DEMOCRACY. — According to its etymological sense, government by the people, or, in the definition of St Thomas, *potestas populi*.
I. HISTORY
Both as a concept and as an institution, democracy dates back to Greek culture. Aristotle classified it among the legitimate forms of government, alongside monarchy, government by one, and aristocracy, government by a few optimates.In the East, the classical land of despotism, no forms of popular self-government arose, nor could they emerge among the Hebrew people, subjected as they were to a theocratic regime, except during the time of the Maccabees, when some traces of a popular assembly are recorded.
Democracy, however, flourished fully in the Greek city-states, particularly in Athens, where Solon established a tempered democratic government. In the constitutions of these city-states, the principle of equality was generally absolute, but in practice, consideration was sometimes given to wealth, so that certain magistracies could not be aspired to without a given economic condition. To remedy this inconvenience and place citizens on a footing of some equality, compensation was established for those entrusted with public functions. The assembly of the people was invested with all powers and was subject to no control, veto, or limitation of any kind. Nevertheless, the democracy of the Greek city-states, modeled on the social life of the time and confined within the narrow circle of the city, assumed a particular character that brought it close to bourgeois oligarchy due to the small number of citizens to whom the right to hold public office was recognized, while the mass of slaves and servants engaged in rural labor were excluded.
In ancient Rome, there was never a government in which the people exercised a prevailing and decisive influence. Even after the expulsion of the kings, the patriciate dominated public affairs unchallenged for a long time. Despite the institution of the tribunate, the gulf between plebeians and patricians remained profound. Only the latter had access to political and religious offices, and only after bitter struggles did the plebs obtain the right to participate in the consulship, the pontificate, and public power, which never assumed a truly democratic structure. The great universal concepts on which democracy alone can rest were lacking in Greek and Roman culture. Nor did the State recognize limits to its own power, nor was a sphere of personal freedom attributed to the citizen as a requirement of his high dignity. In a society that maintained the institution of slavery, theoretically justified by the distinction between slaves and free men by nature, any form of popular government necessarily became oligarchic, with the domination of a small number of citizens over the large population of slaves and servants.
A broader concept of democracy could only take root in the peaceful revolutionary movement of Christian thought, which, by eliminating before God, the Father of all men, the supposed natural differences between slave and free, also overturned the political schemes of pagan society, subordinating social life to the universal ends of man and assigning him a "preeminent position within the collective organism." The concept of the original dignity of the human person activated the gradual movement toward the emancipation of man from political servitude and his more direct participation in public life.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, democratic institutions remained unknown in the feudal system, whereas they flourished in the Italian communes, where the artisan class, freeing itself from the servitude of the barons, constituted itself as a municipal republic. This was a brief period of flourishing social life, during which, however, the idea of equality of rights among citizens was not achieved, nor was there a fully democratic form with power reserved for the artisan and bourgeois classes. Traces of popular intervention are found here and there in the Middle Ages in constitutional charters agreed upon between the people and the sovereign, in which the former sought to protect itself against possible abuses of power; but these are only traces deriving from the then-dominant conception that power comes from the people.
Democracy achieved greater continuity and more organic development in England, where from earliest times the people participated in assemblies and obtained municipal charters. The impulse toward true democracy, however, came under the Stuarts, through the Independent party, which succeeded in overthrowing Charles I, delivering a decisive blow to the preponderance of the Crown and the Lords. Almost parallel in time and conception were the two democratic movements that opened the modern era: that of the American republics, which first constituted themselves as autonomous states based on popular self-government and then united in the federal state, which maintained the same institutional principles, and that of the French Revolution, which reached its climax in the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 and the republican constitution of 1791.
