Was the Boulder Free Zone in 'The Stand' a true democracy?

Answer 1

No. While purportedly so, it was a "parliamentarian democracy", and there is an enormous difference.

In the parliamentary style, there is a governing body - in the Boulder Free Zone's case, a "committee" - that decides things. The membership of the committee is "at large", meaning that the whole of the populace is voting for each one.

This is the kernel of a "representative democracy" in which various segments of the populace will have a representative that they and they alone vote for.

After that comes a "republic", in which while the representatives vote on various things, they are bound by a Constitution or body of laws, and so can not vote on certain things.

As the book showed, any government governed by rules of parliamentary procedure - or any other codified procedure - can be manipulated. As witness Harold Lauder's masterful manipulation that secured the "ad hoc committee" as the "permanent committee" without the need for separate votes for each individual member.

Answer 2

The Boulder Free Zone in 'The Stand' was more of a democratic society, as decisions were made collectively by the members of the community. However, it was not a perfect democracy, as power dynamics and conflicts still existed within the group.