Chapter 3.0. Democracy and the Constitution, Introduction

This chapter examines the original U.S. Constitution from the perspective of “democracy”–especially as we might understand this idea today. To do so, it provides excerpts from the book by Robert Dahl, How Democratic is the American Constitution?, 2nd ed. (Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 7-23, 179-83.

This section consists of Dahl’s introduction, while the next (ch. 2.1) provides a set of seven specific ways in which, as Dahl argues, the Constitution is not democratic, or not sufficiently so. A final excerpt (ch. 2.2) examines the founders’ understandings of the terms “republic” and “democracy.”

Wise as the framers were, they were necessarily limited by their profound igno­rance.

I say this with no disrespect, for like many others I believe that among the Framers were many men of ex­ceptional talent and public virtue. Indeed, I regard James Madison as our greatest political scientist and his generation of political leaders as perhaps our most richly endowed with wisdom, public virtue, and devo­tion to lives of public service. In the months and weeks before the Constitutional Convention, Madison studied the best sources as carefully as a top student preparing for a major exam. But even James Madison could not foresee the future of the American republic, nor could he draw on knowledge that might be gained from later experiences with de­mocracy in America and elsewhere.

It is no detraction from the genius of Leonardo da Vinci to say that given the knowledge available in his time he could not possibly have designed a work­able airplane–much less the spacecraft that now bears his name. Nor, given the knowledge available in 1903, could the Wright brothers have built the Boeing 707.

The knowledge of the Framers – some of them, certainly – may well have been the best available in 1787. But reliable knowledge about constitutions appropriate to a large representative republic was, at best, meager. History had produced no truly relevant models of representative government on the scale the United States had already attained, not to mention the scale it would reach in the years to come. As much as many of the delegates admired the British constitution, it was far from a suitable model. Nor could the Roman Republic provide much of a guide. The famous Venetian Republic, illustrious though it had been, was governed by a hereditary aristocracy of fewer than two thousand men and was already totter­ing: a decade after the Convention an upstart Corsican would knock it over in a featherweight military attack. Whatever knowledge the delegates could gain from historical experience was, then, only marginally rele­vant at best.

Leaping into the Unknown

Among the important aspects of an unforeseeable fu­ture, four broad historical developments would yield some potential knowledge that the Framers necessar­ily lacked and that, had they possessed it, might well have led them to a different constitutional design.

First, a peaceful democratic revolution was soon to alter fundamentally the conditions under which their constitutional system would function.

Second, partly in response to that continuing revo­lution, new democratic political institutions would fun­damentally alter and reconstruct the framework they had so carefully designed.

Third, when democratization unfolded in Europe and in other English-speaking countries during the two centuries to come, constitutional arrangements would arise that were radically different from the American system. Within a generation or two, even the British constitution would bear little resemblance to the one the Framers knew–or thought they knew–and in many respects admired and hoped to imitate.

Fourth, ideas and beliefs about what democracy re­quires, and thus what a democratic republic requires, would continue to evolve down to the present day and probably beyond. Both in the way we understand the meaning of “democracy” and in the practices and insti­tution we regard as necessary to it, democracy is not a static system. Democratic ideas and institutions as they unfolded in the two centuries after the American Constitutional Convention would go far beyond the conceptions of the Framers and would even transcend the views of such early democrats as Jefferson and Madison, who helped to initiate moves toward a more democratic republic…

First I want to indicate some of the practical limitations on what the Framers could rea­sonably achieve. The Framers were not only limited by, so to speak, their inevitable ignorance. They were also crucially limited by the opportunities available to them.

We can be profoundly grateful for one crucial re­striction: the Framers were limited to considering only a republican form of government. They were con­strained not only by their own belief in the superiority of a republican government over all others but also by their conviction that the high value they placed on re­publicanism was overwhelmingly shared by American citizens in all the states.

Whatever else the Framers might be free to do, they well knew that they could not possibly propose a monarchy or a government ruled by an aristocracy. As the Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry put it, “There was not a one-thousand part of our fellow citizens who were not against every approach to­ward monarchy.” The only delegate who was recorded by Madison as looking with favor on monarchy was Alexander Hamilton, whose injudicious expression of support for that heartily unpopular institution may have greatly reduced his influence at the Convention, as it was to haunt him later.

