Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

that includes open elections. They are almost compelled to call any such
conception purely formal as against a substantive notion of democracy
as welfarist, anticolonial, or developmental.
Allegedly minimal definitions of democracy are useful in ruling
out the use of that term to describe authoritarian regimes with social
or cultural purposes that someone wants to affirm – good health care,
safe streets, religious virtue.
The perfectionist critique
The perfectionist critique is more analytically interesting. In this
critique, the problem with the minimal definition is that it does not
recognize the central value of one or another democratic virtue – say
participation. Sometimes a similar claim is made about a policy –
extensive redistribution or strengthening communal ties.
Perfectionist critics aim to make a double move. First, they attach
their program – for redistribution, or heightened participation – to
the general positive valuation of democracy and claim that democracy
really must mean this specific course. Instead of arguing for the program
they can then make it true by definition for those who approve
of democracy. This is not a bad rhetorical move but it is transparent,
which makes it vulnerable – why does democracy require this amount
of participation rather than some other?
In the other key move the term perfectionist applies most strongly. The
idea is that real democracy means the maximal achievement of a particular
virtue such as participation or deliberation. As with most perfectionist
schemes, the first casualties of this line of argument are complexity and
realism in a world where virtues collide and tradeoffs have to be weighed.
Simply maximizing deliberation, say, is not a recipe for a wonderful
democracy, but past a certain point it would mean a deeply flawed regime
in which many other democratic virtues were diminished.
Rather than rejecting an allegedly minimal democracy, perfectionists
should justify their own normative and policy choices as a valid
interpretation of how democracy should look. This is hard work and
opens the way for serious objections. Understandably many perfectionist
critics of minimal democracy prefer to make it simple by claiming
that only their view deserves to be called genuinely democratic.
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DEMOCRATIC VIRTUES
David Plotke