ons to democracy. Democracy is in part a state of public mind. A democratic public has some common sense of itself as a people. A democratic public has some sense of control over the conduct of government; the people can at the least throw the current set of rascals out. Even those people who passionately dislike the government in office accept its legitimacy, and confine their opposition to constitutional channels; they organize protests, but not militias.
Democracy is also an institutional structure. The people at the top are held formally accountable in some way. They can be voted out of office, or removed by a vote of no confidence. The opposition has a permanent place in public life and official debate. Although the traditional theory of democracy and republicanism was hostile to political parties (as reflected in the Federalist Papers, which condemn them) a party system has been found indispensable in modern times.3 Only when democratic sentiment prevails among the population, and the machinery for democratic regulation of
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