I cannot too often repeat that democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.”

It is true that the term democracy has come to mean different things to different people but attempts to define democracy are not “resisted from all sides” – only by the defenders of other kinds of regimes – the false friends and true enemies of democracy.  

For anyone who is sincere and feels no need to hide their real aims, defining “democracy” is a simple matter. The word is derived from the Greek word demokratia, which was formed from two other Greek words: demos (meaning “the people”) and kratia (which means “have power”). A democratic government, therefore, is one in which the people have power. Another Greek word – kratos, which means “to rule” – is also relevant here.  In a democracy, the people rule.  

Majority rule is the essential element that makes a government a pure democracy.  Locke asserted that a majority of the members of a community had “the whole power of the community naturally in them” and “may employ all that power in making laws for the community” because “every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to everyone of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it".  

Locke also identified two other elements that flow from majority rule: an equal vote (or equal representation) for every citizen and the supremacy of the legislative power.

It is impossible to accurately determine the will of the majority unless every citizen has an equal vote and/or equal representation.  Locke stressed the importance of maintaining “a state…of equality wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another…for it is the interest as well as the intention of the people to have fair and equal representation.”  

Regarding the supremacy of the legislative power, Locke stated that “there can be but one supreme power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate.”  The supremacy of the legislative power is established and maintained by having the laws that are made by the people executed by “officers of their own appointing”.

An election in which the people of a state or nation vote directly to determine whether a proposed law or constitutional amendment is enacted or rejected is called a referendum. 

In a pure democracy, referendums should be conducted to make all major political decisions, including  decisions related to the form of the government, the powers of the government, what rights will be secured and protected by the government, and what laws will be enacted (or repealed).

In a pure democracy, referendums should be conducted  whenever it appears likely that a legislature has failed to enact legislation that is supported by most of the citizens, or that a law or amendment that does not have the support of most of the citizens has been passed by a legislature. 

Since the body politic of a state or nation is continually evolving, as some citizens die and others become eligible to vote, political decisions should be revisited from time to time if it appears that the will of the people has changed.

Referendums can be called by various methods: by a legislative body, according to mandates in a constitution, or by the people through the “initiative", which gives citizens the power to initiate and enact legislation, including constitutional amendments, without the involvement or approval of a legislature. 

The adoption of referendums and/or the initiative in twenty-three states in the twenty-year period between 1898 and 1918 was one of the most significant and enduring victories of the Progressive and Populist movements that took place in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  There are currently twenty-six states in America that have provisions for referendums and/or the initiative in their state constitutions. The details regarding how referendums are called and how initiatives are conducted vary from state to state.  There is no provision for referendums or the initiative in the Constitution of the United States.

Efforts are underway in some states to make it more difficult to use the initiative.  If these antidemocratic amendments are enacted, it will be a significant setback for democracy. When it comes to defending democracy, an adage commonly associated with sports and warfare applies – “the best defense is a good offense.”  

We need to do more than defend democracy - we need to proactively promote democracy. We could (and should) address the problems with the way we conduct elections by implementing ranked choice voting, with multiple-member districts for Congress and state legislatures.  That would be good.  We could (and should) make representative democracy as pure as possible by implementing systems of proxies for citizens in both Congress and state legislatures.  That would be even better.  But the best way to promote democracy in America is to enact Pure Democracy Amendments that will extend the use of referendums and the initiative to the federal government and to the states that do not yet provide for those powerful forms of pure democracy and make it easier to call referendums and use the initiative. 

It is common and natural for people to exhibit a noticeable bias in favor of their own country when comparing countries in various ways and that includes believing one’s own country to be more democratic than it is.  This is certainly true in America.

We do have a reasonably legitimate claim to being the birthplace of democracy in the modern world.  The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a concise summary of democratic ideals.  And “The American Experiment” that was launched by the Declaration of Independence was the first real world trial of the concept of “government by the people” since the fall of Athens. 

The facts do not back up several other well-known examples of American exceptionalism.

Most Americans believe that our government is the most democratic in the world and that we are the greatest democracy in the history of the world.  But there have been, and are, other countries in the world that are more “democratic” than the United States.  This is especially true of nations, like Switzerland and Italy, that make greater use of direct democracy by conducting frequent referendums and nations where the people elect representatives using some form of proportional representation.  (Which includes nearly all the other democracies in the world today.)  

The Intelligence Unit of The Economist publishes a Democracy Index annually, ranking the nations of the world in terms of the state of democracy in each country. Nations are given numerical scores on a total of 60 indicators and grouped into four categories based on their average score: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes.

Of the 167 countries included in the 2022 Democracy Index (the most recent), there were 24 full democracies and 48 flawed democracies.  The United States fell out of the full democracies category in 2016 and has remained in the flawed democracies category ever since, ranking 30th in the world in terms of the state of our democracy in the 2022 Democracy Index.  

Most Americans believe that and that other nations have modeled their constitutions on ours, but Robert Dahl (in his book How Democratic is the American Constitution?) thoroughly documented the fact that there are no other nations anywhere in the world that have modeled their constitutions on ours.   There are numerous provisions embedded in our Constitution that are in direct conflict with the basic principles of democracy.  Other nations have learned from our mistakes.  It is time for us to do the same.