The Founding Fathers’ Fear of Pure Democracy
When most Americans think of democracy, they picture a system where the people rule directly. But here’s what might surprise you: the Founding Fathers had “very clear and unambiguous opinions on the horrors of Democracy” and were “very clear that a Republic was the form of government America was meant to follow; a pure or ‘direct’ democracy would only lead us to ruin.”
According to James Madison, democracy was a form of government where “the people meet and exercise the government in person” and decide issues by voting. Alexander Hamilton said that “ancient democracies” lacked “one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny.” James Madison saw direct democracies as “spectacles of turbulence and contention.”
Think about it this way: imagine if every American had to vote on every single law, from tax rates to foreign policy. In the eighteenth century, it was not clear how direct democracy would function across vast geographic areas and with large populations. Political thinkers had long concluded that direct democracies could only work in relatively small city-states.
The Roman Republic’s Powerful Influence
It would be misleading to say that the tradition of Athenian democracy was an important part of the 18th-century revolutionaries’ intellectual background. The classical example that inspired the American and French revolutionaries, as well as English radicals, was Rome rather than Greece.
Rome inspired many features of our own Constitution, including its checks and balances, bicameral legislature, term limits and age requirements. In some cases, the Founders copied terms straight out of the Roman constitution: words like senate, capitol and committee. The US Founding Fathers drew ideas for the United States Constitution from the constitution of the Roman Republic to prevent an absolute monarch. They established three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial) to balance power within it.
The Romans had figured out something brilliant: Their constitution was an oral tradition known as mos maiorum, which meant the ancestors’ ways. The three elements of the Roman Republic’s governmental system were the Senate, magistrates, and assemblies. These elements worked together to create a balance of power within the republican system as it created checks and balances.
Ancient Athens: The Double-Edged Sword of Direct Democracy
Although this Athenian democracy would survive for only two centuries, its invention by Cleisthenes, “The Father of Democracy,” was one of ancient Greece’s most enduring contributions to the modern world. But the reality was more complicated than our modern understanding suggests.
In Athens in the middle of the 4th century there were about 100,000 citizens (Athenian citizenship was limited to men and women whose parents had also been Athenian citizens), about 10,000 metoikoi, or “resident foreigners,” and 150,000 slaves. Excluded from the franchise were women and slaves – not too dissimilar to the limitations America’s Founding Fathers set when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights in the late 18th century.
This system was comprised of three separate institutions: the ekklesia, a sovereign governing body that wrote laws and dictated foreign policy; the boule, a council of representatives from the ten Athenian tribes and the dikasteria, the popular courts. The lottery system also prevented the establishment of a permanent class of civil servants who might be tempted to use the government to advance.
The Constitutional Convention’s Impossible Task
When the delegates to the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, they saw political perils everywhere. A nation stretched across a continent risked disintegration. A democratic government, they feared, might dissolve into anarchy.
The United States was neither founded as a pure republic nor as a pure democracy. Rather, the Framers of the Constitution believed that a mixed government, containing both republican and democratic features, would be the most resilient system. Despite our thoughts of them as stalwart champions of democracy, the Founding Fathers were an elite class—they feared mob rule and debated vigorously about how the new government should be structured. Most of them were utterly opposed to a direct democracy.
Immediately following the secrecy vote, Virginia governor Edmund Randolph introduced the Virginia Plan, fifteen resolutions written by Madison and his colleagues proposing a government of three branches: a single executive, a bicameral (two-house) legislature, and a judiciary. The lower house was to be elected by the people, with seats apportioned by state population.
The Elite Nature of Early American Democracy
America’s Founding Fathers were among the wealthiest people in the Colonies when they drafted and signed the Constitution, and that’s pretty much who they expected to continue to guide the young nation. “It was never meant to be a sort of direct democracy, where all Americans would get to cast a ballot on all issues.”
The founders expected the common people, the poor and uneducated, to participate indirectly, through their local government, at town halls and meetings and through protest actions like boycotts. The Constitution did not originally define who was eligible to vote, leaving that to the constituent states, which mostly enfranchised only adult white males.
This wasn’t an accident or oversight. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were clear that the ability of a bare majority — meaning, half of those who are eligible and actually exercise their right to vote, plus one additional vote — to leverage power over the remaining population posed a grave threat to the stability and identity of the American nation.
The Electoral College and Senate: Protecting Against Mob Rule
This is clear in the composition of the U.S. Senate, where residents of each state are given equal representation regardless of their state’s population, and in the Electoral College, in which states appoint electors, who elect the president.
The Constitution devised democratic processes for collective decision-making, but the Founders had no intention of designing a government that would respond to the will of the majority. The Founders anticipated that in most cases no candidate would receive votes from a majority of the electors.
As the Constitution was originally written, the number of members of the House of Representatives was determined by the population of the states, while each state had the same number of senators, two, and they were chosen by the state legislatures. This proved problematic, however, when politicization of state legislatures resulted in empty seats. The 17th amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress on May 13, 1912 and ratified on April 8, 1913, authorized voters of individual states to directly elect their senators to Congress.
