Determining Democracy (ANSWERED)

QUESTION

Required Resources
Read/review the following resources for this activity:

• Textbook: Chapter 1 ,2, 3
• Lesson: Read this Week’s Lesson which is located in the Modules tab
• Initial Post: minimum of 2 scholarly sources (must include your textbook for one of the sources). Follow-Up Post: minimum of 1 scholarly source for your Follow-Up Post.

Initial Post Instructions

For the initial post, respond to one of the following options, and label the beginning of your post indicating either Option 1 or Option 2: (Write both options. 1 page each)

• Option 1: Does democracy require equality of income or wealth? Discuss why democracy might make a country more or less egalitarian?
• Option 2: Political scientist Larry Sabato has proposed a new constitutional convention (Links to an external site.). Select any one of his proposed ideas and write a short list of pros and cons for this idea and support your reasoning.

Be sure to make connections between your ideas and conclusions and the research, concepts, terms, and theory we are discussing this week.

ANSWER

Option 1: Does democracy require equality of income or wealth? Discuss why democracy might make a country more or less egalitarian?

The notion that wealth inequality hinders democracy is not supported by empirical data (Acemoglu et al., 2015; Scheve & Stasavage, 2017). Researchers typically use Latin America’s economic history to support the notion that wealth inequality impedes democracy. According to supporters of this notion, Latin America historically lacked democracy due to wealth inequality. However, Scheve and Stasavage’s (2017) study revealed that contrary to popular opinion, the US’s largest cities were even more unequal than their counterparts in South America, yet democracy existed in America. Because democracy existed in the US despite these wealth inequalities, the authors argued that democracy and inequality do not go hand in hand.

However, Scheve and Stasavage (2017) found evidence that the wealthy can capture democratic politics despite the one person-one vote principle. These rich people can exert a disproportionate influence on the government, causing it to enact policies that protect only their interests. They can also use their resources to interfere with competitive elections, compromising the country’s democratic integrity. If the wealth can influence the government to be unresponsive to its citizens’ preferences, then it is logical to surmise that inequality has a cumulative effect on democracy. Even though they don’t go hand in hand, inequality threatens American democratic ideals.

Democracy can make a country more egalitarian by allowing the government to create policies that reduce economic disparities and promote equal resource distribution. Scheve and Stasavage (2017) state that democracy does not guarantee economic equality. Egalitarian values may fail to be translated into policies, especially when the economically advantaged people use their resources to influence politics.

Option 2

Larry J. Sabato proposed various ideas on how to revitalize the US constitution. Among these was the idea that the House needed to be expanded from 435 members to about 1,000 members (Sabato, 2007). This idea has both advantages and disadvantages listed below.

PROS

• Equal representation in the House will increase when the number of seats in the House increase. Fleming (2009) states that Congress might become more democratic due to the increased representation.
• The House will become more diverse, creating opportunities for new political voices in the government.
• Currently, the total vote of each state in the Electoral College is obtained from its congressional representation. Unfortunately, large states have more representatives. This disparity in the House apportionment among states impacts their influence in the Electoral College. Typically, this legislative apportionment and representation are linked to presidential selection. Kane et al. (2020) reveal that a large House will help mitigate these disparities, giving small states a fair chance to influence the electoral process.
• Party gerrymandering might reduce. Although a large House does not guarantee the end of gerrymandering, it will make it difficult to exclude political minorities, reducing the possibility of political manipulation to create an undue advantage for a single party.
• This proposition will dilute the disproportionate power experienced by small states and minority political parties. Fleming (2009) says that small states will have adequate power to block proposed constitutional amendments at the ratification stage, resolving current political power disparities between states and political parties.
• The House will need more staff to manage the administrative processes, increasing job opportunities.

CONS (Kate et al., 2020):

• Increasing the size of the House will increase inefficiency because consensus building will be more complex and time-consuming. The House will also need more time to accommodate and reconcile various perspectives and viewpoints.
• The proposition will place a significant tax burden on taxpayers due to increased congressional salaries.
• The capitol building may not be large enough to accommodate all Congress members, preventing them from gathering and debating critical legislative issues.

References

Acemoglu, D., Naidu, S., Restrepo, P., & Robinson, J. A. (2015). Democracy, redistribution, and inequality. In Handbook of income distribution (Vol. 2, pp. 1885-1966). Elsevier. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19746/w19746.pdf

Fleming, J. E. (2009). Toward a More Democratic Congress. BUL Rev., 89, 629. https://www.bu.edu/law/journals-archive/bulr/volume89n2/documents/FLEMING.pdf

Kane, C., Mascioli, G., Mcgarry, M., & Nagel, M. (2020). Democracy Clinic i Why the House of Representatives Must Be Expanded and How Today’s Congress Can Make It Happen Democracy and the Constitution Clinic Fordham University School of Law. https://www.fordham.edu/download/downloads/id/14402/Why_the_House_Must_Be_Expanded___Democracy_Clinic.pdf

Sabato, L. J. (2007). A more perfect constitution. Walker & Company, New York. https://www.amoreperfectconstitution.com/23_proposals.htm

Scheve, K., & Stasavage, D. (2017). Wealth inequality and democracy. Annual Review of Political Science, 20(1), 451-468. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Stasavage/publication/314251040_Wealth_Inequality_and_Democracy/links/5b42630ea6fdccbcf90da995/Wealth-Inequality-and-Democracy.pdf

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