Voters, Elections, and Parties: The Practice of Democratic Theory

Forside
Transaction Publishers - 400 sider
Democratic theory promises that government will protect the interests of the citizenry and follow majority will in its policies. To put theory into practice, voters must be capable, elections must be meaningful, and parties must be responsible. For over two decades, Gerald Pomper has explored the empirical realities of contemporary democracy. The book features a comprehensive introductory essay, stating the major themes of this work. Each of the three major sections is preceded by Pomper's reappraisal of previous writings, both published and unpublished.

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Populære avsnitt

Side 7 - By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
Side 253 - Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable ; that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties ; and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.
Side 7 - Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
Side 20 - It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work ? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair : the event is in the hand of God.
Side 253 - They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force, to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small, but artful and enterprising minority of the community...
Side 137 - When an individual or a party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress ? If to public opinion, public opinion constitutes the majority ; if to the legislature, it represents the majority, and implicitly obeys it ; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority, and serves as a passive tool in its hands.
Side 2 - There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular wills...
Side 361 - There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community...
Side 4 - Unless either philosophers become kings in their countries or those who are now called kings and rulers come to be sufficiently inspired with a genuine desire for wisdom; unless, that is to say, political power and philosophy meet together...

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