Summary Of How Democratic Is The American Constitution Robert Dahl

Kaitlyn Glover

AP US Government

Period 1

How Democratic is the American Constitution? Critical Book Review In his book How Democratic is the American Constitution? Robert A. Dahl evaluates the scope of democracy that the American Constitution creates and compares our ultimate governing document to those of multiple other democratic nations around the world. His goal is not to change the Constitution itself but rather to change people’s perception of it. Most Americans view the Constitution as a sacred document that created the world’s greatest democracy but, in actuality, the American Constitution has many highly undemocratic aspects that prove this judgement to be mistaken. This is brought to light in Dahl’s analysis of the American Constitution.

He claims that strong bicameralism and unequal political representation are direct results of a federal system as well as undemocratic features of the Constitution. The second chamber is the one where a lot of unequal representation is dramatic. People in larger states simply do not have the same statistical sway as those in smaller states. Some argue that people in smaller states are entitled to more weight in their vote in order to protect them from the popular majority, but Dahl does not take a clear stance on the subject. Additionally, Dahl claims that if laws have been properly passed by Congress and the President, the ability of the judicial branch to declare laws unconstitutional extends beyond an appropriate amount of power. The first-pass-the-post system is another comparatively undemocratic feature of the Constitution because it create a two party system in which one party wins everything even if it is just by a slight majority whereas, a proportional system would be more democratic because seats are divided based on the proportion of votes a party gets. Dahl’s last point in the chapter is that the American system is different than other countries in that our president carries out the duties of the prime minister and the ceremonial

It discuss the electoral college in greater depth. The electoral college causes the power of one person to vary greatly, defying basic democratic ideals. Also, the electoral college makes it possible for a president to win an election and still lose the majority of the votes. Dahl reveals that the electoral college is not democratic and provides two potential solutions: an amendment that abolishes the electoral college, replacing it with a direct election by popular vote or an amendment requiring proportional distribution of electoral votes to the candidates. Dahl is also a realist in that he says that the odds of completely abolishing the electoral college are very low but he believes that the latter alternative is