Monday, November 13, 2006
Yglesias on democracy
Having embarked upon Aristotle's Politics, these remarks seem relevant to the critique of representative democracy in general, and not just to its American variety:
the striking thing about American democracy is how little impact public sentiment actually has on the course of things. The way democracy works, in essence, is that the voters get to choose between two teams of competing elites. Thus, public opinion serves as a tie-breaker on issues where the elite is seriously divided.
