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The Shifting Boundaries of Democratic Governments
Social Research, Fall, 1999 by Robert A. Dahl
THE boundaries within which democratic governments make and enforce collective decisions are constantly shifting. Even over short periods, boundaries shift marginally. Over long periods, the changes are sometimes huge and highly consequential. If we define a democratic state as one that enables its citizens to exercise a relatively high degree of collective control over government decisions, whether directly by an assembly, indirectly through elected representatives, or perhaps through other means, then modern democratic states have been shaped by three fundamental changes and a fourth is on the way.
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First, the locus of the democratic state shifted from the city-state to the nation-state or country. Second, democratic governments enormously expanded the scope of their programs and policies. Third, and most recently, the number of both countries and persons living under democratic governments vastly increased. Fourth, democratic governments are increasingly involved with nondemocratic international systems.
From City-State to Nation-State
The first change occurred so long ago that many people are probably unaware of it. Most democrats assume that a country is a perfectly appropriate locus for a democratic government, no matter whether it is as small as Iceland or as large as the United States, India, or, for that matter, China. Though widely accepted, this view ignores or rejects about twenty-two centuries of earlier beliefs and practices. From about 500 BCE to the eighteenth century, democratic and republican ideas and practices were generally thought to be applicable only to very small units, most notably city-states. Even when a city-state expanded beyond its original boundaries, as Rome did, the political institutions that were thought to be appropriate were largely maintained, even if the structures were no longer suitable for any significant popular participation in governing the vastly expanded republic.
The belief that popular governments must be small still persisted in 1787, when the framers of the American Constitution assembled to design a constitution for a representative republic that would govern over a huge and indefinitely expanding territory. Many of the delegates, including one of its principal architects, James Madison, were distinctly aware that what they were attempting contradicted prevailing wisdom. To be sure, none of the delegates seriously doubted that democratic government might be appropriate for units small enough to permit citizens to assemble. Moreover, their experience with colonial governments also suggested that some sort of popular government might even be feasible on the larger scale. That a popular government could exist on the scale of a union of the thirteen states was, however, highly dubious, and even more so if American boundaries continued to expand, as everyone agreed they would.
Yet by the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States, the older doctrine had lost its force, thanks largely to the plain fact, as Tocqueville famously portrayed, that democracy (by the standards of the time) actually existed in the United States. The country was now the obvious locus of democratic government.
To be sure, this extraordinary expansion in scale required a new set of political institutions that, taken as a whole, had never existed in the older republics--representation, for example, plus political parties, plus the multiplicity of associations (interest groups, we might say today) that Tocqueville found both essential and praiseworthy.
I call attention to this change in the scale of democratic governments less for its historical interest than because it suggests an analogy with the fourth change I suggested. If the main locus of democracy shifted during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the city-state to the nation-state, will its main locus shift over the next century from the nation-state to international organizations?
The Expanded Scope of Democratic Governments
During the past century, the scale of democratic governments has increased along another dimension: democratic governments have expanded prodigiously in the scope of the programs and policies they undertake. They do more, much more, than they once did. The magnitude of this expansion in the scope of democratic governments is revealed, among other ways, by the huge growth in the number of programs and policies that require government expenditures, transfers, revenues, regulations, and so on. Viewing the scope of government from a somewhat different angle, democratic governments have also expanded in their protection of rights, privileges, and entitlements.(1)
The change in the scope of government shows up sharply in the extraordinary increase in government revenues and expenditures (Table 1). As a percentage of GDP, taxes rose from 1950 to 1990 in seventeen European countries by 40%. Overall government receipts increased by nearly 70%. In 1990, government receipts averaged 45% of GDP, ranging from 64% in Sweden and around 56% in both Norway and Denmark to 34% in Greece. Government receipts were high even in the poorest countries: 38% in Portugal and Spain and 34% in Greece.(2)
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