a regulation,” Madison continued, “it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves….”

Representatives, Madison believed, would be more rational and more respectful of norms and institutions than the people themselves. They would preserve popular government by refining democracy itself.

Fast forward to the middle of the twentieth century when a generation of political scientists echoed in their time what Madison said in his. Like him, they tried to convince the American public that the only way to save democracy for the people was to save it from them.

Yale’s Robert Dahl, perhaps the leading political scientist of his time, praised the kind of political division of labor envisioned by Madison. The role of the public was to elect representatives and leave them to do the work of governing in the public’s interest.

When he wrote, Dahl thought there was a democratic creed in this country, one shared by citizens and their representatives. But in terms of the intensity of their commitment to that creed, Dahl, like Madison, trusted political leaders more than the people themselves.

And few were more articulate about what he called “the moral distinctiveness of representative government” than the distinguished political theorist George Kateb. Unlike Dahl, Kateb offers what he calls a “non-Madison defense” of representative institutions.

Representative democracy, in Kateb’s view, “is committed to respecting the boundaries of the individual, and the related separation of society and state; yet it establishes a mutual moral permeability between public and nonpublic. In contrast, direct democracy effaces boundaries and separations while subjecting everything to the public political imperative. This imperative repels the exploration of possibilities in nonpublic life that the spirit of representative democracy fosters.”

Representative democracy, Kateb explains, saves the people from the “continuous and all absorbing…life of citizenship” that democracy demands.

What unites Madison, Dahl, and Kateb is their shared belief that democracy needs to be saved from the people by political leaders.

But in 2024, can anyone who has watched what happens in Washington, D.C. believe that our representatives will save us? To watch them, as Jeffrey Rosen puts it, is to live “James Madison’s nightmare.” It is to witness “ideological warfare between parties that directly channels the passions of their most extreme constituents and donors—precisely the type of factionalism the Founders abhorred.”

And today, as we enter an era in which as former President Biden observed, “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, and freedom and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” who will stand up for democratic government in any form?

It seems clearer now than ever that if American democracy is to be saved, it will have to be the people themselves who do it. The first step requires that all of us put aside, or suspend, our disappointments and the democratic disillusionment so vividly registered in the Ipsos poll.

Once we do so, we can begin the civic action needed to reform our institutions. Joining groups working to improve democracy, speaking out when leaders take anti-democratic actions, and committing ourselves to the long-term work needed to preserve democracy will be more important than ever.

As we do this work, we can take as our guiding star what Winston Churchill said in November 1947: “Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.

Read More

The Paradox for Independents

A handheld American Flag.

Canva Images

The Paradox for Independents

Political independents in the United States are not chiefly moderates. In The Independent Voter, Thomas Reilly, Jacqueline Salit, and Omar Ali make it clear that independents are basically anti-establishment. They have a "mindset" that aims to dismantle the duopoly in our national politics.

I have previously written about different ways that independents can obtain power in Washington. First, they can get elected or converted in Washington and advocate with their own independent voices. Second, they can seek a revolution in which they would be the most dominant voice in Washington. And third, a middle position, they can seek a critical mass in the Senate especially, namely five to six seats, which would give them leverage to help the majority party get to 60 votes on policy bills.

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. Constitution
Imagining constitutions
Douglas Sacha/Getty Images

A Democracy Reform Movement- If we can define it!

This is the first of an ongoing series titled “Cross-partisan Visions.” It is in honor of co-publisher David Nevins' dear friend Rob Stein, who passed away in May 2022. Stein was an early architect of what he called the “Cross-Partisan vision.” He and Nevins spent countless hours thinking about how people from across traditional divides can imagine and, therefore, collaboratively implement strategies to realize their common interests and shared destinies and, in turn, build a new values-based constituency with a collective vision and a compelling new cultural and political voice.

Our Founding Fathers created a masterful document that has stood the test of time. The Constitution of the United States prescribes the principles and the rules defining the organization of our government and is the supreme law of the land.

Despite its magnificence, the Constitution does not fully address the particulars of the manner in which we, the people, are to utilize our founders' marvelous blueprint of self-governance. It offers the mechanics of government; it defines the roles of our executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Its core component, the Bill of Rights, delineates the liberties we all cherish as Americans.

However, the constitution does not consider the question of how ourleadership interacts with each other and with the citizenry.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Fragile Ceasefire in Gaza

A view of destruction as Palestinians, who returned to the city following the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, struggle to survive among ruins of destroyed buildings during cold weather in Jabalia, Gaza on January 23, 2025.

Getty Images / Anadolu

The Fragile Ceasefire in Gaza

Ceasefire agreements are like modern constitutions. They are fragile, loaded with idealistic promises, and too easily ignored. Both are also crucial to the realization of long-term regional peace. Indeed, ceasefires prevent the violence that is frequently the fuel for instability, while constitutions provide the structure and the guardrails that are equally vital to regional harmony.

More than ever, we need both right now in the Middle East.

Keep ReadingShow less
Thousands gather for People’s March on Washington

Protesters gather in Franklin Park on Jan. 18, 2025.

(Micah Sandy/MNS)

Thousands gather for People’s March on Washington

The Fulcrum is proud to partner with Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications in amplifying the work of young journalists.

This collaborative coverage features the People’s March, held on January 18, 2025, an event protesting Donald Trump's policies on issues such as reproductive rights, climate change, and immigration.

Keep ReadingShow less