Hardly more acceptable was an adaptation of aristocratic ideas to an American constitu­tion. During the deliberations about the Senate, Gou­verneur Morris of Pennsylvania explored the possibility of drawing its members from an American equivalent of the British aristocracy. But it soon became obvious that the delegates could not agree on just who these American aristocrats might be, and in any case they well knew that the overwhelming bulk of American cit­izens would simply not tolerate such a government.

A second immovable limit was the existence of the thirteen states, with still more states to come. A consti­tutional solution that would be available in most of the countries that were to develop into mature and stable democracies-a unitary system with exclusive sover­eignty lodged in the central government, as in Britain and Sweden, for example-was simply out of the ques­tion. The need for a federal rather than a unitary re­public was therefore not justified by a principle ad­duced from general historical experience, much less from political theory. It was just a self-evident fact. If Americans were to be united in a single country, it was obvious to all that a federal or confederal system was inescapable. Whether the states would remain as fundamental constituents was therefore never a serious issue at the Convention; the only contested question was just how much autonomy, if any, they would yield to the central government.

The delegates had to confront still another stub­born limit: the need to engage in fundamental com­promises in order to secure agreement on any consti­tution at all. The necessity for compromise and the opportunities this gave for coalitions and logrolling meant that the Constitution could not possibly reflect a coherent, unified theory of government. Compro­mises were necessary because, like the country at large, members of the convention held different views on some very basic issues.

Slavery. One, of course, was the future of slav­ery. Most of the delegates from the five southern states were adamantly opposed to any constitutional provi­sion that might endanger the institution. Although the delegates from the other seven states were hardly of one mind about slavery, it was perfectly obvious to them that the only condition on which coexistence would be acceptable to the delegates from the southern states would be the preservation of slavery. Consequently, if these delegates wanted a federal constitution they would have to yield, no matter what their beliefs about slavery. And so they did. Although some delegates who signed the final document abhorred slavery, they nev­ertheless accepted its continuation as the price of a stronger federal government.

Representation in the Senate. Another conflict of views that could not be settled without a one-sided compromise resulted from the adamant refusal of the delegates from the small states to accept any constitu­tion that did not provide for equal representation in the Senate. The opponents of equal representation in­cluded two of the most illustrious members of the Convention, James Madison and James Wilson, who were also among the chief architects of the Constitu­tion. Both men bitterly opposed what seemed to them an arbitrary, unnecessary, and unjustifiable limit on national majorities. As Alexander Hamilton remarked about this conflict (in the Constitutional Convention, on Fri., June 29):

As states are a collection of individual men which ought we to respect most, the rights of the people composing them, or the artificial beings resulting from the composition. Nothing could be more preposterous or absurd than to sacrifice the former to the latter. It has been said that if the smaller States re­nounce their equality, they renounce at the same time their liberty. The truth is it is a contest for power, not for liberty. Will the men composing the small States be less free than those composing the larger?

Let me give you a flavor of the elevated discussion that preceded the victory of the small states. Here is Gunning Bedford of Delaware on June 30:

The large states dare not dissolve the Confederation. If they do the small ones will find some foreign ally of more honor and good faith, who will take them by the hand and do them justice.

To which Rufus King of Massachusetts replied:

I cannot sit down, without taking some notice of the lan­guage of the honorable gentleman from Delaware …. It was not I who with a vehemence, unprecedented in this House, declared himself ready to turn his hopes from our common Country, and court the protection of some foreign hand …. I am grieved that such a thought has entered into his heart. . . . For myself whatever might be my distress, I would never court relief from a foreign power.

Faced with the refusal of the small States to ac­cept anything less, Madison, Wilson, Hamilton, and the other opponents of equal representation finally accepted compromise of principle as the price of a con­stitution. The solution of equal representation was not, then, a product of constitutional theory, high prin­ciple, or grand design. It was nothing more than a practical outcome of a hard bargain that its opponents finally agreed to in order to achieve a constitution.

Incidentally, this conflict illustrates some of the complexities of voting coalitions at the Constitutional Convention, for the faction opposed to equal repre­sentation in the Senate included four strange bed­fellows: Madison, Wilson, Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris. Although all four generally supported moves to strengthen the federal government, Madison and Wilson usually endorsed proposals that leaned toward a more democratic republic, while Hamilton and Mor­ris tended to support a more aristocratic republic.