Quotes About Democracy

At the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788, only white males with property had full political rights; the circle of rights bearers gradually expanded to include white men without property, African-Americans, indigenous people, and women.

A liberla democracy that could fight a short and decisive war every generation or so to defend its own liberty and independence would be far healthier and more satisfied than one that experienced nothing but continuous peace.

Europe's exhausted elites were ready to concede both liberal democracy and redistributive welfare states to ensure social peace.

Political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who has overseen the massive World Values Survey that seeks to measure value change around the world, has argued that economic modernization and middle-class status produce what he calls "post-material" values in which democracy, equality, and identity issues become much more prominent than older issues of economic distribution.

This highly negative narrative about interest groups stands in sharp contrast, however, to a much more positive one about the benefits of civil society, or voluntary associations, to the health of democracy. Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America noted that Americans had a strong propensity for organizing private associations, which he argued were "schools for democracy" because they taught private individuals the skills of coming together for public purposes.

Clientelism is an efficient form of political mobilization in societies with low levels of income and education, and is therefore best understood as an early form of democracy.

The principle of effective government is meritocracy; the principle of democracy is popular participation. These two principles can be made to work together, but there is always an underlying tension between them.

From the earlier discussion of Europe in the nineteenth century, however, it should be clear that the middle classes are not inevitably supporters of democracy. This tends to be particularly true when the middle classes still constitute a minority of the population.

Americans can be proud of this very substantive identity; it is based on belief in the common political principles of constitutionalism, the rule of law, democratic accountability, and the principle that "all men are created equal" (now interpreted to include all women). These political ideas come directly out of the Enlightenment and are the only possible basis for unifying a modern liberal democracy that has become de facto multicultural

In the hands of good leaders, such a system can actually perform better than a democratic system that is subject to rule of law and formal democratic procedures like multiparty elections. It can make large, difficult decisions without being hampered by interest groups, lobbying, litigation, or the need to form cumbersome political coalitions or educate the public as to their own self-interest.

In democratic societies we assert, with the American Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal." Yet historically, we have disagreed on who qualifies as "all men." At the time that the declaration was signed, this circle did not include white men without property, black slaves, indigenous Americans, or women.

These groups began agitating against corruption through reports and publicity about the backgrounds of candidates published in sympathetic newspapers; they sought to professionalize government by making it nonpartisan. Ironically, while this group spoke in the name of democracy, it actually represented the upper crust of Chicago society, an overwhelmingly Protestant group that looked down on the way that Lorimer was empowering the city's new Catholic and Jewish immigrants.

But the stability of democratic politics in the period from the end of World War II up to the present revolved around dominant center-left and center-right parties that largely agreed on the legitimacy of a democratic welfare state.

a politically developed liberal democracy includes all three sets of institutions—the state, rule of law, and procedural accountability—

Liberal democracy is built around the rights given to individuals who are equal in their freedom, that is, who have an equal degree of choice and agency in determining their collective political lives.

Unrepresentative interest groups are not simply creatures of corporate America and the Right. Some of the most powerful organizations in democratic countries have been trade unions, followed by environmental groups, women's organizations, advocates of gay rights, the aged, the disabled, indigenous peoples, and virtually every other sector of society.

Democracy in the developed world became secure and stable as industrialization produced middle-class societies, that is, societies in which a significant majority of the population thought of themselves as middle class.

On the other hand, countries that democratized early, before they established modern administrations, found themselves developing clientelistic public sectors.

Social democracy, one of the dominant forces shaping Western European politics in the two generations following World War II, has been in retreat.

Sequencing therefore matters enormously. Those countries in which democracy preceded modern state building have had much greater problems achieving high-quality governance than those that inherited modern states from absolutist times.

Many of the failures attributed to democracy are in fact failures of state administrations that are unable to deliver on the promises made by newly elected democratic politicians to voters who want not just their political rights but good government as well.

Many modern democratic constitutions thus enshrine the principle of equal dignity. They are drawing on the Christian tradition that sees dignity rooted in human moral agency. But that agency is no longer seen in a religious sense, as the ability to accept God; rather, it is the ability to share in the exercise of power as a member of a democratic political community.

Greece thus became one of Europe's first electoral democracies, preceding Britain by a full generation. As in the United States, democracy was established before an indigenous modern state could be created.

Y en la fornicación, que es un bien general, debe haber democracia libre, porque si no… va a haber que hacerlo por correspondencia…