Commentary
Over the past two centuries, our Constitution has done a good job of curbing the menace of mob behavior. Unfortunately, social media has created new challenges by re-empowering political mobs—notably, but not exclusively, the “Twitter Mob.”
In this essay, I discuss the risks mobs pose to republican political systems. I explain how the American Founders addressed those risks and how modern social media has re-created some of them. At the end, I propose two partial remedies. I encourage readers and policymakers to think of others.
The Historical Background
Most early republics—such as the democratic republics of ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, and various Swiss cantons—relied on mass citizen assemblies to elect magistrates and approve laws. In theory, these assemblies were deliberative. In fact, they often degenerated into irrational fury. Later generations referred to them as “mobs,” an abbreviation of the Latin phrase vulgus mobile, meaning “the fickle common people.”…