Yet many people are less familiar and comfortable with how it all works in practice today in the halls of Congress and our state capitols. They view the legislative process as too slow, too contentious, too unresponsive - perceptions that lead to feelings of cynicism and distrust. Representative Democracy in America: Voices of the People is a national project designed to reinvigorate and educate Americans on the critical relationship between government and the people it serves.
The project introduces citizens, particularly young people, to the representatives, institutions, and processes that serve to realize the goal of a government of, by, and for the people. Published in Print: Copy to clipboard. Log in Register. Volume 12 Issue 1. This issue.
All issues. Articles in the same Issue Frontmatter. Some are parliamentary constitutional monarchies, such as the United Kingdom or the Netherlands, while others are representative republics like Germany or the United States. Even countries that are de facto dictatorships maintain mechanisms of representative democracy.
Russia comes to mind. And a representative democracy can either be liberal — where laws protect not only our human rights and other values, but also limit the power of our representatives — or illiberal, in which elected representatives, once in power, can more or less rule as they please. We have jobs to go to, kids to care for, the latest Apple products to salivate over.
Representatives can also aggregate the various interests of their constituents to shape laws and policy in a way that gives the greatest benefit to the most people. Help us fight for your rights! Donate For representative democracy to work properly, it is complemented by participatory democracy. This means that citizens, through civil society groups and other non-governmental organizations NGOs , are still able to communicate with and influence their government between elections.
NGOs fulfill a number of important functions, including informing people about matters of public interest, providing them with channels through which they can speak to their political representatives between elections, and holding the government to account when it breaks the law.
The freedom of NGOs to carry out these functions and the freedom of people to associate with NGOs are vital components of liberal representative democracy. That said, representative democracy is not without its drawbacks. It necessarily concentrates power in the hands of a few people, thereby giving them ultimate control over the form and substance of our laws. Could legislation be crafted in a way that gives special benefits to representatives, their family or friends? Elected representatives are also difficult to reign in between elections, meaning they could pass laws that make us unhappy, or unfairly favor themselves or others, and we could have to wait years to hold them to account for it.
Most of us would agree that democracy, while not perfect, is the fairest system of government. It tends to do the best job of protecting the values most of us hold, like equality, human rights, and equal application of the law. And representative democracy is probably the best form of democracy to achieve this. Citizens still maintain ultimate control over their government through elections, during which they can choose the people and parties that represent them.
Representative democracy gives people the advantages of democracy — having a say in the way they are governed, and choosing the people who govern them — without the onus of needing to study each law or policy initiative themselves.
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