Subscribe Donate My Account !

15-Year Fixed 2.25% 2.42% APR

Today's Refinance Rate
30-Year Fixed 2.25% 2.46% APR

2.42 %
15-Year Fixed 2.25% 2.42% APR
Today's Refinance Rate
30-Year Fixed 2.25% 2.46% APR

2.42 %
Home / Money, Politics and Power /

Why Madisonian Democracy Still Still shopping

Can't Have It All for a mortgage?

Defending the United States' great experiment in governance from the haters Today’s Rates

BY JONATHAN BERNSTEIN OCTOBER 14, 2013 2.42%

APR

Calculate Payment

30-Year Fixed 2.46% APR

15-Year Fixed 2.42% APR

5/1 ARM 2.96% APR

30-YEAR FIXED

$225,000 $860/mo

$300,000 $1,147/mo

Calculate Payment

Terms & Conditions apply

NMLS#1136

This hasn't been a good month for fans of Madisonian democracy.

One thing that most parliamentary systems are exceptionally good at avoiding is the kind of
deadlock over policy that stilled our democratic government's heart and has left us two weeks
deep in a shutdown.

As a result, those who are skeptical of our separate institutions sharing powers are out in full
force. It's no surprise; liberal preference for the British system over what the Framers concocted
goes back at least to Woodrow Wilson. Not all of the current anti-Madisonians agree on exactly
what they would prefer, but there's a general critique they share: not only does the U.S. system
yield gridlock and risk collapse, but it doesn't really have any advantages in terms of democracy
to justify that inefficiency. I've argued against the efficacy claims recently-the problem is a
broken Republican Party, not the structure of government-but I think the democracy claims are TRENDING NOW
wrong as well.

Dylan Matthews, for example, quotes Max Weber for what Matthews says is his "favorite theory Susan Rice Has a Disclosure Problem
of democracy":
BY ALEXANDER SAMMON

“ In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust.

Then the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.'
Why Cori Bush Succeeded
BY ALEXANDER SAMMON

"People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his

Wall Street’s Newest Way to Part
business. … Later the people can sit in judgment. If the leader Investors From Their Money
has made mistakes - to the gallows with him! BY DAVID DAYEN

But as Matthews admits, how people approach elections, in the aggregate, isn't much better than The Afflictions of the Comfortable
rewarding and punishing the government based on how the economy is doing. It's worse-it's not
BY MICHAEL MASSING
even how the economy is doing since the last election, but only how it's been doing lately. There's
a bit more to it, as votes will punish governments that engage in costly wars or perhaps major
scandals; indeed, on the margins, voters will punish governments for things such as bad How Kamala Harris Fought to Keep
Nonviolent Prisoners Locked Up
weather that are beyond the reach of those governments.
BY ALEXANDER SAMMON
Still, while punishing politicians because they happen to be in office when a bad storm shows
up or the local sports team loses (yup, voters might punish incumbents for that, too), might be
Unsanitized: The Student Loan Hustle
unfair to particular politicians, it's good overall because it sets incentives correctly: I agree with Inside the HEALS Act
Matthews that it's good, all else equal, if elected officials try to produce things that voters like.
BY DAVID DAYEN

While Matthews is correct about elections and voters, the good news is that there's potentially a
lot more to democracy than what he sees. The Coronavirus Will Ruin Your Credit
Score
It's true that voters, in the aggregate, don't do much more than reward and punish the big stuff.
BY DAVID DAYEN
That's in large part because most of us are partisans who will vote for our party no matter what.
It's also true that, in the aggregate, most of us don't care very much about most issues of public
policy. But that masks something important: many of us-probably most of us -do care about bits How Biden and Trump Explain the
and pieces of public policy. A proper democracy should find some way for that to matter. On top American Story
of that, many of us may want to participate meaningfully in self-government ourselves. That, BY PAUL WALDMAN

too, should be possible in a proper democracy.

What the Madisonian system of separated institutions sharing powers does is it allows for-
encourages-that richer, deeper version of democracy.

It does that through the kind of meaningful representation facilitated by individual elected
officials who have meaningful influence as individuals. That's the advantage of the
transformative Congress. In typical parliamentary systems, the parliament itself only approves
of what the government (the Prime Minister and the rest of the cabinet) does. At best, if that's
the case, then all a constituent can hope for is that she will agree with what the representative
does. But representatives in Congress can and do initiate bills (and just as important, amend
bills) totally outside of whatever the White House might want. That allows a far deeper form of
representation; constituents are able to press their representatives and their senators to become
involved in specific areas of public policy and take specific substantive actions.

