Electoral Choice and Popular Control of Public Policy: The Case of the 1966 House Elections

Recent democratic theorists define democracy procedurally, providing lists of necessary and sufficient conditions for a democratic system. They require a free press, free and open elections, universal suffrage, one-person onevote; they require that candidates or parties with the most votes must win, that minorities must be allowed equal opportunity to become majorities, and so on. Certainly this description fits such theorists as Dahl,1 Downs,2 and Mayo,3 all of whom feel that the basic meaning of democracy is deciding who shall govern. Typical is the following definition of democracy: "One test of an electoral system is the extent to which it is democratic, that is, the extent to which everyone is permitted to participate in the choice (of rulers) ."4 It is argued that since the size and complexity of modern nations have made direct popular control of policies impossible, the best test of democracy is popular selection of decision makers. According to this criterion, we have in the