There are many partisan responses to this question. Of course,
internationally, the United States is regarded by many people to be the
gold standard of what constitutes a democracy (perhaps because the US
was the first nation that was born out of a successful revolution
against an existing dictatorship and that quickly produced a written
Constitution, which endorses many democratic principles and which lasts
proudly till the present day). However, that reputation is not a
substantive answer to the question as to whether the United States is
today a democracy. There are dictatorships that have democratic written
constitutions. Furthermore, the way that a constitution is enforced or
not enforced can determine whether or not the nation’s constitution is
real or whether it’s instead more of a mere formality than a reality.
