Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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224<br />
DEMOCRACY TODAY<br />
theoretically) is. And the fact that many today’s born democrats in<br />
Ukraine and other countries of the ex-USSR are former convinced<br />
communists only strengthens the idea that ‘democracy’ could be<br />
perceived rather as a keyword that denotes belonging of titular<br />
‘democrats’ to the self-proclaimed ‘power party’. Indeed, some leaders<br />
of the former USSR republics in 1991 have just renamed their<br />
parties ‘democratic’ instead of ‘communist’, and then they were<br />
elected presidents. At the same time, authors from both East and<br />
West, like Alexander Zinovyev or Colin Crouch, tend to describe<br />
the contemporary social situation as a ‘post-democracy’ [Crouch,<br />
2004; Zinovyev, 2006].<br />
Nevertheless, we still believe that phenomenon of democracy<br />
should not be reduced to its ‘Realpolitik’ connotation, providing the<br />
space for its philosophical comprehension – and its true realization.<br />
<strong>Democracy</strong> from the philosophical perspective is not just a given state<br />
of affairs, a certain way of organizing the political system (featuring<br />
general elections, parliament, free<strong>do</strong>m of speech etc. etc.) – it is rather<br />
an ideal image of harmonious social life, which could indeed be presented<br />
as a process of its development and its implementation in reality<br />
for every human person.<br />
Our position here is close to the tradition of participatory democracy<br />
and opposes a neo-classical understanding of democracy, that of<br />
Schumpeter or Sartori, who present democracy as a limited form of élite<br />
activity. We would like to cite the criticism of that position by Canadian<br />
theoretician of participatory democracy, C. B. Macpherson:<br />
The model of democracy that has been raised to ortho<strong>do</strong>xy in American<br />
political science… is counter-democratic (by the older concept of democracy)<br />
in that it empties out, as being normative, unrealistic, or utopian,<br />
the egalitarian and developmental moral ideal of the original liberaldemocratic<br />
theory, and accepts as an adequate model (and proclaims as<br />
the only accurate model) of democracy, a competition between two or<br />
more élite groups for the power to govern the whole society. <strong>Democracy</strong><br />
is held to be consistent with, and even to require, a low level of citizen<br />
participation: only so, it is said, is the political system likely to stay in<br />
equilibrium. <strong>Democracy</strong> is reduced from a humanist aspiration to a<br />
market equilibrium system. And although the new ortho<strong>do</strong>x theory