There is no single way to explain democracy. Americans have, through most of our 250-year history, been proud of the fact that we live in one, and polling supports the notion that democracy is popular. What’s harder to discern, though, is what a healthy, robust democracy looks like. 

What is democracy? 

Democracy is a system of government where the people freely select their leaders and those leaders are constrained while in office. Maintaining that system requires a complex balance of laws, norms, and institutions that can be achieved in different ways. 

Many of the critical ingredients of democracy — things like checks and balances and press freedom — can be somewhat hard to see in day-to-day life. The best way to understand it, then, is to understand its benefits. Democratic governance comes with the rule of law, individual rights, and electoral freedom.

These three pillars of democracy balance and support one another. And when democracy is working as it’s supposed to, its citizens should be able to rely on each of these three pillars. 

These pillars have not always been accessible to every American, but they are the north star that we are striving towards. 

The rule of law

Freedom under law is like the air we breathe. People take it for granted and are unaware of it – until they are deprived of it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

The United States is a remarkably prosperous country. That success is directly thanks to democratic systems, institutions, and processes that ensure predictable, fair, and rules-based outcomes. Democracy is good for business. Full stop. This is true around the world. Prosperity is a notable outcome of having a system that operates under the rule of law, but it’s not the only benefit Americans enjoy that stems from that single principle. 

It’s also imperative for a variety of federal agencies, from the Department of Justice to the IRS, to remain independent of political interference. These agencies are ultimately designed to give citizens a sense of predictability, and it’s that predictability that leads to a feeling of freedom. Of course, freedom doesn’t mean that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want. You can’t drive 100 miles an hour down a residential street or trick your neighbors into investing in an elaborate ponzi scheme. Those are illegal. And the consequences for breaking those laws — up to losing your freedom — need to be predictably enforced by people seeking to apply the rules fairly and rigorously, not use the rules for their own interests.

Individual rights and the restraints on power

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

George Orwell

Like the rule of law, the rights we have in a democracy are sometimes easy to take for granted. The right to speak our minds, to travel freely, to worship as we wish, to feel safe and secure in our homes, to earn a living, to love and marry, to criticize the powerful, and to not be arbitrarily and indefinitely imprisoned are all core to American identity, but they are not a given. Everything around us is built on the foundation of fundamental rights like freedom of speech and due process and privacy and equal protection.

Yes, violations of those rights can happen dramatically. You can be arrested, deported, or investigated by the government. But it can also be more subtle. Modern authoritarian regimes are able to wield immense influence over their populations, creating an environment of fear and self-censorship where your rights are not guaranteed, and the rules are different for different groups. 

Electoral freedom and the ability to choose our leaders

Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.

Adam przeworksi, NYU

The easiest way to determine whether an election is meaningful is to simply look at the outcomes. Do the people in power routinely lose and leave power through elections? If yes, great. If no, that’s not a democracy. This gets to the heart of why free and fair elections really matter. It’s not just that we the people get to select our leaders — and therefore have a say in policy decisions (although obviously that’s important). It’s that we have a failsafe way to hold our leaders accountable by removing them from power when we inevitably need to do so.

It can be easy to think of elections as outcome dependent, but elections are most important because they give us a real contingency plan against being led by people who no longer represent us or our interests. We need the ability to vote to throw our leaders out of office if needed, and elections are the best way to do it.

Democracy is important and invisible

The easiest way to understand democracy is to consider what your life might be like without it. It’s a system of government that gives you freedoms, predictability, and a way to make change in the world around you. It might not ever be perfect, but it’s the best system for reaching toward perfection.