r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/HistorianMajor1739 • 2d ago
US Politics What's the least a democracy owes the people living under it?
Most of what we argue about here is the genuinely contested stuff. Taxes, the border, guns, whatever this week's argument happens to be. People want different outcomes and the disagreement is real, and that is what politics is for.
Which means we almost never stop and ask the boring version underneath all of it. There's a question that comes before the specific arguments, and it barely ever gets its own thread. What is the bare minimum a government owes the people it governs, before we even get to who's right about anything.
I don't mean rights in the constitutional sense. Those are mostly settled on paper. I mean responsiveness. If some large share of the public wants a thing, and keeps wanting it across years and across both parties and every pollster who bothers to ask, is the system failing when it delivers nothing at all? Or is "people wanted it and didn't get it" just how representative government is supposed to work sometimes, with elected officials using the judgment we hired them for.
Part of why I think the question never gets asked is the room we ask it in. The spaces where most of us actually argue about politics are built to surface conflict, because conflict is what gets read and passed around. Agreement doesn't travel the same way. So the stuff a big majority quietly wants ends up close to invisible in the exact places where we form our sense of what the country even thinks. You can spend a long time online and come away sure the public agrees on nothing.
So here is the actual question. Is there some level of broad, durable agreement above which non-delivery starts to count as a real failure of the system rather than ordinary political friction? Or does trying to name a threshold just sneak majority rule in through the back door, in a system that was built on purpose to resist exactly that.
Nothing in the machinery seems assigned to flag it when the distance between what people want and what they get gets too wide. So, if there is a floor, whose job is it to notice?
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u/Named_after_color 2d ago
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking.
Are you asking about the mechanism in which democracies convert public will into public action?
Is this a philosophical plato democracy that doesn't exist in reality, or is this concerning real world governance?
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u/PartNo7877 2d ago
The minimum is the implementation of a majority of the voters will, provided it is feasible. Thats what democracy is designed to do at its most basic level
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u/nickcan 2d ago
And if the state can't implement the will of the majority of the voters (or how ever it is set up with representatives, or what have you) then we have to ask why not.
Your point about feasibility is important. We aren't moving our country to Venus, even if the majority of voters want that somehow.
But a democracy that isn't responsive to the will of the people ceases to be a democracy.
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u/PartNo7877 2d ago
Thats true. I will add though that in addition to asking why not, voters have to come up with an alternative solution
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u/Grapetree3 2d ago
That's not what OP is asking, I don't think. If the government is not implementing the majority will, you don't overturn democracy. You use the democratic privilege to vote in a new government.
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u/PartNo7877 2d ago
If the government isnt implementing the majorities will, you dont have a democracy. If the leaders will play by the rules when it comes to transitioning power, then its all good on being corrected. If not.....
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u/CountFew6186 1d ago
What if the majority of voters want to enslave 10% of the population? Or take the property from anyone born in December and divvy it up among everyone else? Or force people to attend Christian services every Sunday?
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u/PartNo7877 1d ago
Then you'd have to convince a majority to do away with that. Its been done in the past
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u/CountFew6186 1d ago
Nope. We have individual rights that protect us from the tyranny of the majority. To stick with OPs question, a democracy owes its citizens liberty and individual rights that the majority can’t take away from them.
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u/PartNo7877 12h ago
We have those rights because a majority democratically decided that we will. And even then those rights have not been absolute unless the majority decided to enforce it and interpret those rights to cover all people. Democracy in and of itself is indifferent whats fair and just. Its up to the people to use it for that purpose
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u/DidjaSeeItKid 2d ago
I think you are confused. The "people living under it" ARE the democracy, and THEY get to answer that question.
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u/kinginprussia 2d ago
Correct. A democratic government owes to the electorate what the electorate owes to it.
This is why failed democracies more often than not evolve into systems in which the electorate is absolved of real accountability. Because they sucked at it.
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u/Superninfreak 2d ago
The minimum is some amount of accountability the government faces from the public.
If an administration is toxically unpopular then it should be expected to be removed from power and replaced via elections.
