The Mainstream Democratic Vision
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.1991.12.0.13-41Abstract
This work utilizes recent literature on the democratic experience to provide insight into the nature, institutionalization, and problems of mainstream democratic thought. Our innate needs motivate us to seek a decision-making system in which our self-interests are met most effectively. Democracy is a procedure for making binding collective decisions that permits each citizen to express self-interest by having some voice in decisions concerning matters that affect her/his life. Democracy has evolved from a system of citizens expressing their self-interest through direct participation to a system of expressing self-interests indirectly through representatives. Large populations of diverse interests necessitate indirect participation in the form of guaranteed individual rights to formulate and express preferences and to choose in free elections those who, under circumscribed procedures, will make public policies in response to citizens’ preferences. Modem democracy institutionalizes individual freedom of choice in a competitive system of making binding collective decisions. It is the distribution of privately controlled resources that both provides the wherewithal to demand participation in binding collective decision-making and guarantees the competitive, accessible nature of the decision process. Belief in the democratic process may be the ultimate shared value that binds diverse groups together into a modem political community.References
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