Greek Philosophy’s Profound Impact on American Ideals
All of America’s founding fathers had studied ancient Greek philosophers’ texts, drawing inspiration about morals, ethics, and the sense of independence, all fundamental principles of a democratic society. The Founding Fathers, such as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, were well-versed in the works of ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Polybius.
The ideas of checks and balances, separation of powers, and the importance of a virtuous citizenry were all influenced by ancient Greek political thought. The concept of natural law, which suggests that certain rights and principles are inherent to all human beings, was also present in ancient Greek philosophy. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle discussed the existence of universal principles that transcended man-made laws. These ideas of natural rights, including life, liberty, and property, were central to the American Revolution.
The fathers of the American nation studied the ancient Greek thinkers; our revolution of 1776 drew inspiration from them. 45 years later, Greek patriots fought for their own independence. Greece is woven into the very foundations of our democracy and of our nation. All around us here in the United States we see the profound influence of Greek culture, art and philosophy [, and in] the Federalist Papers, our founding fathers consulted the wisdom of the ancient Greek city states.
The Transformation From Republic to Democracy
Democracy was often a pejorative word, and even Thomas Paine, who argued for a more democratic government (“radical democracy” according to critics) than most proponents of independence, rarely employed it. The word democracy is nowhere in the Constitution (the word “republic” is).
In the 1790s, the French Revolution re-animated the ideal of democracy, leading more ordinary people to assert that they should have a role in their government. By 1800, it had shifted once again to refer mostly to Thomas Jefferson’s political party, which advocated for a moderate version of popular rule.
This book describes how the fundamental principle underlying American government has been transformed from protecting individual liberty to carrying out the will of the people, as revealed by a democratic decision-making process. By popular usage, however, the word “democracy” came to mean a form of government in which the government derives its power from the people and is accountable to them for the use of that power. In this sense the United States can be called a democratic republic.
The Slavery Question and Democratic Participation
In her study of Jefferson, a slaveholder of 600 slaves, Annette Gordon-Reed notes ironically, “Others of the founders held slaves, but no other founder drafted the charter for American freedom”. As well as Jefferson, Washington and many other Founding Fathers were slaveowners; 41 of the 56 signers of the Declaration owned slaves.
The class also focused on slavery, another similarity between ancient Rome and America. Both were slave societies, holding a significant proportion of their populations in legal bondage. For most of human history, slavery was not seen as morally problematic. That shift in human consciousness and understanding was so great that it’s difficult for us to put ourselves in a moment before that time.
As in Athens, when the United States was founded, only white, landowning men were allowed to vote. Over time, however, all U.S. citizens over the age of 18 who have not been convicted of a felony have gained the right to vote.
Modern Threats to Democratic Institutions
There is a shared view across both major political parties that democracy is the best form of government, with 67% of Americans agreeing with that statement according to an Economist/YouGov poll from shortly before the 2024 election. However, according to a New York Times/Siena poll, 76% of Americans also agreed that “U.S. democracy is currently under threat.”
Aspiring autocrats are increasingly targeting independent media, including via frivolous libel and other legal actions. They are also taking advantage of technological advances such as AI and social media to promote disinformation. This impacts traditional media and journalism writ large by crowding out the truth.
In the U.S., attacks on journalists increased by more than 50% from 2023 to 2024. As of 2020, authoritarianism and populism are on the rise around the world, with the number of people living in democracies less than the end of the Cold War. “Democratic backsliding” in the 2010s were attributed to economic inequality and social discontent.
The Lasting Legacy of Ancient Wisdom
That was the brilliance of the Founders: rather than trying to create something never tested, they adapted the lessons of history to their own age. They used older models in innovative ways, like making Rome’s unwritten constitutional norms part of America’s written Constitution.
Democracy is a product of education. The ancient Greeks coined the word democracy and tried the experiment only after centuries of instruction by epic and tragic poets. Ancient Greek literature and history remind us that without education, we become undiscerning dupes of demagogues and despots. Without education, democracy becomes merely a disguise worn by tyranny.
When we consider the staying power of U.S. democracy, it’s humbling to consider the Roman Empire’s longevity of 1,500 years. The influence of the Roman Senate waned and surged, then waned again, during its 1,500 years, but it remains the most long-lived example of representative government.
The American experiment in democracy wasn’t born in a vacuum. It emerged from centuries of human struggle with power, participation, and the age-old question of who should rule. The Founders crafted something unprecedented: a system that balanced the wisdom of ancient republics with the needs of a new nation. They feared both tyranny and mob rule, creating instead a complex web of institutions designed to channel popular will while protecting individual rights. Today, as we face new challenges to democratic governance, their careful study of history reminds us that democracy is not a destination but a continuous journey requiring constant vigilance and adaptation.
