I have heard for years, and again recently, that we should not be talking about America having a democracy, but instead that the Founding Fathers created a republic. This view seems to have its origin in Federalist No. Ten, written by James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, in which he distinguishes between a direct democracy, which he says is a society consisting of a small number of people who come together to administer the government in person, and a republic, where he says, “by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place.” Madison goes on to say, “The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.”
What Madison was doing was making the distinction between direct democracy and representative democracy. A country with 13 states, and more to be added in the future, could not possibly come together and enact laws directly as they did in New England town meetings, and as had been done much earlier in Greece, where the term “democracy” was invented. The Founding Fathers perhaps understood that in a large country, a republican government would have to be a representative government in which national laws would be passed by a legislative body whose members are elected directly or indirectly by the people. Thus, the United States is, indeed, a representative democracy.
