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While not characterizing the United States as an "oligarchy" or "plutocracy" outright, Gilens and Page give weight to the idea of a "civil oligarchy" as used by Jeffrey A. Winters, saying, "Winters has posited a comparative theory of 'Oligarchy,' in which the wealthiest citizens—even in a 'civil oligarchy' like the United States—dominate ...
Over its 248 years, the United States has developed a more inclusive system of governance. From Morris' perspective, this is because Americans have demanded something closer to pure democracy.
A few states did meet the interest payments toward the national debt owed by their citizens, but nothing greater, and no interest was paid on debts owed foreign governments. By 1786, the United States was facing default on its outstanding debts. [32] Under the Articles, the United States had little ability to defend its sovereignty.
He makes an argument on how this is not possible in a pure democracy but possible in a republic. With pure democracy, he means a system in which every citizen votes directly for laws (direct democracy), and, with republic, he intends a society in which citizens elect a small body of representatives who then vote for laws (representative democracy).
CNN’s John Avlon writes that new House Speaker Mike Johnson’s words that “we don’t live in a democracy” show there’s a trend among right-wing leaders to dismiss a majoritarian democracy.
The primary focus of Democracy in America is an analysis of why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the United States while failing in so many other places. Tocqueville seeks to apply the functional aspects of democracy in the United States to what he sees as the failings of democracy in his native France. [13]
Dahl states that difference in size, diversity, and economic affluence make attributing good performance on those measures to government effectiveness too difficult. He describes American performance as "mediocre" and concludes that changing the US Constitution to a system resembling one of the other stable democracies would not necessarily ...
Prior to the American Revolution in what is now the United States—and before the coming of age of the "crowned republics" of constitutional monarchies in the United Kingdom and other European countries—democracy and republic were "used more or less interchangeably", [6] and the concepts associated with representative democracy and hence ...