How Did Jeffersonian Democracy Differ from Jacksonian Democracy - Essay Example

 While Jeffersonian democracy resembles Jacksonian democracy in part through recognition of people’s rights and will as expressed in the freedom to participate in the affairs of the state, the two political movements differ in terms of the extent of judgment by the common people. On one hand, Thomas Jefferson is primarily known to have stood by the fundamental principle of “absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority” where he is acclaimed for advancing the ‘will of the people during elections to guide the republic’s direction.

Jefferson, nevertheless, states “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine” which reflects an ideology that the rule of people ought to be regulated to a certain degree. Jeffersonian democracy is characteristic by agricultural development, the perception of a weak central government, and a struggle for equality amid rising social and technological changes (Jeffersonian Ideology). Jacksonian democracy, on the other hand, proceeded with a more radical approach in the belief of a system where common citizens ought to possess higher judgment or power of governance rather than the mere right or liberty to elect.

The equal political policy attached to Andrew Jackson’s form of democracy enabled his democratic concept to be perceived as one that eradicates the ‘monopoly’ of the elites in the government. To Jackson, it is possible to acquire good leaders out of the common and the uneducated yet during his time, the scope of such democracy did not cover the resolution of the issue of slavery (Jacksonian Democracy). Through the help of M. Van Buren, President Jackson managed to develop a democratic party which occurred to enhance the thematic relevance of his being a “champion of the common man”.

The party consisted of ideals that claimed to promote the welfare and interests of the ordinary rural and urban working classes as it discouraged the elite people’s economic progress. With the democracy of President Jefferson, however, democrats maintained the philosophy that central government must not have strong power as it might tend to defeat its good-natured core purpose of representing and serving the people. Thus, this bears the implication that the central government’s weakness would necessarily create strength for the people of a such democratic society. Though Jefferson gave no special treatment to farmers and workers of menial jobs, both of whom had been declared chief concerns of the Jacksonian democracy, he channeled to focus on the separation of the state and the church.

By this decree, considering the diversity of religious beliefs, no official state church was proclaimed at the time to justify a democratic ground that people need not pay taxes nor be required to support the cause of principle or doctrine they had no faith in (Jeffersonian Democracy)