Conceptualizing Politics

1.   Democracy one and two
A one-track explanation of democracy, say, as a procedure for governing a state, 
would give a clear-cut but impoverished picture of it, which could not cover the 
many instances in which a different version plays a role. In the following, two fun-
damental versions of this notion will be taken into consideration:
One: democracy as a set of values and principles, or as an ideal, and
Two: democracy as a method for governing mass societies – what the much 
quoted and praised Athens of the fifth century BCE was not.
Democracy One means power of the people (
δημοκρατία) or, in a well-known 
formula used by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address (1863), ‘government 
of the people, by the people, for the people’ – though Lincoln did not refer to it as 
a democracy, a word that became of general use only later. The standard interpreta-
tion of Lincoln’s motto sees the people, rather than a king or the nobility, as the 
actor entitled to rule the state, that is the people itself (of the people); the people 
providing the governors, taking them from its very ranks according to norms estab-
lished by itself (by the people); the people running government to the advantage of 
everybody, instead of granting privileges to a social class or group or geographical 
section of the state (for the people). We will see that in reality things are much more 
complex than in this standard view of democracy (and in Lincoln’s clause), but this 
does not deprive the formula of its persistent fascination.
A first document about the fascination beaming from the democratic ideal is in 
the public eulogy Pericles pronounced for the Athenian soldiers who fell in the first 
year of the Peloponnesian War and retold by Thucydides (BCE 454–404 or –396) in 
Book 1, Chapter 2, §37 of his History of the Peloponnesian War:
Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather 
a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the 
many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the 
laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social 
standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class con-
siderations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty 
bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the 
obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government 
extends also to our ordinary life.
4
In this account, the primacy given to the interest of the generality of the population, 
equality before the law, the superiority of personal merits over the social condition 
(meritocracy) along with freedom are the defining features of democracy. These are 
still now the basic reasons for democracy’s attractiveness, or what still makes it a bat-
tle cry vs. personal or party dictatorship, oligarchs, corrupt and inefficient regimes. 
This came again to the surface in the Chinese protest movement of 1989, before 

---

82  How politics works
the Tian An Men massacre, in the political upheaval in the countries of the former 
Soviet bloc (1989–1991), in the Arab Springs and the Iranian Green Movement of 
2011, and in the democratic movement in Burma down to the election of 2015 – 
just to mention a few examples. In all these episodes, democracy is invoked less in 
its proper meaning as system of government and rather as an emblem for things 
such as the transparency of power or the rule of law that are not all strictly demo-
cratic in nature but originate from democracy’s previous competitors, in particular 
liberalism and constitutionalism. In the time of its eighteenth century resurrection, 
2,100 years after it eclipsed, the very idea of democracy, elevating the people’s will 
to the rank of the only and unlimited sovereign, was indeed perceived as dangerous 
for the individual liberties that were being established against the absolute monarch. 
The conjoining of liberal values with democratic rule came later in the late nine-
teenth century and was again put to a stress test in the mass democracies between 
the two World Wars, a test failed in Italy and Germany. As we shall soon see, the 
conjunction of liberal and democratic principles is after the Second World War an 
accomplished fact in Western countries, and in our conventional wisdom we often 
call ‘democratic’ values or policies that rather stem from the liberal tradition.
In the modern version the core of the democratic idea is the equal distribution of 
political power as enshrined in the motto ‘one man, one vote’ – whose slightly sex-
ist formulation (it should rather read ‘one man or woman’ or ‘one citizen’) aptly 
mirrors the time and the toil it took to extend universal suffrage to women, as 
it happened to an extent between the World Wars and definitely after 1945. This 
equality cannot be taken at face value because in order to do so several presupposi-
tions should be met that not always are: first, formal equality on the ballot does not 
necessarily lead to equal power in government, because this operates not only along 
the lines indicated by the voters, but also very much under the pressure of other, 
non-democratic forces as well (high bureaucracy, big money, economic and party 
lobbies, the clergy or the military in weak democracies). This can hurt the promise 
of autonomy (to obey only commands and laws we have ourselves created by our 
vote) that is implied in the principle establishing equal power for all and everybody.
Second, tied de facto to formal voting equality is or used to be the mostly implicit 
expectation of higher social equality, due to redistributive or welfare policies pur-
sued by the government. Empirical analysis disavows the expectation of this tie 
(Przeworski 2010), and the impressive rise of inequality in democratic countries 
since the 1980s puts, for the time being, a gravestone on it – though miracles (strat-
egies reversing the rise of inequality while keeping the economy going; strong lead-
erships) can still happen. The much welcomed transformation of advanced societies 
into a ‘knowledge society’, has for the time being only added a new divide to the 
income gap between layers of the population. It remains true that in a democracy 
anti-poverty laws, fiscal benefits for low-income citizens and access to education 
for all are more likely to be passed than in an autocracy, thanks to parliamentary 
battles, an attentive public opinion and social movements. Yet the disappointment 
and resentment deriving from the gap between formal political equality and sub-
stantial, even rising social inequality can, over the long haul, push back the citizens’ 

---

Government and democracy  83
affection for the democratic regime, either by making them vote for strongly anti-
democratic or at least populist parties or give up participation in public life. The 
peak reached by inequality in the middle of the Great Recession after 2008 seems 
to be putting an end to the prevalence of post-materialist values (autonomy, self-
esteem, self-expression, sense of belonging) seen in the decades straddling the mil-
lennium divide and to shift attention again on jobs and salaries. Democracy as a 
method or procedure of government cannot be separated in the citizens’ minds 
from the substantive policies and results it leads to.
Before we leave Democracy One I will briefly break up my abstinence from 
historical questions because I wish to clarify something that seems to me a popu-
lar misunderstanding concerning the theory of democracy, of which Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau is regarded as the modern founder. This is hard to reconcile with his con-
demnation of (direct) democracy as a system of government, in which the popu-
lace itself is supposed to manage the state affairs, blurring the distinction between 
legislative and executive power (Rousseau 1762, Book III, §4). Only a people of 
gods – Rousseau argues – could govern itself democratically. Equal participation is 
due only in the founding act of the polity, consisting of the total alienation of eve-
rybody’s rights in its favour (Book I, §§6–7) – as it was already known to Hobbes 
and Locke. This gives the people the power to legislate, but how the volonté géné-
rale/general will expressed by the people creates laws remains undefined (Book II, 
§§6–12). This is enough to deprive Rousseau of the crown of ‘father of democracy’, 
which he would have himself certainly rejected. This gives him back his honour 
because otherwise, should his theory of the polity be mistaken for his theory of 
government, the accusation of having founded a totalitarian version of democracy 
would not be unjustified.