Direct democracy was common in the pre-modern world, but that isn't the subject here: The authors identify two principal roots of what they deem modern representative democracy. First is the presence ...

Representation is an essential but troubled element of American democracy. The entire US political system is built on an idea of representation. Indeed, representative government is guaranteed to ...

I realize that as a part of its messaging, the Republican Party likes to talk about how democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. I also understand why they are against ...

What Ed Meese and Kelly Shackelford describe in “The Left’s War on the Rule of Law” (op-ed, May 17) illustrates how social justice is meant to operate: outside of our governance structures. Within ...

People around the world generally believe representative democracy is a good way to govern their countries. But as a new Pew Research Center survey highlights, many are dissatisfied with the way it is ...

From an oligarchy to a democracy to a constitutional monarchy, there are many ways government can operate. The government is a representative democracy, meaning citizens vote for their government ...

Every other Tuesday, Civics 101 hosts, Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, join NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to talk about how our democratic institutions actually work. But there's ...

The honeymoon's over - if there ever was one. One month into office, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is at loggerheads with the legislative Republicans over whether to submit a ballot issue to the voters ...

Thirty years ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a widespread belief that democracy would rapidly spread to envelop the whole world. Now we’re worried about whether democracy can survive ...