Secrecy Votes and Secret Talk
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Description
The promise of democracy is that it may motivate government to serve a wide range of interests—those of all citizens—and it may enlist in that pursuit a wide range of intelligences from all of its citizens. But involving all citizens in collective decision making poses onerous organizational problems that may have no satisfactory solution, especially once the citizenry has become essentially universal. And in fact, modern democracies have generally chosen not to try to engage citizens directly in policy choice, but rather to govern through elected representatives who are in some way responsible to the citizens. For this reason, voting, in elections and in parliament, has become the most important democratic aspect of contemporary democracies. Votes are the way we pick rulers and the way that those rulers impose laws in our name.
Source Publication
Secrecy and Publicity in Votes and Debates
Source Editors/Authors
Jon Elster
Publication Date
2015
Recommended Citation
Ferejohn, John A., "Secrecy Votes and Secret Talk" (2015). Faculty Chapters. 489.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/489
