POL 2104 Lecture Notes - The Infamous, Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy
27 Feb 2014
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Democracy: government held accountable, elected representatives take into account the people"s interests, changes possible in the electoral sphere. Pol 2104 c - intro to comparative politics - emily regan wills - 09 feb. 03. Electoralism assumes that we can determine whether a country is democratic based on whether or not it holds free & fair elections. Richer notions of democracy have more elements: that rulers are held accountable by citizens, the existence of a public sphere, & that citizens have representatives who compete, cooperate, Neither pitkin nor dahl use the term democracy to talk about what they"re evaluating. Dahl: he uses polyarchy (rule of the many) Remember democracy = rule of the people. Pitkin : b/c she considers the regime good or not whether the representativeness of the government is actually effective & w/o corruption. Dahl : he wants to pull the assumptions associated with the overdefined term with democracy away from it, and polyarchy is a prerequisite for democracy.
