Popular democracy

Popular democracy is a notion of direct democracy based on referendums and other devices of empowerment and concretization of popular will. The concept evolved out of the political philosophy of Populism, as a fully democratic version of this popular empowerment ideology, but since it has become independent of it, and some even discuss if they are antagonistic or unrelated now (see Values). Though the expression has been used since the 19th century and may be applied to English Civil War politics, at least the notion (or the notion in its current form) is deemed recent and has only recently been fully developed.

Some figures, like TV documentary producer, director and writer Colin Thomas, see the Levellers, resistance of groups to both the Stuart monarchy and Oliver Cromwell’s English Republic as early popular democracy advocacy groups. Thomas sees the line of this early popular democracy going through the dissenting church, to the American Revolutionaries and later British trade unionism.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense is sometimes considered to defend a form of popular democracy.Andrew Jackson was considered a defender of popular democracy as a politician and president, and his presidency is considered as having made the transition from republic (Jeffersonian democracy) to popular democracy (Jacksonian democracy) in the United States

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