Democracy

A DEMOCRACY IS a political system in which all adult citizens have the opportunity to participate in decisions affecting their interests. The more significant and comprehensive these opportunities are, the greater the level of democracy: political theorists discuss, in these terms, the “widening” or “deepening” of democratic decision-making. Ultimately, this extension of the democratic principle can lead to the questioning of the “political” category itself and its relationship to social choices determined by a market economy. However, within widely shared conceptions of liberal democracy, the economy is not a realm of civic self-determination, while the polity itself comprises decision-making by representatives elected by a form of majority voting among the population. Representative liberal democracy describes the overwhelming majority of political systems in the world today, ...