#representative democracy

End Gerrymandering! Pass the FAIR MAPS Act!

What is meant when it is said that we live in democracies? Strictly speaking, democracy is not a form of State. It is always beneath and beyond these forms. Beneath, insofar as it is the necessarily egalitarian, and necessarily forgotten, foundation of the oligarchic state. Beyond, insofar as it is the public activity that counteracts the tendency of every State to monopolize and depoliticize the public sphere. Every state is oligarchic. One of the theoreticians of the opposition between democracy and totalitarianism quite happily acknowledges it: ‘It is impossible to conceive of a regime which in one sense is not oligarchic.’ But oligarchy can give democracy more or less room; it is encroached upon by democratic activity to a greater or lesser extent. In this precise sense, the constitutional forms and practices of oligarchic governments can be said to be more or less democratic. Usually the mere existence of a representative system is regarded as the crucial criteria defining democracy But this system is itself an unstable compromise, the result of opposing forces. It tends toward democracy only to the extent that it moves nearer to the power of anyone and everyone…We do not live in democracies…We live in States of oligarchic law, in other words, in states where the power of the oligarchy is limited by a dual recognition of popular sovereignty and individual liberties

The loss of control of the nation’s capital is an affront to the very notion of the rule of law and order. One thing is for certain now – the runaway train that has been American democracy for the past four years has crashed, leaving a stain that will forever mar what once was the world’s premier experiment in representative democracy... How America emerges from this national tragedy is yet to be seen. One thing, however, is painfully clear – the system of representative democracy that defines the American Republic is fundamentally broken. Governments can only rule effectively when they are recognized as legitimate by those they purport to govern. The fact that no evidence has been provided to sustain the allegations of large-scale voter fraud is beside the point – perceptions create their own reality, and tens of millions of Americans perceive the results of the 2020 US presidential election as illegitimate... Political commentators will, rightfully, place the blame for this lawlessness at the feet of Trump. But the fact is the storming of the Capitol is but a symptom of the larger disease of the partisanship that fundamentally and irrevocably divides America.