The rapid expansion of democratic institutions that occurred after the French Revolution was caused by the changed economic and social conditions of the modern era. On the one hand, the introduction of machinery and the progressive industrialization of European countries, while overturning the centuries-old economic order and producing the great mass of the so-called proletariat, crowded into urban centers under precarious living conditions, enabled them to become aware of their strength and seek active participation in public affairs. On the other hand, the continuous extension of state interference in all sectors of social life—partly demanded by new needs of order, partly a consequence of a false concept of its powers, generally considered unlimited—made the need for public defense and control ever more pressing. Added to this was the heightened awareness that man had gained of his value and dignity and the keen sense of personal freedom that is always linked to II.
II. THEORETICAL ELABORATION
To complete the historical outline just sketched, it is well to mention the movement of ideas, particularly in the Catholic sphere. Inherited from Roman law, throughout the Middle Ages the prevailing conception was that the original subject of sovereignty is the people, by whose investiture the physical or moral person exercising its functions in the government of the community holds it as a secondary and derived subject. Thus there existed a constant doctrinal tradition that interpreted the origin and foundation of public authority in a democratic manner, supporting it on an act of free election by the people.This tradition manifests itself in all its vigor in St. Thomas Aquinas, in whom is stated the distinction between the origin of the power of the leaders and the Hebrew people, who obtained it through a direct intervention of God, and the origin of power in other societies, in which the prince possesses it by the consent of the people, hence his expression vicem gerens multitudinis used to designate the sovereign. Alongside the democratic conception of the origin of power, the Angelic Doctor also offers a theoretical evaluation of the various forms of government, in which democracy does not occupy the last place. From Aristotle he derives the well-known tripartite division into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, but in his evaluation he transcends the strict Aristotelian vision. Keeping in mind the exigency of the internal unity of the social organism, he holds that for the attainment of this unity, government by one is more perfect and efficient, while the polyarchic forms are less perfect. Nevertheless, when he takes as the criterion of his judgment the abuses to which each form of regime may give rise, he objectively notes that monarchy is most exposed to the danger of degenerating into tyranny, on account of the concentration of all powers in a single person, and inclines to prefer a tempered government, in which other citizens participate, chosen by popular suffrage. The perfect constitution, according to St. Thomas, exists when it is simultaneously composed of kingship, inasmuch as one person possesses the power, of aristocracy, inasmuch as many govern according to virtue, and of democracy, inasmuch as those who govern can be chosen from among the people and the people have the right to elect them. The principles that will become the basis of modern democracy already appear in St. Thomas, namely, popular suffrage and the electivity of those destined for government.
The Thomistic conception continues unbroken until the end of the 17th century. Vitoria, Suárez, Bellarmine, and others are its representatives. The last two in particular stand out, as they have done most to clarify and systematize it, opposing it to the pretensions of royal absolutism, embodied in the theologically minded King James I of England, against whom they entered into controversy. The cardinal points of their theory can be reduced to the following: the original subject of authority is the people considered organically, which possesses it by immediate communication of the law of nature, from the moment it has gathered into society; the physical or moral subject that actually exercises it receives it immediately from the people, *potestas a Deo per populum*, by virtue of an irrevocable act of transfer, necessitated by the people’s inability to exercise it themselves. Once the transfer has taken place, the monarch becomes the holder of sovereign right; nevertheless, the people, according to Bellarmine’s factual integration, continue to possess it in root, in the sense that they retain the permanent right to oversee how it is exercised and to reclaim it should it degenerate into tyranny or external causes impose an institutional change (v. AUTORITÀ).
Although these solutions remain on the abstract plane of political theory, one cannot ignore the living elements contained within them, in view of a more accurately scientific reconstruction of democratic institutions and a critique of more modern conceptions.
