Is American Democracy Broken? Perspectives and Debates

In this lecture, I will give you an overview of the course and frame the questions and structure of our class.

In this lecture, we develop working definitions to get the lay of the land and create a foundation to build a more systematic understaning of competing images of American democracy. In particular, we will look at "direct" democracy, "representativte" democracy, and majority rule.

This lectures sums up our discussion on stratificationism, pluralism, and hyperpluralism.

NOTE: Please forgive the audio! At some points, the audio becomes distorted but you should still be able to hear what I am saying.