Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

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DEMOCRACY TODAY
A focus on control of the agenda identifies a strong egalitarian
strain in concepts of radical democracy.
Inclusion is a key theme for accounts of democracy as generalized
recognition.
Linking Dahl’s requirements of democracy to major contending
views of democracy means a good deal of simplification. Yet these contending
views are each closely linked to central features of democracy.
Linking Dahl’s requirements to contending accounts of democracy
directs attention to this question: Does democracy mean that we seek
to maximize all of these attributes at the same time? Thus advocates
of participatory democracy stress the need to enhance participation.
Proponents of one view rarely disparage the other attributes per se.
Instead they argue or imply that increasing or maximizing one attribute
will also cause the values of the others to increase appropriately. With
more deliberation, inclusion is apt to follow.
Yet it is hard to imagine that positive relations prevail among
these relations at all levels. One might think so if the only reference
were levels near the threshold at which the polity can be regarded as
democratic. At low levels of these goods, relations among them are usually
positive and sometimes strongly reinforcing. Absent voting equality,
agenda control would be very difficult – how would actors ensure
that their preferences about the agenda were taken seriously? Absent
deliberation, participation would be very difficult to initiate and sustain
– how would actors be able to define the aims and forms of their
participation? Given that positive relations among these goods do exist
at some levels, it is tempting to infer that maximizing one dimension
of democracy – as in deliberative or participatory democracy - would
also achieve maximum or nearly maximum values as regards inclusion
or agenda control.
If these democratic virtues tend to go together at lower levels,
positive relations cannot be presumed at all levels. Could we increase
all levels of these attributes to their maximum points? It seems not
to be possible to maximize the levels of all of these democratic goods at the
same time. [5]
5
A full analysis of relations among attributes of democracy, or democratic virtues,
could be attempted in one of two ways. One approach would hold all but one attribute