What is democracy?

[broken robot]

This might be a more philosophical question but the reason I raise it is because I'm watching the protests in Egypt and Thailand and astounded by the number of people who claim they're fighting for "democracy," each with competing loyalties and concerns. In the case of Egypt, a democratically elected albeit "authoritarian" government led by Islamist Mohamed Morsi was overthrown by a council of generals who claim to be acting in the name of democracy. In Thailand, the current ruler Yingluck Shinawatra is under siege by "red shirts" (nothing to do with communism ) claiming that she's protecting her corrupt brother who was ousted in a coup, again to protect democracy! So my question to you all is, what are the characteristics that define democracy? Is there one single version of democracy, or is inevitably modified by local conditions? To start off, some propositions:

1) democracy, as Weber identified, is in tension with the logic of bureaucracy. While bureaucratic specialization is promoted in favor of administrative efficiency, it can also subvert popular aspects of rule and legitimation. For example, NSA overreach.

2) democracy can be defined both by its formalistic and more substantive attributes. These include political rituals of voting ("kick the bastards out in four years"), or it can include deeper aspects such as popular participation through mechanisms of local government.

3) democracy can either be centralized or decentralized, but proponents of either system will often argue that their opponents are abusing democracy. The famous case of course is the federalists v. anti-federalists, though non or someone with more knowledge on US history would have to comment.

4) democracy is a political discourse, meaning beyond its actual formal characteristics as a system, it's a more general language through which people articulate ideas about how society should become "better." It's associated with equally vague notions such as "justice" and "freedom" that are colored by their historical association with particular groups, classes, or political parties. Among the Left for example Bush managed to turn democracy into a dirty word, a mere propaganda trick, given its association with the project to "liberate" Iraq and other third world countries.

[Dobby]

First of all apologies for the many spelling and grammatical errors that are going to be in this post, I'm on my phone.

First of all, in the west when we think of democracy we nearly always think of western liberal democracies which are actually not true democracies (assuming a true democracy means any simple majority would win that particular vote with everyone having one vote). Why? Well, constitutions are a huge factor in this. Taking the US as an example (as Britain's unwritten constitution will be far too complicated to examine simplistically) if the president wished to pass a law hugely restricting the right to assemble he still couldn't as it would be Unconstitutional, hence restricting democracy in its true sense.

Of course this above scenario assumes that a) the president won the election with a simple majority b) everyone that voted for the president supported him on this decision. Which brings me to my 2nd point as to why western democracies are not true democracies. Lets take an MP in the UK parliament. They represent a marginal constituency which they won with 36% of the vote ahead of a 2nd place candidate who won 34% and a third place candidate who gained 30%. Now only just over a third of this MP's constituents want this MP to represent them. Which is hardly democratic. Now let's say only 66% of these people that voted for the MP support them on a particular vote in the commons, that's less than a quarter of all of their constituents. Again not very democratic.

So 'what is a democracy?' Completely depends on your perspective. And do we really want a true democracy where minority rights can be massively infringed upon? (as a constitution is undemocratic by its nature) probably not. Anyway, I could go on but that's my bit on western democracy, which really isn't that close to a true democracy. But a true democracy is not necessarily a good thing.

[Medius]

Not that Dobby has it wrong, but I'm going to go for extreme brevity here.

Democracy alone is simply the tyranny of the majority.

[Dobby]

Yea, guess I could have summarised that a bit.

[Hyperion]

That's not true. The original Greek conception of democracy adhered to demarchy instead of majoritarian privilege - eligible citizens were randomly selected to decide different issues. Furthermore many aspects of the Athenian military operated around super-majorities instead of simple 50%+1 affairs. I would argue democracy is a much better safe guard of rights than constitutions, which are critically wounded by the concentration of wealth and legalism. If you want an informed, active public that adheres to civic responsibility, you can't strip the people of power.

I view democracy as the intent to equalize power relations, but some people get their jolly off thinking about being king of Westeros.

[Medius]

[Spider]

And democracy can only work if the minority that didn't get its way is also respected...and if that minority can be convinced to say, "Well damn. Next time we'll get our guy in there." as opposed to freaking out and rioting. All too often Democracy only seems acceptable as long as your on the winning side.

[eynon81]

[Hyperion]

[broken robot]