Direct democracy is to be contrasted with representative democracy, much as the respective titles suggest. According to the theory of direct democracy, all concerned citizens must directly participate in the making of decisions and the passing of laws, and this function can neither be delegated to others, nor can it be carried out by others chosen to represent the interests of the many. The inspiration for this system of democratic politics comes from classical Greek democracy, especially as it is understood, sometimes, to have worked in 5th century Athens. The earliest, and still most influential, exponent in the modern world is Jean Jacques Rousseau, particularly in The Social Contract.
The arguments given for the advantage of direct instead of representative democracy are varied. Foremost is the idea that only a genuine majority of the population can make a law which really maximizes the democratic nature of rule, and representative government can only very seldom be seen as fully applying the majority principle. Other arguments are equally important. To Rousseau, for example, direct democracy is necessary for true freedom, because one is only free when obeying a law which oneself has ‘willed’. As, according to Rousseau, one cannot delegate one’s will, it follows that no law in the making of which one has not directly shared can be obeyed without a loss of freedom. A somewhat similar argument is that direct involvement in politics, listening to and joining in debate and voting, has an educative influence. People are seen as coming to understand their own and others’ needs more clearly, and to grow in personality and morality through direct participation in decision-making and law-creating.
This idea is shared by some theorists of representative democracy, such as John Stuart Mill, who emphasize the importance of local politics because such political activity comes nearer to direct democracy. At a less elevated level demands for direct democracy often arise out of a sheer mistrust of putting power in the hands of a few, often because of a feeling that hierarchy, even if it is supposed to be representative, inevitably becomes corrupt. It is not necessarily the case that advocates of direct democracy as a legislative process also insist on full and equal participation in decision-making at the stage of executing policy—indeed Rousseau clearly sees the executive as separate from the mass meeting of all citizens that legislates. However, the only arenas where direct democracy is at all widely practised, for example colleges or clubs, usually do not have a clear distinction between legislating and executing.
The problems are fairly obvious. If all citizens are to share fully in decision-making, the society must be very small indeed. Classical Athens could only manage to employ the system because, at its height, the free adult male citizenry probably numbered no more than 20,000, and because most people seldom took up their rights. A second major technical problem is that, unless the society is to be very simple, and operate at a very low technology level, the time consumed in policy-making would prohibit all those who had to work full time from any serious use of their rights to participate. No political system today comes anywhere near operating direct democracy at the national level, nor has one ever done so. At times, local government may have approached this system (the Town Meetings of early New England states are the best example, while newly-democratic Hungary introduced measures for regular consultation at the local level, although the low participation rate in most parts of the democratic process suggested that there was no great enthusiasm for them). However, the cry for direct democracy is being increasingly heard, and increasingly answered, in the running of institutions. Universities, political parties and to some extent industrial plants (see industrial democracy) are subject to the demands for such governance, as part of the more general value attached to participation throughout the developed world.
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