№ 4 - 2001
Shapiro I.
Rethinking Democratic Theory in the Face of Contemporary Politics

Having dwelled in the first part of his article (see Polis 2001, No.3) on the bulk of conflicting accounts of democracy’s aim, including those attending to the legitimate management of power relations on the basis of electoral competition (Schumpeterian concept of competitive democracy), the author now shifts his attention to mechanisms for advancing democracy. In this second part of the article, within a general task of exploring ways to make competitive democracy work better, he analyzes comparative merits of different electoral systems as engineering devices to promote democracy under different socio-historical conditions and, in particular, in societies usually thought antithetical to it. The author comes to a general conclusion that democracy might in principle operate everywhere, arguing at the same time for an incremental approach, given the dearth of reliable knowledge about the adaptability of politicized identities to the requirements of competitive democracy.