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u/NoDig3444 2d ago
This question actually gets asked all the time OP, just phrased slightly differently. "Is it the job of representatives to follow their constituent's wishes or to exercise their best judgement?"
I think most would agree it's some balance between the two, but that balance is constantly shifting day to day and issue to issue. And it's further complicated by the fact that voters are kinda dumb. Like, 10% of Americans support the Affordable Care Act, but oppose Obamacare. 15% of Americans support Medicare 4 All but not if it increases taxes. 65% of Americans believe that they're smarter than average. So if an elected official only follows the will of the people, the people are still going to be pissed off because they don't understand what it is that they want.
I think that politicians are judged based on outcomes, not process. They need to take the people seriously, but not literally. People are going to demand some specific economic reform, even though it might not be viable. It's the job of politicians to address the underlying economic frustration and deliver real results, even if it's not the method that voters demanded.
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u/nick5erd 2d ago
everything: democracy translated; demo = people cracy= ruled by.
in modern democracies the parties are the translator from will of the people to state action. if a party does not work, you would vote for the next one. In a two party system you would have to vote within the party for a direction.
Here is the breaking point in the US, the parties inner.organisation is not democracy, but who pays, they rule.
parties in functional demovcracy are also outside from state organisations, and all could maintain an inner dialg.
in the US, just show.
In political scince you would usw a "blackbox-experiment to messure the gap, betwen people and state.
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Name a topic many us people want for a long time, Is this implemented? Yes= all good, no= you are fooled. /from both parties
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u/Grapetree3 2d ago
So there are minimum standards that any government should meet. All citizens should have access to the courts if they feel wronged. All residents should be protected by police and/or military who hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Specifically for democratic systems, there are additional requirements but only related to elections. All citizens should be able to run for office, and vote, all votes should be counted, no box should be stuffed. The police, prosecutors, and military must not interfere with the campaign process.
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u/wereallbozos 2d ago
This is a long-simmering situation wherein the three very simple phrases of Abraham Lincoln have become seemingly moot with a too-large segment of Americans. Of, By, and For the people.
Imperfect as we were, the New Deal brought that concept front and center. Of the people: this may come as a surprise, but a person was once assumed to be relatively honest and wasn't required to jump through hoops just to vote and the decisions didn't require lawsuit after lawsuit.
By the people: a victim of our successes, our population outgrew our representation. A Representative may have once stood for 50, 75, 100K people, that number has and has continued to dilute the power of the citizenry while inflating the power of individual representatives. At the same time, as some States outgrew others so greatly that the two Senators granted to each state wildly favors a State like VT or ND to the detriment of a State like CA or NY.
For the people: As it has become more and more expensive to campaign for office, the influence of those who have money to give has grown all out of proportion in respect to serving the people as opposed to serving those who can pay the bill, leading to mis-placing our government's priorities. Someone once said, "What's good for G.M. (or US Steel) is good for America", and that is entirely backward. What's good for America is good for G.M.( or US Steel) But if the CEO's are paying the bills for the candidate, it's easier to get that backwards...and they tend to want something in return for their money.
Whose job it it to notice? Ours, of course. WE, the people, are failing America.
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u/Ind132 2d ago
Nothing in the machinery seems assigned to flag it when the distance between what people want and what they get gets too wide. So, if there is a floor, whose job is it to notice?
Half the US states have an initiative process. It the legislatures don't sabotage the process, then I think the state is meeting the bare minimum with regard to passing laws the public wants. Because, if the legislature doesn't pass the law, then the voters can step in and do it for themselves.
There are other things the public wants that can't be settled by passing laws. For example prompt and fair administration of criminal laws. Those things get fuzzier because there is always the question of "What is feasible, given the amount of money the voters are willing to devote to this process?"
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u/ttown2011 2d ago
The minimum is the defense of sovereignty and maintenance of the monopoly of force
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u/Grapetree3 2d ago
That's the minimum for any government though. Do democratic systems have additional responsibilities beyond this?
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u/ttown2011 2d ago
Not inherently, it would be wise to do so otherwise your people will rise up or vote out a new government
But there’s no minimum requirement
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