Robert A. Dahl > Quotes

“democratic theory is concerned with processes by which ordinary citizens exert a relatively high degree of control over leaders;”
― Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory

“Why should we feel bound today by a document produced more than two centuries ago by a group of fifty-five mortal men, actually signed by only thirty-nine, a fair number of whom were slaveholders, and adopted in only thirteen states by the votes of fewer than two thousand men, all of whom are long since dead and mainly forgotten?2”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“É dispensável dizer que, na falta do direito de exercer oposição, o direito de "participar" é despido de boa parte do significado que tem num país onde existe a contestação pública. '' P. 25

''Consideremos, então, a democratização como formada por pelo menos duas dimensões: contestação pública e direito de participação'' P.26”
― Robert Dahl

“The Framers feared and detested factions, a view famously expressed by Madison in Federalist No. 10.31 Probably no statement has been so often cited to explain and justify the checks against popular majorities that the Framers attempted to build into the constitution. It is supremely ironic, therefore, that more than anyone except Jefferson, it was Madison who helped to create the Republican Party in order to defeat the Federalists.”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“As with the United States, so too in these other five countries federalism was not so much a free choice as a self-evident necessity imposed by history.”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“It is difficult, indeed impossible, to fit the presidency into the simple categories of consensual or majoritarian. One obstacle to straightforward classification is the president’s combination of roles. Most notably, whereas in the other older democracies the roles of prime minister and ceremonial head of state are separated, in our system they are blended, not only constitutionally but also in popular expectations. We expect our president to serve both as chief executive and as a sort of ceremonial, dignified, American-style elected monarch and moral exemplar.”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“In short, just as happens in American presidential elections, majoritarianism often fails to produce a government that reflects the choices of a majority of voters. Second, the distortion between seats and votes in majoritarian systems sometimes creates a majority of seats for a party that has failed to win even a plurality of votes and thus has actually come in second. In these cases, the minority party among voters becomes the majority party in the legislature. Third, even in majoritarian systems, “in practice, purely two-party politics is a rare phenomenon and often not robust when it appears.” That is, a third party—like the Liberal Democrats in Britain—may prevent either of the two major parties from gaining a majority of votes, even though one of them may gain a majority of seats.”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“I’m going to invite you to contemplate a fictional scenario. Say that we are all citizens in a New England town with a traditional town meeting. As usual, a modest proportion of the citizens eligible to attend have actually turned out, let’s say four or five hundred. After calling the meeting to order, the moderator announces: “We have established the following rules for this evening’s discussion. After a motion has been properly made and seconded, in order to ensure free speech under rules fair to everyone here, each of you who wishes to do so will be allowed to speak on the motion. However, to enable as many as possible to speak, no one will be allowed to speak for more than two minutes.” Perfectly fair so far, you might say. But now our moderator goes on: “After everyone who wishes to speak for two minutes has had the floor, each and every one of you is free to speak further, but under one condition. Each additional minute will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.” The ensuing uproar from the assembled citizens would probably drive the moderator and the board of selectman away from the town hall—and perhaps out of town. Yet isn’t this in effect what the Supreme Court decided in the famous case of Buckley v. Valeo? In a seven-to-one vote, the court held that the First Amendment–guarantee of freedom of expression was impermissibly infringed by the limits placed by the Federal Election Campaign Act on the amounts that candidates for federal office or their supporters might spend to promote their election.3 Well, we’ve had time to see the appalling consequences.”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“Until the twentieth century, most of the world proclaimed the superiority of nondemocratic systems both in theory and in practice.”
― Robert A. Dahl

“Yet among the countries most comparable to the United States and where democratic institutions have long existed without breakdown, not one has adopted our American constitutional system. It would be fair to say that without a single exception they have all rejected it.”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“That the idea of equality was alive and well among Viking freemen in the tenth century is attested to by the answer given by some Danish Vikings when, while traveling up a river in France, they were asked by a messenger calling out from the riverbank, “What is the name of your master?” “None,” they replied, “we are all equals.”3”
― Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy

“Among the most influential of these was George Mason, who wrote the Virginia constitution and its Declaration of Rights. Responding to the insistent demands of Mason and several others, as well as to similar voices outside the Convention, Mason’s fellow Virginian, James Madison, drafted ten amendments that were ratified in 1789–90 by eleven states, more than a sufficient number for their adoption.”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“Both Caligula and Abraham Lincoln sought power, yet it is highly implausible to suppose that Caligula and Lincoln were driven by the same motives.”
― Robert A. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis

“Thrasymachus's hypothesis that people deliberately seek to rule for reasons of self-interest has been restated many times. Hobbes, for example, held that people were impelled by their passions and guided by their reason. Passion is the wind that fills the sails, reason the hand on the rudder. A human being, to use another metaphor, is a chariot pulled by the wild horses of passion and steered by reason. Human desires are insatiable, but reason dictates prudence. With the aid of reason, people can discover the general rules or precepts that will enable them to improve their chances of gaining the ends their passions dictate. All people, then, seek power in order to satisfy their passions. But reasons tells them how to seek power to reduce frustration, defeat, and the chances of violent death.”
― Robert A. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis

“That the idea of equality was alive and well among Viking freemen in the tenth century is attested to by the answer given by some Danish Vikings when, while traveling up a river in France, they were asked by a messenger calling out from the riverbank, “What is the name of your master?” “None,” they replied, “we are all equals.”
― Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy

“Andrew Jackson did just that. In justifying his use of the veto against Congressional majorities, as the only national official who had been elected by all the people and not just by a small fraction, as were Senators and Representatives, Jackson insisted that he alone could claim to represent all the people. Thus Jackson began what I have called the myth of the presidential mandate: that by winning a majority of popular (and presumably electoral) votes, the president has gained a “mandate” to carry out whatever he had proposed during the campaign.”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“Policy-thinking is and must be causality-thinking.”
― Robert A. Dahl

“The American constitutional system is not majoritarian.”
― Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?: Second Edition

“To put it another way, logically it can't be true that the members of an association ought to govern themselves by the democratic process, and at the same time a majority of the association may properly strip a minority of its primary political rights. For, by doing so the majority would deny the minority the rights necessary to the democratic process. In effect therefore the majority would affirm that the association ought not to govern itself by the democratic process.”
― Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics