Active and Passive Citizens: A Defense of Majoritarian Democracy

A powerful case for why majority rule—not representation—is the defining feature of democratic politics

The idea that democratic governance rests on active self-rule by citizens plays surprisingly little part in current theories of democracy, which instead stress the importance of representation by elected, appointed, or randomly selected bodies such as legislatures, courts, and juries. This would have astonished eighteenth-century theorists of democracy, who viewed universal suffrage and ma...