US Democracy: Founded on Fear of People but Dependent on Support of People

• In Event: Executive Politics and Popular Leadership

Abstract

The authors of the United States Constitution, as reflected in The Federalist Papers and debates in the ratifying conventions, feared the people and chose to design a system that was run by elites. Thomas Jefferson, who corresponded from France with some of the constitution’s authors, had greater skepticism of unchecked elites than he had of uneducated and uninformed masses. His solution to the dangers of granting more power to the unenlightened was to provide public education. His fear was that if citizens did not serve as a check on political leaders, the leaders would become wolves that devoured the sheep (citizens).

The Founders failed to address the issue of slavery and neglected to address the issue of suffrage that left states the right to exclude women and non-propertied males from voting. The greatest expansions of the franchise came as a result of great turmoil—a civil war, a women’s suffrage movement that included imprisonment of women who peacefully protested their lack of franchise, and a violent Civil Rights movement that resulted in the lynchings and beatings of African Americans who sought to exercise their voting rights.

American history is rife with examples of elites serving themselves rather than those they represent and examples of government policies that result in enormous income inequality. The United States has been through a series of reform movements to address corrupt practices that resulted from unchecked power of those who have been more motivated by greed than the well-being of the nation and its citizens.

For decades, several studies have documented the poor state of civic literacy in the United States, even among college graduates. In many states, college of education graduates are not required to take a single course in government, political science, or civics. One explanation for the lack of attention or interest in civic literacy is that the ordinary citizen simply does not want to be engaged in politics and does not want to take the time to participate. This explanation, which is consistent with a Hamiltonian view of average citizens will be challenged in this paper by citing research that demonstrates that citizens do have the desire and capacity to participate in sophisticated policy debates and decision-making; yet they largely remain shut out or discouraged from meaningful engagement.

Discouraging engagement of citizens is precisely what Harvard University political scientist, Samuel Huntington advocated in a 1975 report he wrote for the Trilateral Commission on the problems with governability in the United States. Huntington bemoaned the dangers of the political activism of the 1960s and 1970s. He concluded that the irony of democracy is that the United States needed less activism and political engagement in order to salvage democracy. The demands that youth, women, and African Americans were making for more responsiveness and greater transparency in government placed too much pressure on the system, which became overloaded by the demands of citizens. What he ignored in his analysis is that these activists were asking for a voice in government that had shut them out while the government advanced the interests of elites. In essence, his recommendation to deal with the challenges of governability in modern democracy is to encourage the silencing and/or discouraging of the activism of citizens instead of responding to their demands for a more fair and just society.

When there is a combination of conscious decisions to not provide civic education and intentional efforts to silence activists who challenge government practices and policies, it is not surprising that there is often an emotional and/or uniformed reaction to government. This paper will argue that populist movements are a likely reaction in a political system that was designed based on distrust of the majority of its adult population. It will also argue that populism has both an enlightened side and a dark side. Further, it will argue that America’s failure to develop informed and engaged citizens has often been an intentional way to keep citizens from being effective safe-guarders of democracy. The paper concludes, however, that citizen anger and discontent has also led to an awakened and engaged citizenry that serves as a counter to uninformed reactionaries and self-serving elites and it shares Jefferson’s equanimity in the face of episodic citizen revolts.

Author

• Christa Daryl Slaton, New Mexico State University