What Makes a Democracy Strong?
Author: Esther Olojo
When we think about democracy, a lot of words come to mind: freedom, liberty, justice, elections, voting, representation, rights. These are the “big picture” ideas that usually show up in textbooks or in class. But just because a government has those features doesn’t always mean it’s really giving democracy. One piece that makes or breaks the system is equality.
Equality, at its core, means that every person has an equal chance to participate in political life, no matter their gender, race or background. Without equality, the promise of democracy becomes hollow. True democracy depends not only on having the right institutions but also on ensuring that everyone can access and benefit from them.
History makes this clear. Democracy has often promised fairness without fully delivering it. As Susan Mendus, in her essay, Losing the Faith: Feminism and Democracy, argues that democracy, early democracies claimed equality but excluded women from full political participation. Her point shows that even systems built on freedom can still uphold inequality when they decide whose voices matter. For decades, women were not part of the “we the people,” and later, people of color faced the same exclusion. These struggles show that democracy must constantly be rewritten and challenged to live to its ideals.
Economic inequality also shows where democracy starts to break down. John Weeks, a political economist, explains that when too much money ends up in the hands of a few people, those people get more power to influence politics. We can see this today when wealth donors and big corporations spend millions on campaigns, while regular citizens can’t compete with that kind of money. When money starts deciding who gets heard, democracy begins to feel less like
“power to the people” and more like power to the rich. Similarly, Wendy Brown argues that neoliberalism reshapes citizens into consumers and competitors, which undermines the idea of equal participation in the public sphere. Instead of seeing ourselves as political equals, we’re encouraged to think of ourselves as individuals competing for advantage. That shift pulls democracy further away from its foundations.
So why is equality so essential for democracy? Because without it, the other democratic elements, voting, rights, freedoms, don’t function as intended. They might exist on paper, but in practice, they only serve a small portion of society. Equality is what ensures that democracy really means governments by the people, not just government by some of the people.
Democracy has never been perfect, but it is a system that can be improved and expanded when citizens demand it. To me, equality is the measure of whether a democracy is working. If a system excludes people, whether through laws, systematic inequality, or cultural barriers then it isn't truly democratic. At the end of the day, without equality, democracy becomes an empty title rather than a lived system.
References:
Brown, Wendy. “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization.” Political Theory 34, no. 6 (2006): 690–714. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591706293016.
Mendus, Susan. “Losing the Faith: Feminism and Democracy.” In Democracy, edited by John Schwarzmantel and Ricardo Blaug, 318–24. New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7312/blau17412-070.
Weeks, John F. “Wealth Accumulates and Democracy Decays.” In Democracy, edited by John Schwarzmantel and Ricardo Blaug, 357–60. New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7312/blau17412-077.