ABSTRACT
The democratic formula seems simple enough in words: democracy means rule by the people. James Wilson, the Philadelphia Convention's most consistent exponent of the democratic formula, anticipated this curious metaphysic of representation. In the early phases of modern history it was the assembly that appeared as the principal—though still partial—embodiment of the democratic formula. Of course in the earlier stages many of the governmental institutions expressed the democratic formula only inadequately, and with manifest distortions. Experience has proved, it may be parenthetically remarked, that the actual effect of these measures has been very different from what was advertised by ideologists who affirmed their desirability on the basis of the logic of democratism. Democratism was present as an epochal sentiment, and continued to have a cumulative effect in the sense of its internal logic. Successive refinements sought to squeeze the lumpy political structure more and more tightly inside the strict democratist formula: toward the political shape that Ortega calls, "hyperdemocracy".
