The Disadvantages to Democracy are Built in to the System and Ultimately Lead to Tyranny.

The disadvantages to democracy depend on the type of democracy that is under discussion.

What is referred to today as democracy in America is more exactly a system of a democratic federal republic.

The distinction is important because it allows the United States to function in a different way, compared to a system of “two wolves and a sheep deciding what is for dinner”, as John Adams famously described democracy in its original form.

The disadvantages that Adams and other statesmen of the United States saw at the beginning of the nation were related to the uncomfortable proximity of “rule by the people” to “mob rule”.

They saw the potential for tyranny all too clearly if a majority or even relative majority was allowed to rewrite the rulebook to suit its own ends.

This threat of the ‘tyranny of the majority’ has survived throughout the centuries.

There is still the possibility in a so-called democratic system that a majority represses a minority, using the constitutional structure of the country to get into power.

This was the case of Nazi party in Germany that was legitimately elected as the “largest minority” and that then went on to create a real majority rule in Germany and elsewhere with the catastrophic consequences already known.

Democracy Needs to be Properly Understood

Such a case, while unthinkable in a country such as America today, falls within the bounds of the literal definition of democracy, whether direct or representative.

It illustrates the difficulties of entrusting political choices to people who do not necessarily appreciate what is at stake, and is among the disadvantages to democracy.

Majority Rule that Crushes Minorities

However, in pure democracy, smart manipulation of the system can lead to the successive definition of different minorities to be repressed until what is left is a power elite that was careful enough to never include itself in any of the minorities that it targeted.

Pure democracy suggests that minorities in an ethnic, religious, sexual or lifestyle sense will always be at risk, according to the collective opinion of the majority, one of the disadvantages to democracy.

In this sense, articles in the US Constitution that guarantee freedom of speech in America are anti-democratic.

This sounds preposterous until one remembers that in this context democracy is being defined simply as majority rule.

Short Term Survival for the Power Elite

In terms of disadvantages to democracy, the majority can define what the minority says as being undesirable or illegal, and freedom of speech disappears.

Likewise, if the definition of poverty in a “democracy” is such that poor people are in a minority, there is nothing to stop the majority from voting against and therefore killing off any notion of state aid or welfare for the poor.

Even in the democratic federal republic with its system of checks and balances, the democratic dimension still gives cause for certain concerns.

With the requirement to be able to change governments according to the majority vote of the people, many administrations take a dangerously short-term view of their four-year term.

Policies and decisions are geared towards a return to power at the next general election, rather than to the long-term benefit of the nation and its public.