III. CONCEPT AND ELEMENTS
It is more than ever difficult to disentangle from the tangle of conflicting opinions the essential features that belong to the concept of democracy, so as to gather into a comprehensive definition the elements that distinguish and constitute II. “Nothing,” wrote Toniolo, “is more vague, more tangled, more resistant to a theoretical formula than this word democracy.” Having become a common slogan of opposing and irreconcilable political movements, it has been subjected to an extensive and profound deformation of meaning, to the point of including, with the addition of some qualifying adjective, forms of police states and oppressive regimes. Not only this, but the very ideas that should constitute its soul continue to wander in the sphere of the indefinite, mingled with false theoretical orientations that render its content even more vaporous.For a more systematic exposition it is necessary, from the outset, to distinguish social democracy from political democracy. The former, as Toniolo defined it, consists in “that civil order in which all social, juridical, and economic forces, in the fullness of their hierarchical development, cooperate proportionally for the common good, ultimately resulting in a preponderant benefit for the lower classes.” Its specific element is thus the end of the harmonious promotion of the common good for the advantage of the less fortunate classes. It consequently consists in a social movement in which all the forces operating within the community remain oriented toward the reform of civil and economic institutions, to mitigate injustices and glaring disparities of life. To this movement, which initially aligned itself with socialist claims, Catholic currents soon joined, guided by the teaching and example of eminent sociologists such as Ketteler and Windthorst in Germany, De Mun and Harmel in France, Manning in England, Toniolo and Talamo in Italy. The high human aims of this movement in favor of the underprivileged classes were recognized and officially consecrated by Leo XIII in the encyclical *Rerum novarum*, defined as the magna carta of labor, by Pius XI in *Quadragesimo anno*, and by Pius XII in various addresses and radio messages on the social question.
While in the sphere described one advances in the full light of clear concepts, one remains instead in semidarkness when one turns to the study of political democracy. This is commonly defined in a wholly approximate manner, according to the well-known phrase of A. Lincoln, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” or simply “government of the people,” but as soon as one begins to analyze the individual terms, difficulties threaten to overwhelm the concept. It is evident, first of all, that the end assigned to democracy by Lincoln’s definition is not a specific end peculiar to this form of regime, since all other regimes have as their essential aim the good of the people, which they must serve by intrinsic mission. Once this element is discarded, nothing remains but the simpler formula, “government of the people,” around which it is necessary to clarify.
The term “people” is subject to various interpretations, among which a selection must be made. For individualist theories, the people result from the arithmetical sum of individuals, and thus in its concept there is no room for the smaller societies in which man is born, such as the family, or those he forms by elective affinity. The people, understood as a dust of atoms, is set in opposition to the State in every single individual, with no organic bond uniting one to another. Progressive movements, socialism and communism, in turn arbitrarily restrict the extension of the term, using it to signify only the mass of manual workers, thus performing a vivisection within the community, in deference to the more general principle of the irreconcilable opposition of classes. Democracy thus comes to mean government by class or oligarchy of the proletariat.
The two conceptions referred to must be rejected. In its true social reality, the people is not composed of isolated individuals or a mere sum of them, but of individuals united by an internal principle that binds them into a social organism, as well as by smaller natural or voluntary societies. Moreover, the people cannot be identified with a single class, since it includes all those who, in any way, contribute to the common good; nor can arbitrary exclusion be made of those who represent a burden on the community: children, the disabled, the elderly, the sick—all are part of the people and belong to II. A true democracy can be founded on this broad concept, which, as is easily deduced, cannot in any way be classified.
Greater interpretive difficulties arise with the term "government." Government by the people in its fullest sense can be realized only in direct democracy, and this, in turn, to function properly, requires small communal or political bodies in which citizens can gather in deliberative assemblies. Outside this assumption, government by the people is an unattainable utopia. Considering the problem realistically, one arrives at the conclusion that contemporary democracy can only be indirect or representative. The supposed government by the people is consequently reduced to a sporadic participation of the people in the management of public affairs through the periodic election of representatives and the continuous oversight of the same over the actions of public authorities, so that they do not betray social goals.
Reduced to this minimum, modern democracy can only be defined as the participation of the people in the management of public affairs through the exercise of the right to vote for the election of their representatives and the oversight of the State's actions carried out by public opinion. A more modest concept than the other, it upholds government by the people but is more in line with empirical data.
