recapitulation

To recapitulate this review of the meaning of democracy: First, democracy must be understood in the context set out by Winters, as a form of government existing in the space provided by oligarchs, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of government organization. Democracy in ancient Athens was a very primitive form of democracy surviving in a space provided by the ruling oligarchs of the day, and in spite of appearances, largely controlled by them. Athenian democracy lasted only for a relatively short period. The model of good government became the Roman Republic, but it was never a democracy, in spite of Machiavelli’s attempt to describe it as such.

It was not until the 1700s that democracy in the form of representative government appeared, although the English government had a tradition of democratic albeit non-representative government long before then. Representative government appeared perhaps first in America, then in France, and then in Britain, although British parliamentary government is the purest example of truly democratic government. Przeworski confirms that the elements of democratic government are that it is made up of representatives of the people, and that decision making is ideally by majority rule. Neither representation nor majority rule are universal. Representation is often constrained and restricted in various ways, and there are often restraints on the simple operation of majority rule, but these are the essential ingredients, and deviations from these ideals are only indications of how much a given government fails to be truly democratic.

Przeworski does not emphasize that the process of representation is important not just in giving the voter a choice of who is to govern, but more importantly it forces the representative to pay attention to the will of the voters, and to shape his policies and programs to conform as much as possible to the will of the people. This more than anything else is what makes representative government responsive to the demos. Przeworski pays unnecessary lip service to the dogma of the separation of powers and the virtue of checks and balances, and he therefore ignores another necessary characteristic of democratic government, namely the effective control of the executive by the legislature.