Should the United States Change to a Direct Democracy or remain a Representative Democracy?

The United States has for a long time been using representative democracy. This is a form of governance where citizens elect representatives who will be involved in the formation of the laws of the country on behalf of the citizens. In this case, citizens continue being the sovereign power though political power is directly exercised via elected representatives. This is quite different from direct democracy where citizens have active and direct participation in the government decision making. After studying the two forms of democracy, I strongly believe that the United States should continue exercising representative democracy. One of the main reasons is that the U.S. is a consolidation of 52 states each with a huge population such that the state’s own affairs are equivalent to a country in non-state consolidated environment. The U.S. population is around 325.7 million based on 2017 estimate. This means the country will need to use a huge amount of money every time there is a law to be passed to facilitate citizens’ full participation if the country was to adopt direct democracy. This could be unmanageable in terms of cost. Direct democracy is normally viable in small countries with manageable population. In addition in a country such as the U.S. the size of the population also suggest increase in social issues initiating needs for more laws. The number of laws that may need to be made might be considerably many for frequent population involvement. The management of the process and data analysis would be quite hectic for U.S. Thus, direct democracy cannot be appropriate in the country.

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