Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 20

Representative democracy embodies the principle of majority rule—the idea that 50 percent plus one of the people should be able to choose a majority of the elected officials in a country and thereby determine its direction. Aside from many questions about the mechanics of elections (which we will explore in greater depth in Chapter 8), the fact that representative democracy makes people equal only in their right to vote also limits majority rule. The vote is a powerful resource in democratic politics, but other resources that are unequally distributed—for example, money, education, and social position (being a newspaper editor, for instance)—give some citizens more access to decision making than others. To the extent that these other resources affect the decisions that elected officials make, 50 percent plus one of the votes may not be the determining factor. According to surveys, for instance, for most of the period since World War II, strong majorities in the United States have favored prayer in the schools and stricter control of firearms, yet neither practice has become national law.