American Government - Essay Example

Representative democracy Representative democracy is a form of democracy whereby the government is founded on the principles of people’s representatives (Roger, 2004). The people’s representative’s means that an independent ruling body formed to represents the interests of the people during the election period. The body does not always act to fulfill their wishes but may act otherwise in accordance with the prevailing circumstances. The representatives are elected by the voters where the winning candidate becomes the people’s representative.

Effectiveness of Representative democracy in United StatesRepresentative democracy is a failure in the United States of America. The so called representatives of the peoples that are chosen only serve to represent themselves and their interests. Their aims are to make themselves popular in the world over and to create fear among nations (Roger, 2004). The people have no power to make decisions of national governance as it would be in true democracy. The system ensures important decisions to be made by few people who create inefficiency in the whole process of decision making and execution.

There concentration of power on top level has seen stagnation of economy among other bad decisions that have continued to plague the tax payer. This form of the government represents their wealthy clients at best often ignoring the have-nots who are the people who have elected it. Therefore the party in power is not the problem facing American but the social contract structure whereby decision making process is left for the wealthy few instead of being distributed to the people. The only solution would be to redesign the American government and that would be through constitutional amendment to restore the power to run the country back to the people to ensure the system get efficient since the elected representatives will become directly responsible to their actions and answerable to the people.

Furthermore, decision making will be decentralized.Social contract Social contract comprises the philosophical therories describing agreements between the ruled and the rulers among the members of an organized society and the philosophies defined the duties of each party, limitations, and rights (Stuart, 2007). A contract in normal cases comes with specific obligations and therefore in political scenario a contract between the citizens and the sovereign power grounds the nature of obligation on each party.

Under the social contract the legitimate authority is drawn from the consent of the people.Effects of social contract on the structure of the American governmentMembers of the society are bound by the social contract to respect the ruling government as the government is bound to serve the citizenry that has elected it. Due to the belief by the Americans that the power of the governed is much important to the government social contract has influenced the structure of the government through the constitution.

The constitution has defined the civil rights whereby the citizens have gained them in return to subjection to civil law. The social contract has spelt the human rights of every individual and the penal code for the offenders of the law. The constitution has influenced the way the decisions are made and the protocol followed in solving crisis in running a country by the various authorities (Stuart, 2007). On the contrary the social contract gives the civil rights which are not natural and only remains in place once they are able to meet the interest of the system for which it is created.

In case of failure the system terms are renegotiated in term of the change or amendments of the constitution. References Roger d. Rosenberger. (2004). How to Fix what’s Really Wrong with the American governmentStuart M Butler. (2007). Restoring the American Social Contract: New Social Contract.Washington DC. John Hopkins University