What do we call a system where government power comes from the people?

A system in which government power comes from the people is called popular sovereignty. The phrase combines popular, meaning of or relating to the people, with sovereignty, meaning supreme political authority. Together it asserts that the ultimate source of governmental authority is the public, not a hereditary ruler, a self-appointed leader, or a divine grant.

The American Founders made popular sovereignty foundational. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 declared that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The Constitution's Preamble in 1787 begins with the words We the People do ordain and establish this Constitution. Both statements signal that legitimate political power flows upward from those who are governed, not downward from rulers.

The principle was developed by Enlightenment thinkers including John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government in 1689 argued that legitimate political power exists only by consent, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose Social Contract in 1762 located sovereignty in the general will of the people.

The American constitutional order implements popular sovereignty through several institutions. Members of the House of Representatives have always been directly elected by voters. Since the Seventeenth Amendment took effect in 1913, U.S. senators have been chosen by direct popular vote rather than by state legislatures. Presidents are chosen through the Electoral College, whose electors are themselves selected by voters in each state. Constitutional amendments must be ratified by three-fourths of the states acting through elected legislatures or specially called conventions. State governors and most state legislators are popularly elected.

Federal and state officeholders pledge loyalty to the Constitution itself, not to a sovereign, a political party, or any individual. Naturalized citizens take an oath that converts tacit consent into express consent.

Popular sovereignty does not authorize unlimited majority rule. The Constitution and Bill of Rights protect individuals and minorities against majorities through specific guarantees, structural features like the Senate and the Bill of Rights, and supermajority requirements for amendments and treaties.

The principle has not always been fully realized. The Founding generation excluded women, enslaved people, Native Americans, and many others from full political participation. Successive amendments and statutes, especially the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, have progressively expanded who participates in popular sovereignty.