Democratic Responsiveness, the Senate Filibuster, and Distributive Equity in the United States

The United States has been internationally seen as the “beacon of democracy” since its founding over two centuries ago. Since initiating the great democratic experiment, the ideals of equal political representation and self-governance have become baked into the nation’s culture, historical consciousness, and public policy. Undoubtedly, the second half of the twentieth century’s international conflicts, within which the United States was involved, were dominated by intentions to promote democratic institutions abroad. However, in recent decades, the foundations of democracy in America have begun to show vulnerabilities, particularly when it comes to the democratic responsiveness of the government. For a myriad of complex and historically contingent reasons, the twenty-first century has ushered in an era of American politics in which the capacity for congressional governance has been significantly limited. Certainly, social phenomena such as historically high levels of political polarization, and the subsequent widening of the ideological gap between the two major parties, has something to do with this. But as this analysis shows, these social phenomena with real political implications are actually symptoms of a larger problem; namely, the numerous institutional flaws in our democratic system that reliably generate political inequity and threaten the viability of our nation’s political structure.