dichotomous variable when you're looking at democracy as measured by elections
- the growth of democracy as a legitimizing factor has created a variety of meanings for
democracy, its characteristics, what people value about it is, what it is not, how democratic a
country is etc.
Is democracy primarily a mechanism (elections( that rotates political leaders in office or sit is a n
ideological commitment to the twin ideals of freedom and equality (attitudes)?
- demos: people kratos: power, democracy : power to the people
- values of a classical theory of democracy:
Ancient Greece: institutional arrangement that realizes the common good through decisions that
carry out the common will
common good: a utilitarian ideal where everyone is better off than in a ny other condition, as well-
off as they themselves can be, your utility is maximized
Utility curve: how much utility we get out of a certain distribution of goods, steeper at bottom
(bigger marginal gain ie. more utility lower levels of money up to a certain level in the millions)
- common good is point on curve before it starts to even out
- point of democracy is to unearth the common goof for society through these deliberations and
then implement it
- common will is the will of the people, achievement of the common good
-Schempeter (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy): there is no such thing as a common good,
people have different ideas/wants of good -> we don’t even know what we want to maximize
(critiques of utilitarianism, more pragmatic look a democracy)
- people stand in different relations to the structures of power (social conditions) and have
different natural conceptions of common goods, there is no 'correct' set of policies that
democracy might unearth, all there are changing and competing preferences of individuals
- by extension there is no commin will, will of the people -> will of the majority yes, but no will in
common -> but maybe a manufactured will, the democratic process produces shaping and
manipulating public opinion not an input into the process but the output of democratic process
-Schumpeter: elitist, thin, rule of representatives and those elected to make decisions
- freedom? Freedom of free competition, but no individual commitment to freedom
of the people
- will of the majority, not the will of the people
- economic definition of democracy, like a market : votes are money, parties are
trying to gain market share, ideologies are the products/brands that they use to attract the
greatest number of voters (consumers)
- ideologies and policies are not important to parties, are an incidental byproduct of competition
to win elections
Thick definition of democracy? Different ideas of thick, think in different ways
1- concept of the public realm, commonly considered to fall under jurisdiction of the state and
subject to public deliberation
o is the public real broader or narrower? Healthcare: private or public? Whether public
real is smaller or bigger doesn’t determine the level of democracy, but all democracies must have
a concept of a public realm and some idea of a government having some sort of responsibility to
ensuring human well-being ( but this is not about whether a country is non-democratic, but
whetehr it is more neo-liberal or social democratic) 2- citizenship only in democracy, have social/economic/cultural rights but most important civil
rights that protect them from government exercises in power while subjects don’t have those
rights -> specific to democratic forms of government
3- competition, classical definition of a common will is outdated and unrealistic, consensus is not
desirable because it requires everyone to agree (people don’t agree, not because they are
unreasonable because people objectively have different interests that are not wrong
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