DEMOCRACY (Gk. 57pAoKparia, diln okra I government of the people, from di.mos, people + npareir, kralcia, to rule). A term of wide and variable signification, comprehend ing such diverse but related conceptions as (1) a society based on equality; (2) a State in which the actual power of government is lodged in the mass of the people; and (3) a form of governmental organization in which the au thority of the State is directly administered by the people or their chosen representatives. The term is also often employed indefinitely to de scribe all of these taken together—in which ease it may be defined as a form of society in which the social organization. the energy of the State, and the powers of government are directed and controlled by the mass of the people; and some times more vaguely to characterize the tendency of the progressive nations during the last two hundred year- toward the' realization of such a social and political organization. H. is in the first, or social sense, that the term democracy is most frequently employed by Continental and especially French writers, and in the third or governmental sense by the Greek philosophers. while among English and American political writers, from Bentham to Leeky and Woodrow Wilson. the tendency has been to limit its use to the actual exercise of political power by the people, and therefore as coextensive in meaning with popular government.
A democratic society is one in which privilege, whether based on birth, on wealth, or on public service, has been abolished. and a substantial equality of legal rights and obligations and of social and industrial opportunity established. The existence of a caste, whether hereditary or intellectual. or of social classes is incompatible with a democratic organization of society, which is likewise menaced by the growth of centraliza tion of wealth on the one hand, and, on the other. by the existence of extreme poverty and the growth of dependent classes. It can there fore. under the present industrial system, be only imperfectly realized in a state of civilization, its hest illustrations being found in primitive or simple communities, like certain of the Swiss cantons and the frontier settlements in the west ern portions of the United States and Canada. Democracy as a social principle rests upon the doe trine of the essential equality of all men and of their equal worthiness—a notion derived mediate ly from the Christian conception of the equality of all men before God, hut owing its transla tion front religion to society and polities chiefly to the influence exercised by the writings of Jacques Rousseau. In the form which he gave to it. and in which it claim: our allegiance, the doctrine and the practice of it are wholly mod ern. Certainly there was no social equality in the 'state of nature,' in which Rousseau imag ined himself to have found it, and the so-called democracies of the ancient world were a nvthing but democratic in sentiment or in soeial ',true titre. The triumph of the principle in the 1.14.(14.1.11
world has been by the unexpected per ststcnee of the military spirit and the revival of militarism in Europe during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and by the wonderful in dustrial expansion of the same period, with the consequent increase and unequal distribution of wealth, in both Europe and America.
A government democratic or popular in form is a republie—that is, a government in which the administration of the affairs of the State is com mitted to the people, to be exercised by them either directly in popular assemblies, like those of the Athenian democracy. or indirectly through representatives chosen by them. as in the repub lics of the modern world. Of this it may be ob served, first, that the pure or direet form of democratic. government, at which the criticisms of Greek political writers were directed, has never been completely realized, and cannot be completely realized in practice. Certain of the funetimis of government must always be dele gated. If the legislative power be exercised the whole body of citizens. and the judicial power by large bodies of citizens chosen by lot or aeting in turn, the executive power must always in fact he committed for longer or shorter periods to chosen representatives of the popular will. In tire second place, even in this limited form, the direct form of democratic government is pos sible only in small and compact States. like the smaller Swiss cantons and the city States of an tiquity: and even in these it has usually been found to be operative only on the undemocratic principle of rigidly limiting the number of citi zens entitled to participate in the government. The town-meeting plan of government cannot be extended to the great aggregate; of people which constitute modern States. In the third place, it is to he observed that, though the democratic State tends to act through republican forms, a representative republic is not necessarily demo cratic either in spirit or in its actual operation. A government republican in form may, like that of France, be essentially bureaucratic in strne lure and effect ; or be, like that of most of the Spanish-American States. a military tyranny! or he. like that of Mexico. a virtual despotism. No one of these can properly be termed a democracy, though that designation would not be denied to England. which is a monarchy in form, or to Can ada, which is a subordinate part of an empire. It would seem, therefore, that the term democracy is not properly used to describe the external form of government, but rather a type of political society in which the essential power of the State is wielded by the mass of the people.