Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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To assess forms of representation, one needs criteria. These can be<br />
provided by looking at how modes of representation enact different<br />
democratic virtues. To have that discussion in a useful way requires<br />
dispensing with views of democracy in which all good democratic<br />
things happily go together.<br />
1. Minimal democracy and democracy<br />
62<br />
DEMOCRACY TODAY<br />
There can certainly be bad and unfair democracies, but it is hard to<br />
imagine an actual ‘minimal’ democracy in the sense that this concept<br />
has often been used in the last sixty years.<br />
Proponents of a ‘minimal’ definition of democracy, from Schumpeter<br />
on, have achieved large political effects and limited analytical results.<br />
Minimal definitions of democracy <strong>do</strong> notable work in rejecting<br />
the democratic claims of many regimes and political forces. This is<br />
valuable work in a world where no licensing procedure prevents a<br />
tyranny from declaring itself democratic.<br />
Yet analytically these efforts have not been so successful. They<br />
narrow the meaning of their own concepts so severely as to leave them<br />
with little substance. An election, to take the key term, cannot be nearly<br />
as limited an event as most definitions of minimal democracy claim or<br />
imply, or else the term is simply misapplied. We <strong>do</strong> not recognize a<br />
contest with one candidate as an election. Nor <strong>do</strong> we regard an election<br />
without real competition and uncertainty as an election. Nor <strong>do</strong> we<br />
accept an election under conditions in which citizens cannot express<br />
their views of candidates openly and actively. In these ways and many<br />
more, elections contain a robust range of political and cultural elements.<br />
There is not much minimal about this complex of conditions.<br />
Usually the debate goes like this. Someone – famously Joseph<br />
Schumpeter or more recently Adam Przeworski – tries to provide<br />
a narrow and limited definition of democracy: democracies choose<br />
rulers via elections.<br />
Here is Schumpeter’s definition:<br />
“[…W]e now take the view that the role of the people is to produce a<br />
government, or else an intermediate body which in turn will produce a