Democracy has a number of dimensions and multiple definitions.
A form of government in which sovereignty resides in the citizens as a body.
A system of government "whereby the governed people enjoy control over the governing authorities." (Philip Pettit)
Other definitions emphasize popular participation in determining policies that affect the whole community. (Keohane, pp. 156-157)
Three types of democratic governance:
1.representative or liberal democracy. Example: modern nation-states
2.traditional participatory democracy. Example: South African government
3.classical democracy. Example: the Athenian polis, workplace in large modern industries. (Keohane, pp.158-161)
John Dewey's The Public and Its Problems (1927)defines the essential conditions for democracy. In his view it is the formation of a public that can recognize and govern itself. The democratic machinery that has so far evolved is a poor approximation of the practices that would emerge in a true democracy. "We have every reason to think that whatever changes may take place in existing democratic machinery, they will be of the sort to make the interest of the public a more supreme guide and criterion of governmental activities, and to enable the public to form and manifest its purposes still more authoritatively."
"The prime difficulty is that of discovering the means by which a scattered, mobile, and manifold public may so recognize itself as to define and express its interests." (Keohane, p.168)
We have frequently printed the word Democracy, yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.
Walt Whitman Democratic Vistas (1871) (West, p.1)
Democracy is not just a system of governance, as we tend to think of it, but a cultural way of being. (West, p. 68)
The good society is one that is based on three equalities: economic equality, today known as socialism, or the sharing of wealth; political equality or democracy, or sharing in political decisions which affect daily life; and social equality which, to some extent, results in socialism and democracy, and is characterized by a lack of social classes and discrimination based on color, faith, race or sex. In the good society people are judged according to their intellectual and moral character, as reflected in their public and private lives and demonstrated in the spirit of public service at all times and through every means. Social equality aims at removing social classes and differencesbetween urban and rural life by providing equal opportunity for cultural refinement.
Mamoud Mohamed Taha, The Second Message of Islam (1987) (West, p. 108)
Democracy is not simply a matter of an electoral system in which citizens get the right to vote and elected officials must compete for the public's favor....All systems set up to enact democracy are subject to corrupt manipulations, and that is why the public commitment to democratic involvement is so vital. Genuine, robust democracy must be brought to life through democratic individuality, democratic community, and democratic society.
....From the time of that first Athenian democratic experiment in the fifth century BC to the birth of the American democratic experiment in the eighteenth century, the consolidation of the elite power was the primary object of democratic revolt. This will to transform corrupted forms of elite rule into more democratic ways of life is an extraordinary force, though each new democratic result of the exercise of this will falls short of democratic ideals. This is why all democracies are incomplete and unfinished, and this is why American democracy is a work in progress.
(West, pp. 203-204)
In a democracy, each person's voice should count the same in determining the final outcome. "One man, one vote." Too great a deviation from this ideal raises the question whether the system can truly be called democratic. (Keohane, p. 174)
Insofar as equality is closely correlated with democracy, there is a fundamental tension between leadership and democracy as well. (Keohane, pp. 174-175)
Sources:
Cornel West. Democracy Matters.(New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2004).
Nannerl O. Keohane. Thinking About Leadership. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
