Is U.S. a democracy or a republic?

Gordon L. Weil

A few weeks ago, I received a reader’s comment, trying to educate me on the difference between a democracy and a republic.  He noted that the word “republic” appears in the Constitution, while “democracy” does not.  The writer then canceled his subscription, probably making it impossible for him to read this reply.

There is no single historically agreed definition of “democracy” or “republic.”   Some people see a political conflict between them that could affect the way we are governed.  The pat answer has often been: “It’s both.”  While that’s superficially true, it does not go deep enough to resolve the argument.

In any of its definitions, “democracy” means a system in which the people either make political decisions or select other people to make them on their behalf.  It contrasts with a system in which an unelected person makes the decisions.  

In the most basic form, called direct democracy, people themselves are the legislature and make decisions.  In this pure form, it may only now exist in some Town Meeting governments in New England municipalities.

The second form in which people choose others to act on their behalf to exercise either legislative or executive functions is called representative democracy.

Either of these forms leaves open two key questions.  Who constitutes “the people”?   When the Constitution was drafted, “We, the People” did not include women, Blacks and, in some states, people without property.  That has changed.

The other issue is whether those chosen by the people are their delegates, expected to exercise the popular will, or their designees, who exercise their own judgment on behalf of the people who selected them. 

The U.S. is simply too large to be a pure democracy.  The people elect the decision makers, and do not decide federal issues directly.  The American system is a representative or indirect democracy; the Framers referred to it as “a republican form of government.”

A republic is a form of democracy; not an alternative system to democracy.  The republic does not alter democracy “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

“We, the People” recognizes that the sovereign is the American people as a whole – not each individually or a single ruler like the King of England.  Federal and state sovereignty results from an agreement among the people to allow their governments to use their collective sovereign power. 

If the right to vote is limited, that undermines democracy by preventing participation.  When a political leader acts outside of the limits of the laws meant to protect individual rights, that can reduce or eliminate democracy.

Concerns that such events may be occurring in the U.S. is likely what motivates Biden’s repeated claim that Trump endangers democracy.  Trump says he would be a dictator for a day and would have almost unlimited powers if he were president. 

The Supreme Court has decided that each person is entitled to a vote and presumably that all votes are equal.  But equality is true only up to a point, and the reason has little to with a democracy or republic.

The U.S. is a federation of states.  A democratic republic need not be a federation (for example, as in France or Japan), but, having been created by the states, the U.S. is both.

In the American federal system, each state must be a republic and has certain voting rights: two votes in the Senate.  As a result, a single voter in a low population state like Wyoming has greater weight than a voter in a large population state like California when it comes to choosing a senator. 

The Electoral Vote that chooses the president gives each state a number of voters representing the two senators plus a single vote for each congressional district. This gives greater weight to the voter in a low population state than one in a large state.  (Within each state, individual voters have equal influence.) Each state decides how it will select its presidential electors.

The state weighted vote system means that the Senate can enact bills with the votes of senators who represent less than half of the population, and the president can similarly be elected by states whose population is less than half the national total. Trump and four other presidents have been elected by a popular minority.

Whether elected officials should use their own judgment or follow public preferences remains unresolved.  But, even if they believe they can exercise their independent judgment for public benefit, they are limited in the scope of their discretion.  The Constitution includes safeguards intended to protect individual rights from the government.  

When Trump wants to be an authoritarian for a day or ignore legislative limits on his authority, the Republic would give him no such powers and his actions would violate the Constitution.  When people storm the Capitol in the belief that they have personal rights, they, too, violate the Constitution, because they would deprive others of those same rights.