Representative democracy, however, raises a host of contentious issues. Two of them are fundamental: on what basis does the people's right to active participation in the management of public affairs rest, and how should political representation be understood accordingly? According to the well-known individualist thesis—explicitly condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (prop. 60), drawn from the allocution *Maxima quidem* of June 9, 1862—every man living in society, by virtue of an original and total autonomy, would possess a particle of sovereignty, which, summed with others through the expression of individual will, gives rise to social sovereignty and the general will, which becomes a law to which even the minority must submit. On the other hand, since sovereignty is inalienable, the people remain sovereign, so that their representatives are configured as true mandataries who act solely in their name and on their behalf. This is the concept of popular sovereignty elaborated by anti-contractualist Enlightenment thought, which juridical science—adopting a principle taught by Catholic theologians—has demonstrated to be entirely baseless, arguing convincingly that sovereignty is a unitary and original power of the entire social organism, to which alone belongs the right to order and govern its own life.
Democracy must therefore be founded on a different conception, and this is offered by the Catholic theory on the democratic origin of power, of which mention has already been made. If, in fact, the original subject of sovereignty is the people, and this freely chooses the democratic form, it retains the right to interfere in public affairs on a twofold basis: one original, since, assuming the definitive transfer of sovereignty, it retains—according to Bellarmine's expression—*radicaliter* the right of sovereignty, with the faculty to oversee its exercise; and one derived from the democratic organization positively chosen by common consent. In this theoretical construction, representatives are not mere mandataries, and they act as *vices gerentes multitudinis* insofar as they are organs of the collectivity and must interpret its will. Thus, the crisis of political representation becomes evident, to which it will be difficult to apply the figure of private-law mandate without an analogical interpretation (v. RAPPRESENTAZIONE). This further demonstrates how problematic democracy is.
Remaining on the empirical level, it can be affirmed that contemporary democracies, despite their extreme variety of forms, exhibit the following characteristics: derivation of authority from the will of the majority, legal protection of certain fundamental rights (known as liberties), free and periodic election of rulers, public oversight of their actions, and division of powers among several constitutional organs, each entrusted with one of the functions of sovereignty. Each of these raises complex juridical and theoretical questions, which it is not even appropriate to deliberate here.
IV. IDEOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS AND DEMOCRATIC INSTRUMENTS
Democracy is also defined as a regime of liberty, both because it safeguards its rights and because the exercise of elective power granted to the people cannot be carried out unless the people enjoy a certain autonomy. Care must be taken, however, not to attribute an absolute value to liberty. Even in democracy, it has intrinsic limits as the faculty to act for the good, and extrinsic limits in the demands of the common good. True democracy does not consist in allowing freedom to malfunction but in the conscious safeguarding of order, which cannot be achieved without enforcing its just and necessary moral and juridical limitations.One of the aims toward which the democratic regime tends is equality—not only formal equality before the law but also effective equality, through the adjustment of social classes to a standard of living, as far as possible, common to all. Even in this regard, however, it must not be forgotten that social equality is not arithmetic but proportional, and therefore cannot consist in the levelling of all disparities.
The instruments of democracy are universal suffrage and political parties. No difficulty arises from popular suffrage as an institution for the election of representatives and the ascertainment of the people's will, nor from the various forms in which it is organized, provided that it ensures the secrecy of the vote and the greatest freedom of choice. Far greater opposition, however—particularly in Catholic circles—has been aroused by universal suffrage, which has been judged a fiction, since ordinarily a large number of citizens are excluded from the right to vote, and contrary to the living reality of human society, in which there does not exist that perfect equality on which it is based. Moreover, alongside individuals, smaller associations exist that would have the right to influence public life as such. The criticisms, especially when the danger of demagogic degeneration is added, are serious if directed against equal suffrage; they lose weight when directed against a qualitatively differentiated suffrage, to which nothing prevents it from retaining the character of universality.
