The US is not a "Democracy", and never has been. It's a Republic.
You conflate those two things at your peril.
You conflate those two things at your peril.
That being said, US could use a whole lot more "democracy" into its system. I don't think the delegate system works very well. Gerrymandering has also been abused for decades.
It's supposed to, and if it doesn't, that only tells us that things have gone very wrong. But you don't have to have direct democracy (as opposed to representative democracy) to adhere to the idea that the ultimate political power rests in the hands of the people.
Most importantly, the point of having a constitutional republic is the constitution protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
Wouldn't you say that fits within the term "direct democracy"?
The state of California is closer than most I think. IIRC part of their budget troubles were because some issues require a referendum.
Many countries that are, like the US, representative democracies are, unlike the US, not republics (an obvious example is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, but nevertheless also a representative democracy.)
More to the point, "Democracy" has a fairly broad meaning, and encompasses a range of systems and traditions. You'd have to be exceedingly pedantic to insist that using it to describe any form aside from a pure, direct democracy is a misuse of language.
[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
So yeah, still technically a democracy, just not a direct democracy.
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Finding democracy is an exercise left to the reader.
Some people use the term "republic" to imply "merely a republic" in the sense that the country in question is not a direct democracy. I am not sure whether this betrays that they think of government as having one dimension of variety from hereditary monarchs to direct democracy, whether they think that republics and democracies are incompatible forms of government, or whether they realize that democracy is merely one form of a republic and choose to simplify for effect when they say things like "The USA is not a democracy, it is a republic."
As usual, wikipedia is pretty good on the subject:
However, it is worth noting that attempting to rank systems by quantity-of-democracy-nature stops being useful pretty quickly, and it becomes helpful to introduce other terms/variables/factors/axes along which to measure and evaluate political systems.
Equally, once certain baselines are met, the exact mechanics of the system quickly stop being as important as less tangible factors such as civil society mechanisms and cultural biases:- Particularly the professional culture of the legislature:- Ability of legislators to set aside party politics to work in the national interest; To preserve the integrity of the political system from corruption, and maintain the ability to make decisions without bias in the face of attempts to lobby and influence behaviour.
It's probably the only way out of the downward spiral we've found ourselves in.
Direct democracy can only ever work when a significant majority of the population is well educated and engaged in the process of government. Anything else and they will vote for what every makes their immediate lives more palatable.
It is very rare for somebody to make a decision that will make life more difficult in the short term in anticipation of the greater good in the long term.
The whole point of representative democracy is that our representatives are supposed to be wiser than the majority of the public, and therefore be able to make the difficult decisions on behalf of the people, whilst understanding that the people themselves may not, due to self interest, be able to make those decisions themselves.
Even in Ancient Greece, the bastion of all things democratic, only a very small part of the population were able to vote. You had to be a landholder with a fair amount of money. Sound familiar?
I would love to live in a world where individuals were able to take the long view and vote based on the greater good. Unfortunately we are a long way from that. What we have, whilst suffering form increasing influence from well funded interests, is the best that the world has seen.