Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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national executive or government. And we define: the democratic method<br />
is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which<br />
individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle<br />
for the people’s vote.” [1]<br />
Here is Przeworski’s statement:<br />
“Yet suppose this is all there is to democracy: that rulers are elected. Is it<br />
little? That depends on the point of departure…Yet if the point of departure<br />
is that in any society there are conflicts, of values and of interests, electing<br />
rulers appears nothing short of miraculous.” [2] (44)<br />
These definitions focus on choosing a government via elections<br />
– ‘electing rulers’ in Przeworski’s terms or a ‘competitive struggle for<br />
the peoples’ vote’ in Schumpeter’s.<br />
Taking the bait, critics then claim that this definition is too narrow,<br />
often that it is only electoral or formal rather than substantive.<br />
The argument goes on and on, for at least six or seven decades now.<br />
While critics of minimal definitions are guilty of simplification and analytical<br />
sloppiness, their arguments get life from the basic wrong move<br />
of those who propose minimal definitions. The minimal definitions are<br />
either wrong or not really minimal. Unless we are playing with words,<br />
election means an open competition with real choices. It is a rich and<br />
expansive concept, and it contains a number of important political and<br />
cultural elements. We can recognize the polemical aims of efforts to<br />
establish a minimal definition, but not accept them as plausible ways<br />
to define the concept or as an adequate analytical framework.<br />
Proponents of allegedly minimal definitions have been wrong<br />
about what they have produced. Their core statements are either<br />
not valid definitions of something we would recognize as democracy,<br />
or more often, these statements are not at all minimal in what they<br />
require and strongly imply. Again, there may well be something called<br />
63<br />
DEMOCRATIC VIRTUES<br />
David Plotke<br />
1<br />
Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and <strong>Democracy</strong> (New York: Harper & Row,<br />
1950): 269.<br />
2<br />
Adam Przeworski, “Minimalist conception of democracy: a defense,” in Ian Shapiro<br />
and Casiano Hacker-Cor<strong>do</strong>n, editors, <strong>Democracy</strong>’s Value: 44.