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Robert Longley is a U.S. government and history expert with over 30 years of experience in municipal government and urban planning.
Updated on August 02, 2024Direct democracy, sometimes called "pure democracy," is a form of democracy in which all laws and policies imposed by governments are determined by the people themselves, rather than by representatives who the people elect.
In a true direct democracy, citizens vote on all laws, bills, and court decisions.
The first examples of direct democracy are found in the ancient Greek city-state of Athens, where an Assembly of roughly 1,000 male citizens made decisions. During the 17th century, many Swiss towns and town meetings in colonial America used similar people’s assemblies. By the 18th century, early states in the United States started using procedures in which constitutions or constitutional amendments were ratified by direct democracy. During the 19th century, Switzerland and many U.S. states incorporated direct democracy in their constitutions. The continued use of direct democracy originated from three major types of developments:
Modern democracy developed as people gradually demanded a larger share of political representation and an extension of representative voting rights. Constitutions, civil rights, and universal suffrage became identified with “democracy” based on the principles of popular sovereignty, freedom, and political equality.
Direct democracy is the opposite of the more common representative democracy, under which the people elect representatives to create laws and policies for all of society. Ideally, the laws and policies the elected representatives enact should closely reflect the will of the majority of the people.
While the U.S., with the protections of its federal system of “checks and balances,” practices representative democracy, as embodied in the U.S. Congress and the state legislatures, two forms of limited direct democracy are practiced at the state and local level: ballot initiatives and binding referendums and recall of elected officials.
Ballot initiatives and referendums allow citizens to place on statewide or local ballots—by petition—laws or spending measures typically considered by state and local legislative bodies. Through successful ballot initiatives and referendums, citizens can create, amend, or repeal laws, as well as amend state constitutions and local charters.
Some towns in some states in the New England region of the U.S., such as those in Vermont, use direct democracy in town meetings to decide local affairs. A carryover from America’s British colonial era, the practice predates the founding of the country and the U.S. Constitution by more than a century.
The framers of the Constitution feared that direct democracy could lead to the “tyranny of the majority.” For example, in Federalist No. 10, James Madison specifically calls for a constitutional republic employing representative democracy over a direct democracy to shield the individual citizen from the will of the majority. “Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society,” he wrote. “Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.”
In the words of Declaration of Independence signer John Witherspoon: “Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state—it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.” Alexander Hamilton agreed, stating that “a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity.”
Despite the framers' intentions at the beginning of the republic, direct democracy in the form of ballot initiatives and referendums is now widely used at the state and county level.
Perhaps the best example of direct democracy existed in ancient Athens, Greece. While it excluded many groups, including women, enslaved people, and immigrants from voting, Athenian direct democracy required men over the age of 20 to vote on all major issues of government. Even the verdict of every court case was determined by a vote of all the people.
In the most prominent example in modern society, Switzerland practices a modified form of direct democracy under which any law enacted by the nation’s elected legislative branch can be vetoed by a vote of the general public. In addition, citizens can vote to require the national legislature to consider amendments to the Swiss constitution.
While the idea of having the ultimate say over the affairs of government might sound tempting, both good and bad aspects of direct democracy need to be considered:
