Democracy

Democracy is a form of collective decision making that presupposes some form of equality among the participants. The term is used empirically and normatively, often simultaneously. It is often used to describe or distinguish one kind of political regime from another. A democratic system, for example, is one in which there are procedures and institutions for capturing the views of citizens and translating them into binding decisions. At the same time, however, these empirical descriptions often contain within them normative claims about the way institutions ought to be structured or behave. Thus, it can be said that one society (whether now or in the past) is more (or less) democratic than another. The ideal of equality is particularly important to the normative evaluation of democracy. A democratic political system, on this view, is one that manifests in its institutions and procedures a conception of its members as free and equal and thus owed equal respect.

If we look to the Greek roots of democracy (demokratia), demos refers to the people and kratos to power, capacity, or rule. Democracy, therefore, refers to the power or the capacity of the people to do certain things in the public realm.

These simple definitions, however, betray deep complexities. Who are “the people”? What kind of power do they exercise, and what is it, exactly, that they are supposed to do? It is particularly difficult to establish just who the people ought to be. Are they simply the mass of the adult population sharing the territory in question? Or should we define them as all those whose most important interests are affected by the law or policy under consideration? How and where do we draw the distinction between who is in and who is out?

Even if the people can be so identified, what is it that they do when they exercise their power? In general, we can distinguish between direct and indirect forms of democratic rule. Direct democracy implies that the people exercise some kind of direct control, or authority, over their society. Indirect democracy, on the other hand, implies that the people are represented by others who make decisions on their behalf (but who remain accountable to them in various ways). According to the former, exercising authority or control might entail not only participating in deliberations about the best course of action but having control over and responsibility for implementation. According to the latter, being able to validate the decision-making processes of others—without necessarily having participated in the deliberations themselves—is enough.

Winston Churchill once quipped that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that had been tried. Recent work in political science has investigated the conditions in which democratic government can emerge, produce coherent outcomes, and remain stable over time. The results of this research often seem to confirm Churchill's suspicion; democracy is the least bad of a range of possible systems, but it remains deeply imperfect. Political theorists, on the other hand, have generally focused on the normative evaluation of democracy. How can democracy be justified? Which kinds of democracy are morally desirable and why? What is the relation between democracy and other important values, such as liberty, equality, and social justice? What is the scope of democracy?

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