Contents - Index

2.2.  What is a Healthy Democracy?                  (Top)

A properly working democratic political system is a political system that is in a constant state of balancing and re-balancing.  It is a system that responds to open political debate and fluctuates between the conflicting goals of maximizing growth and maximizing distribution, as it moves progressively toward higher levels of both.  A healthy system also moves progressively toward higher levels of citizen participation, peace and stability, efficiency, health and welfare, peaceful and effective foreign relations, and a satisfied citizenry.  An ailing democracy is one that has seized up or stalled.  A democracy in crisis is one that is seized up for an extended period of time, usually accompanied by pent-up population frustration and anger, government secrecy, repression, and the ominous signs of impending dictatorship.

The central cause of a stalled system is a truncation of "acceptable" issue debate to the point that elections are either impossible or rendered meaningless - or are perceived as meaningless by large segments of the population.  Severe narrowing of political debate can come about through a forceful takeover by another system.  However, it can also come about through internal forces that in combination with events begin to undermine the system.  There is a natural tendency for the party in power to tighten control by limiting the scope of debate.  Also, there are cultural factors, like slavery, McCarthyism, and patriotism that affect the "acceptable" issue domain.  However, the roots of a truncated issue debate are "built-into" the system.  That is, they are structural properties like electoral rules and party systems that can restrict the boundaries of issue debate in response to events.  

In a healthy democracy, these potentially negative forces are kept in check through a balancing of power centers.  A balanced democratic system is one in which power centers have enough (and only enough) political influence to participate in the definition of the boundaries of debate and the making of policy and at times to check the actions of other centers.  A balanced system does not necessarily require an equal distribution of political influence among power centers.  It does require that each power center have the ability to check the political influence of another power center and produce an outcome that would not otherwise come about.  A balanced system theoretically requires a continuously unrestricted flow of information and unfettered competition of ideas.  In practice, it is sufficient that each power center has enough information to act when another power center threatens to throw the system out of balance.

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Materials

References

Barber, Benjamin R., Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age
 Dahl, Robert A., Polyarchy: Participation & Opposition
Fishkin, James S., The Voice of the People: Public Opinion & Democracy (Yale University Press:  New Haven, 1995).
 Gastil, John, By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy Through Deliberative   Elections (University of California Press: Berkeley, 2000).
Greenberg, Douglas, Stanley N. Katz, Melanie Beth Oliviero, Steven C. Wheatley (Eds.),  Constitutionalism and Democracy: Transitions in the Contemporary World (Oxford  University Press: New York, 1993).
 Held, David, Models of Democracy
Kaufman, Arnold, "Human Nature and Participatory Democracy," in Carl J. Friedrich, (Ed.),  Responsibility: Nomos III (The Liberal Arts Press, New York, 1960).
 Lippmann, Walter, The Public Philosophy (New York, 1955).
Mill, John Stuart, Considerations on Representative Government (Liberal Arts Press, New York,  1958).
Pateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,  1970).

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