Where is American democracy headed? A distinguished political scientist, student of the short history of democratic rule, has a pretty good idea . . .
As the practice of “free elections,” democracy has only a short history, mainly since 1800 under the influence of the movement toward a broader suffrage and the election of a larger number of public officials. Its success is limited mainly to Western Europe, the United States and the British Dominions. However, the tradition of two-party elections is almost exclusively Anglo-American. A new era for democratic elections has obviously dawned with the rise of vast pressure groups and the so-called “mass media,” where, as in television, personality instead of principle surges to the foreground and consciousness of party and party-principle disappears.
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