Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

Given these tensions, enhancing democracy could not mean simultaneously
maximizing all of its main elements. Beyond a basic level that
distinguishes between democratic and undemocratic politics, citizens
and polities need to choose which attributes to make a priority and how
to do so. These choices produce different forms of democracy, with
distinct strengths and weaknesses. And different forms of democracy
imply preferred forms of representation. (I mean to reach judgments
such as: “If we want democracy to maximize [x] then the most
appropriate form of representation is probably [y].” Thus answering
questions about good representation depends to a significant extent
on answering questions about what democratic virtue(s) we mean to
emphasize.)
With democracy we always have to start at the beginning with a
definition. To identify the main elements of democracy, I begin with
Robert Dahl’s criteria of a democratic political process in Democracy
and its Critics. [3] These are similar to the attributes specified by many
authors – Dahl spells them out clearly:
– Effective participation
– Voting equality
– Enlightened understanding
– Control of the agenda
– Inclusion
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DEMOCRATIC VIRTUES
David Plotke
The first two attributes establish a polity as democratic in its procedures.
The third expands democracy to include key processes within
the terms of a given political agenda. The fourth feature, control of
the agenda, means that a polity is egalitarian with respect to a demos.
Adding inclusion, the fifth element, makes the polity fully democratic
within a society. All these virtues entail multiple political elements,
well beyond what we would normally call procedural.
One big set of questions is about the extent to which democracy
means an equal distribution of these attributes among individuals –
equality of voting, or of agenda control. Another group of questions
3
Robert Dahl, Democracy and its Critics: 109-113.