Or, to think of it from the point of view of the politician, there are a wide variety of
representative styles available to those serving in Congress, as the political scientist Richard Today’s Refinance Rate
Fenno has described in detail in his studies of politicians. They can promise to focus on national
2.42% APR 15 Year Fixed
issues; on narrower local issues; they can offer mainly symbolic representation or substantive
accomplishments; they can promise Burkean independence or strict adherence to the wishes of Select Loan Amount
$
the district. In a typical parliamentary system, none of that is really available because the job of
MPs (at least those who are not cabinet ministers) is mostly to just vote with their party.
$50,000
The separations between the House, the Senate, the presidency, and state governments also
encourage less ideological, more permeable political parties. Now, it's certainly true that the
Democratic Party of the mid-20th century, with a liberal northern wing and a very conservative T &Cs apply. NMLS#1136

southern wing, was a historical oddity. But less dramatic regional differences between parties
are common throughout U.S. history (Republicans had their old split between a mostly-
Midwestern conservative faction and the Eastern Establishment of moderates and liberals); our
current sharply polarized parties are in some ways as historically unusual as the old Dixiecrats
were-and may not last, either.

Even now, individual senators break with their parties all the time. Differences emerge between
presidents and their congressional parties, or between same-party governors in different states,
or governors and their same-party state legislators. That's by design; it's exactly what Madison
discusses in Federalist 51 when he talks about setting ambition against ambition.1 1. "But the
great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department,
consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means
and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in
this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be
made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the
constitutional rights of the place … A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary
control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary
precautions."

Those within-party differences are important, again, because they mean that the representative
relationship between each individual politician and her constituents really matters. Of course,
most voters, most of the time, with most of their (many, many) elected officials, don't get
involved enough for that relationship to mean much to them. But because all those politicians
matter individually, and not simply as members of a party, the distance between voters-as-
voters and a more active participation in democracy is very small.

I think it's no coincidence, either that a polity which encourages individual politicians to
compete for influence has generally given its government bureaucracy a relatively small and
constrained role. That, too, is a more democratic outcome. Indeed, the dangers to self-
government from bureaucracy was one of the great worries of 20th century political theorists,
Weber very much included. If bureaucratic organization was simply more efficient than any
other form, then the realm of pure administration would encroach more and more into the
realm of political decisions, leading to a rule not of the people and their representatives, but to a
kind of rule of no one: a rule of procedures and forms and processes. It's safe to say that the
United States has less of that than most comparable large democracies.

Is the Madisonian system flat-out more democratic? I'm tempted to conclude it is, but one
should probably be careful about it. There are massive differences between various different
parliamentary systems; there are also all sorts of norms which can make all the difference. The
details matter, too. The Senate's malapportionment has no democratic justification, for example,
although (as can be seen in state governments, which nowadays must be one person, one vote)
that's a defect not inherent in the overall system.

Overall, however, there's nothing democratically deficient about separated institutions sharing
powers. To the contrary: it's exactly the kind of system which allows for a richer, more
substantive, and more participatory democracy-for at least the closest that anyone has figured
out how to get to Lincoln's government of the people, by the people, for the people.

BLOG: VOX POP POLITICS

The American Prospect depends on reader support

If you are scraping by right now, please don’t give us anything. But if you have the ability to
support independent, non-profit journalism, we are so grateful. Your voluntary contribution
helps keep this website paywall-free. You can sign up as a subscriber with a range of
benefits, including an opt-in to receive the print magazine by mail.

Click to View Subscriber Levels: IDEAS, POLITICS & POWER

JONATHAN BERNSTEIN
Jonathan Bernstein is a political scientist who writes about American politics, especially the
presidency, Congress, parties, and elections. Follow @jbplainblog

15-Year Fixed 2.25% 2.42% APR

Today's Refinance Rate
30-Year Fixed 2.25% 2.46% APR

2.42 % APR
Refi and Compare: Average $34K in Savings
5/1 ARM 3.00% 2.96% APR

$225,000 (30-yr fixed) $860/mo 2.46% APR

Calculate Payment
$350,000 (30-yr fixed) $1,338/mo 2.40% APR
Terms & Conditions apply. NMLS#1136

About the Prospect / Contact Info DONATE TO THE PROSPECT

Browse Archive / Back Issues
Subscription Services
Privacy Policy

Copyright 2020 | The American Prospect, Inc. | All Rights Reserved

Built with Metro Publisher™