Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

DEMOCRATIC COMPROMISE OR COMPROMISING
DEMOCRACY: RETHINKING PARTICIPATION
Heidi Matisonn
UKZN SOUTH AFRICA
DEMOCRACY HAS WON. WHETHER IN THE FACE OF EXTERNAL FORCES OR INTERNAL
PRESSURES, the label ‘democracy’ has become the ultimate legitimiser.
A political regime is justified when it is ‘a democracy’; policies, laws
and actions are acceptable when they are ‘democratic’. As John Dryzek
puts it ‘democracy is today a near-universal validating principle for
political systems’ (Dryzek 2005: 218). In practice, however, although
professing to conform to the notion of democracy, these regimes,
policies, laws and actions often differ substantially from one another.
In theory too, interest in democracy is evident from the amount of
scholarly attention given to and time spent on it, whether the attention
is positive or critical. Less evident are the normative justifications for
democracy today given the meritocratic and competitive global society
(in other ways) in which we live. With the exception of a select few,
philosophers from the time of Plato have been very negative about
‘democracy’, however conceived. Even those who appear to have supported
something resembling what we know as democracy did not do so
unequivocally, with some, like Jean Jacques Rousseau, James Madison
and Karl Marx, being unwilling to use the term itself. Today, however,
despite there being significant disagreement as to what democracy’s
value is, there seems to be widespread agreement that it does have
a value. But while vastly differing political regimes throughout the
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DEMOCRATIC COMPROMISE
OR COMPROMISING
DEMOCRACY: RETHINKING
PARTICIPATION
Heidi Matisonn