You say democracy, I say republic

When Madison said the U.S. was a republic and not a democracy he meant (in today’s vocabulary) that it was a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. 4 Given that all modern democracies employ a “scheme of representation,” that’s an unimportant distinction today. But questions about what counts as a democracy – what it means to have popular government – are highly important, and contested, right now. The biggest of those concern who counts as citizens, and ensuring that those who are included as part of “the people” have full citizenship. That’s obviously been a long debate, with the franchise sometimes getting expanded (in several constitutional amendments, in the Voting Rights Act, and in other ways) and sometimes contracted (after Reconstruction and during the Progressive era in particular, and at many other times). And advocates for making it easier for everyone to vote and for ensuring political equality argue that democracy requires those measures.

So to say that the U.S. is not a democracy is to at least imply a position on the actual questions about democracy that people debate today. And not just a mild position, such as an argument that democracy does not require, say, early voting or strict one-person, one-vote rules. Instead, to say that the U.S. is not a democracy is to declare the entire debate irrelevant and wrong-headed, even though all but a small fringe in the U.S. believe that it’s a democracy.