CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY

The term ‘democracy’ was first used in the fifth century BC by the Greek historian Herodotus in the sense of ‘rule by the people.’ This term is derived from a combination of two Greek words: demos, meaning ‘the people’ and kratein, meaning ‘to rule.’ It is not easy to give a universal definition of democracy. It is closely associated with Participation, Competition, and Civil and Political Liberties. It has been described as an order of society. Several exponents like John Austin, A.V. Dicey, James Bryce, John Seeley, and A.L Lowell have treated democracy as a form of government.  

MAJOR DEFINITIONS OF DEMOCRACY

• Seeley: Democracy is a government in which everyone has a share.
• Dicey: Democracy is that form of government in which the governing body is comparatively a large fraction of the population.
• MacIver: Democracy is a form of state which is merely a mode of appointing, controlling, and dismissing a government.
• Macpherson: Democracy is merely a mechanism for choosing and authorizing governments or, in some other way getting laws and political decisions made.

THEORIES OF DEMOCRACY

• The theories of democracy include the classical or liberal notion and the contemporary ones, including Marxist, Elitist, Pluralist, Participatory and Deliberative theories. Major theories are explained as follows: 

CLASSICAL OR LIBERAL THEORY

Early traces of classical-liberal democratic ideas are found in the writings of Thomas Moore’s ‘Utopia’ (1616) and Winstanley’s ‘The Law of Freedom’ (1652). Thomas Hobbes in ‘Leviathan’ elaborated on the democratic principle that the government is created by the people through the social contract. 

Characteristics:

• It takes an individual as the basic unit of the democratic model. It emphasizes individual freedom.
• Participation was considered a virtue as it would serve as a means of intellectual, emotional, and moral education of an individual.
• It made a clear demarcation between elected representatives and bureaucracy.
• At the institutional level, it advocated representative government.
• At the economic level, it believed in the complete market economy, private possession, and control over the means of production.

Thinkers: Thomas Moore, Winstanley, Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Mill.

Criticism:

• This theory assumes that an individual is rational, ethical, and ready to participate in political activities. But scholars like Bryce, Graham Wallas considered man as neither as rational, as informed as it is assumed to be.
• The liberal theory ignores the role of organized groups, leaders, or emotions in political affairs.
• It is also based on the assumption that a common good exists. But Schumpeter argued that there is no such thing as a common good on which all people could agree.
• It views the complex procedure and decision-making process in politics in an oversimplified manner.

ELITIST THEORY

According to Suzanne Keller, elites are those ‘minorities which are set a part from the society by their pre-eminence in the distribution of authority, achievement, and reward.’ The elite theory is based upon the idea that society consists of two broad categories of people- the selected few and the vast masses.

Characteristics:

• The theory believes that a democratic system must rely on the wisdom, loyalty, and skill of its political leaders rather than on the population.
• It conceives democracy in procedural terms.
• The primary aim was to make democracy more realistic and empirical in reality.
• It shifted the emphasis of democracy from individual participation in decision making to the needs and functions of the system as a whole.
• It allows the citizens a passive role in political activity.

Thinkers: Pareto, Mosca, Harold Lasswell, C. Wright Mills.

Criticism:

• It does not pay attention to the recognized characteristics of democracy.
• It has deliberately cleared the moral content from the democratic phenomenon.
• It has diminished the essence of ‘popular government’ to popular choice at periodic elections of governors who make policy-decisions.
• This theory favours the minimum involvement of citizens in the affairs of the state.
• The concept of the passive apolitical common man is considered to be an unsatisfactory element.
• It has replaced the classical theory of ‘democratic humanism’ with ‘democratic mechanism.’ Thus, it has diluted the utopian vision of democracy.

PLURALIST THEORY

• Pluralism is a system in which political power is fragmented among the branches of government. The key character of this theory is that no single group or minority coalition groups dominate in all areas of political decisions.

Characteristics:

• It believes that power should not be concentrated on one single group; instead, it should be decentralized.
• There should be a system of checks and balances to check the concentration of power.
• The function of the government should be to meditate and adjudicate.
• According to pluralists, democracy is a political system run by competitive minorities as they can secure the political interests of the masses.

Thinkers: Robert Dahl, S.M Lipset, F. Hunter.

Criticism:

• It does not have enough capacity to limit or control the great concentration of wealth, income, and employment opportunities found in large Private Corporation.
• It does not plan ways to increase or redistribute society’s resources effectively. 
• It also does not devise methods for the electoral legislation to control the huge bureaucracy.
• Marxists regard this theory as a justification of the discredited bourgeois system.

MARXIST THEORY

• It is also known as ‘the concept of people’s democracy.’ Marxism adjusted democracy in the overall philosophy of the socialist revolution. It associated democracy with the dictatorship of the proletariat or people’s democracy.

Characteristics:

• People’s democracy is a transition between capitalist democracy and communism.
• It believed that true democracy could be realized only in a classless society.
• It attacked bourgeois democracy as a distorted form of democracy.
• According to this theory, democracy is essentially a participatory activity by the working class. It is the rule by the majority, of the majority, and for the majority.
• At the economic level, people’s democracy means social ownership of the means of production, central control of production in the hands of the state, etc.
• At the social level, there will be no inheritance, free education for all children, and other basic needs to be met.
• At the political level, democracy means integration of executive and legislative functions, government personnel to be directly elected, and so on.

Thinkers: Marx, Engels, Lenin.

Criticism:

• Marxist theory rules out the existence of democracy itself.
• The dictatorship of the proletariat holds no promise of a classless society.
• The hegemony of bourgeois values poses a challenge to the Marxist road to social transformation.

OTHER THEORIES OF DEMOCRACY:

Deliberative Democracy: It requires that democratic decision-making should strike a balance between personal freedom and popular rule. It should be used as a means of encouraging public deliberation on issues. It also requires politicians to report and justify their decisions and actions to people regularly.

Participatory Democracy: It regards people’s political participation as the basic principle of democracy. It argues that representative democracy gives little opportunity to its citizens for any significant participation in the decision-making process. The objectives of participatory democracy in modern large states are achieved through the decentralization of administration and extensive use of a referendum. 

Today’s world is a democratic world. Every state, whether it is liberal, socialist, or communist, depicts itself as a democratic state and does not shy away from calling the other state undemocratic. True, democracy is accepted as the best form of government by many scholars, but what is better than democracy? The answer is, “A better form of democracy.”

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