Just as the proper organization of suffrage is essential to democracy, so too is the presence of parties. Although all members of the community tend toward the common good, divergences of ideas and programs may arise regarding the most suitable means to achieve it; these ideas and programs naturally form a center of attraction around which wills polarize. The plurality of parties is therefore a natural outcome of social life when it unfolds under the sign of freedom. A single party is the death of democracy.
THE CHURCH'S TEACHING ON DEMOCRACY
The Church has never been fundamentally opposed to democracy. A fundamental principle to which her teaching has always adhered is that political systems in which men can freely organize their social life are in themselves legitimate, provided they respect morality, religion, and justice. The Church is more concerned with good rulers than with the forms of government. If at times it may have seemed that she opposed democratic institutions, this has been because she has encountered ideological errors that vitiated their content and rendered them dangerous.
For example, the condemnation in the Syllabus against popular sovereignty was not intended to strike democracy *per se*, but a particular theory in which mechanism and materialism were mingled, both inimical to the true concept of sovereignty, reduced either to the tyranny of the majority or to the leveling force of the state. Leo XIII continued along the path traced by his predecessor. In the encyclical *Diuturnum* of 20 June 1881, reaffirming the condemnation of popular sovereignty in the sense given it by contractualism, he reasserted the genuine concept of authority as a power deriving from God, and, linking himself to a firmly established tradition of thought, declared that for the Church there is no reason why it should not approve «the rule of one or of many, provided it is just and directed to the common good». Saving justice, «it is not forbidden to peoples — he adds — to procure for themselves that form of government which best suits their character, or the institutions and customs of their ancestors».
The same ideas were later repeated in the encyclical *Libertas* of 20 June 1888. Democracy was treated more directly in the encyclical *Longinqua Oceani* of 6 January 1895, addressed to the bishops of America. In it, the Pope noted how in a state governed by a popular regime a deeper formation of the people is indispensable, so that they may become conscious of their duties, honest in their customs, and lovers of justice. That is, against the easy abuses of democracy and the dangers of corruption already foreseen and described by Tocqueville, he emphasized the warning, adopted even by writers distant from the faith, that democracy is a regime for mature peoples. Also to be recalled is the encyclical *Graves de communi* of 18 January 1901, in which the same Pontiff sought to determine the exact meaning of the term "Christian democracy".
Pius XI, in turn, in the encyclical *Ubi arcano* of 23 December 1922, dwelt on the danger of democracy sliding into demagogic disorder when parties engage in struggle not «for a serene divergence of opinion regarding the public good and for its sincere and disinterested pursuit, but out of a desire to prevail and in the service of particular interests to the detriment of others». This occurs more easily «in modern representative systems, which, though not in themselves opposed to Catholic doctrine, always conciliable with every reasonable and just form of regime, are nevertheless more exposed to the subversion of passions».
The most important papal document after *Graves de communi* is the radio message of Pius XII at Christmas 1944, in which, reaffirming the legitimacy of temperate regimes, the Pope addressed democracy «to examine according to what norms it must be regulated, in order to be called true and sound democracy». In it, the citizen must have the right to express his opinion on the duties and sacrifices imposed upon him, not be forced to obey without being heard. For the proper functioning of the democratic method, it is required that he be placed in a position «to have his own personal opinion and to express it and make it prevail in a manner befitting the common good». Hence the need for education, which raises the people from an amorphous, inert mass moved from without to the level of a living association with its own life and moved by a consciousness of social ends. Liberty and equality must be kept within just limits: the former must not degenerate into the «tyrannical pretension of giving free rein to human impulses and appetites to the detriment of others», the latter cannot lead to «a mechanical leveling, to a monochrome uniformity».
The state, even in democracy, must be «invested with the power to command with true and effective authority», while respecting the rights of the human person and the natural limits of its function within the social organism, resolutely opposing that corruption which attributes to state legislation an unrestrained and unlimited power, and which, despite contrary but vain appearances, makes even the democratic regime a mere system of absolutism.