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The Political Returns of Democratic Governance
Georges A. Fauriol
A significant characteristic of modern governance is an ever-changing
interaction between citizen and government. This relationship has
been in motion since the dawn of civilization with an endless search
for a workable calibration of the fundamentals of how governance
is created. This calibration remains very active today: The locus of
modern governance centers on accountability and in turn highlights
the role of individual citizens. How does this develop? Why are some
experiences more successful than others? Ultimately, what lessons can
be gleaned from these experiences?
We can pick up the story with the various renditions of the Magna Carta
in Britain that emerged between 1215 and 1225.
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These undertook to
formalize a political discourse between the monarchy and its feudal
constituents regarding their respective duties and responsibilities. In
effect it placed an elementary but emerging form of governance in a
wider institutional matrix. Five centuries later, an American response
was born in a political process that underscored the very idea of
revolution against state authority – in this case, independence from
the British Crown. An approximation and less consistent variant of
