POLI 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Essentially Contested Concept, Jeremy Bentham, Participatory Democracy
22 Feb 2016
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Generally considered to be a positive term. Set of institutions built around competitive elections that enable all adult citizens to choose and remove their government leaders (stoker, 2006) Illiberal democracies, also called competitive authoritarian regimes or semi-democracies, are also on the rise - turnover from elections is smaller than might be expected. Regime in which political power is widely distributed and power in some way rests with the people. This leaves lots of room for differing interpretations as to what counts as democracy. The concept of democracy is about popular rule, or the rule of the people. Lively suggests that democracy requires that the people either make decisions directly or choose, and be able to remove, those who make decisions on their behalf. Lively argues that interpretations 1-4 can justifiably described as democratic. 5-7 cannot, since there is no provision for rulers to be removed by the ruled. Point 7 allows for systems without elections to call themselves.
