CHAPTER XXI THE OUTLOOK FOR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT IN writing of the progress made and of results obtained in the struggle for responsible government, we are not dealing with democracy as such. There is no question raised as to whether or not democracy is desirable. For this purpose its desirability is assumed. We are dealing with fundamentals of the organization and the procedure through which and in which democracy must express itself the mechanism by means of which "government of the people, by the people, and for the people must be realized. A Question of Machinery for Making Popular Control Effective This is the reason that our forefathers undertook to establish here a representative system. A representative system is a type of organization, a kind of machine. The purpose of its adoption was to make democracy possible to a numerous and widely scattered people. It was to provide a great and growing nation with the instruments whereby the will of the people might control their institutions of public service to provide an effective mechan ism of popular control. Fundamentally, all processes and methods of popular control rest on the recognition of the need for leadership the purpose of the control being to make the organization subservient by providing practical ways of holding the leader accountable to those for whose benefit an institution is established and maintained. And the exercise of this function of control is the only end or aim of adopting the representative principle. Every device of popular control rests on the principle that control over the organization must be exercised through its leadership. In a small local democracy popular control is made effective by bringing the head of the service to be controlled before an assembly composed of the whole democratic "electorate." In a populous, widely scattered democracy, it is conceived that popular control may still be made effective; that this may be done by interposing a body of representatives — bringing the head of a service to be controlled before an "Assembly or "Congress" made up of persons chosen by the broad democratic "electorate to represent them, and in a manner to give the process news value, and then make their acts and decisions reviewable by the people. In order to achieve this result the vicarious town meeting has to pursue the same method of inquiry and deliberation and initial decision as is used in the real town-meeting of the small democracy. The success of the representative principle, however, depends on having the proceedings conducted openly and publicly and in a manner to make news of them. In a great democracy it is only through "news" that the people may be kept as well informed as if each voter attended the meeting. By means of such a procedure popular control may be made quite as effective through a plebiscite as if the people in fact came together in one great meeting. In a large, populous, widely extended democracy both the representative "assembly or " and a congress democratic electorate" are necessary to the exercise of popular control; the "electorate" is helpless unless the representative" assembly" or "congress" performs the inquisitorial and deliberative function, and does it in an open public, news-making manner - serving as the organ by means of which the acts and proposals of officers who are to be held accountable are made known to the people. This done, then the electorate may act with intelligence. |