What is Democracy?

“May it not be true, as has been well said, that ‘the belief in democracy presupposes belief in things higher than democracy’?” — F. A. von Hayek

Usually, we associate certain ideas with the term democracy immediately. On the other hand, however, the term’s technical definition remains the subject of intense debate within the scholarly community. Democracy is often understood through two primary lenses: first, as a normative ideal of collective self-determination, and second, from a more institutional perspective, as a specific form of government.

It is precisely this tension between idea and institutional reality that leads to a fundamental conceptual overload in modernity. Due to the accelerated dynamic of modernisation, citizens’ demands and expectations placed upon the political system grow almost inflationary. Crucially, these diverse and often contradictory societal demands – be it for climate protection, social justice or the ethical justification of war – are all semantically subsumed under the term democracy. This process of semantic inflation transforms the concept into a functional catchment area for virtually all structural and ideological challenges. This places immense pressure on the concrete form of government, which is inherently limited in its institutional capacity to translate every citizen’s diverse normative expectations into effective policy.

This article addresses this tension by adopting a strictly technical and descriptive perspective on democracy in its governmental form, defining its historical development and institutional architecture. To regain the necessary analytical sharpness, we must move beyond ambiguous popular perceptions. Therefore, this article describes democracy’s conceptual development, defines its core principles and highlights its institutional forms. After the descriptive part of this analysis, the structural problems of democracy, especially those centered around a performance gap, are examined, before heading into the normative discussion on what to expect from democracy, or, more precisely, how we actually should approach democracy. In this context, the quotation above can already guide our thoughts, as the philosophical question of what a people can expect from a state may not be answered by a specific form of government, as already Sokrates warned, the people are the end, not the means, in the shaping of society.

Historical Context

Before delving into the structural components of democratic governments, this analysis will capture the historical conditions that led to today’s view of it. The modern form of democratic rule, specifically as a representative democracy in the nation state, is a historically young phenomenon, emerging only in the 19th century in the United States of America (hereinafter: USA). Historically, this form of governance represents an anomaly, existing for only about 5% of recorded civilisation history. However, the foundational idea of people governing themselves is much older.

The long-held belief that democracy was born exclusively in ancient Athens 2.500 years ago is increasingly viewed as an outdated myth. Newer archaeological findings suggest that the concept of assembly democracy is far more ancient, tracing its origins up to 4.500 years before the Common Era. This political practice likely originated in regions of the modern Middle East and South Asia, including Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria, Iran, Iraq, India and Pakistan. This suggests that the Greeks may have adopted the idea from these older cultures, later promoting it as their own invention to emphasise their cultural superiority over the East. Despite this, it was Cleisthenes who, around 510 BCE, after the overthrow of a monarchy, significantly expanded political freedoms to the people in Athens.

While modern society views democracy as a positive ideal, this was not the case for many classical thinkers. In ancient Athens, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle often regarded demokratia as a negative term. Aristotle, whose states theory combined quantitative and qualitative criteria to define six regime types, classified democracy as a degenerate form of rule – a corrupt, self-interested rule by the poor and common masses (the mob) that prioritised opinion over knowledge. This classical critique viewed democracy as inherently prone to chaos and instability, an outlook that took centuries to be overturned by the modern understanding, yet still echoes in present-day debates when it comes to insufficient state outcomes.

Since the Early Modern period, the meaning of democracy has expanded significantly. Humanism emphasised individual rights and freedom, while the Enlightenment stressed reason, equality and criticism of traditional authority. Thinkers like Locke, Rousseau and Montesquieu applied these ideas to politics, discussing how power should be distributed, how citizens’ rights should be protected and what makes a government legitimate. Consequently, democracy came to represent not only direct rule by the people, as in ancient Greece, but also broader ideals of participation, legal equality and civil rights. This semantic expansion made the term more flexible and widely used, sometimes even applied to very different political systems or movements.

Defining Democracy: From Etymology to Ideal

The semantic shift of democracy from a negative, classical concept to a modern, universally aspired ideal necessitates a clear technical definition that moves beyond mere ideological appreciation. At its core, the term derives from the Greek words Demos (the people or common masses) and Kratein (to rule), fundamentally meaning the rule of the people. Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the USA, once claimed democracy as: Government of the people, by the people, for the people, a definition that still finds great validation. This definition mandates a minimal standard, realised through three fundamental normative principles:

• Principle of Civil Sovereignty: The ultimate authority and right to rule must originate from the people, whether exercised directly or through representatives. The political system is thus fundamentally a government of the people.
• Principle of Political Equality: All members of the political community must be considered free and equal (legally), possessing the same rights and opportunities for political participation.
• Government Pro Tempore (Time-Limited Rule): All governmental decisions and offices are reversable and subject to periodic renewal through established processes like regular elections.

These principles collectively guarantee the promise of participation – the permanent and regular opportunity for people to participate, directly or indirectly, in the making of decisions to which they are subject.

Robert Dahl’s Transformations and the Procedural Ideal

The practical implementation of these principles has undergone fundamental changes, characterised by two historical transformations (and a third current challenge) as defined by the political scientist Robert Dahl:

1. First Transformation: Ancient City-State Democracy: This form was realised in the first half of the 5th century BCE, best exemplified by the Athenian assembly democracy. It centred on the Ekklesia (the assembly of the people). Critically, this was ruled by a minority over a majority, excluding slaves, foreigners and women from citizenship.
2. Second Transformation: Representative Democracy in the Nation State: Emerging over the last two centuries, this form connects the idea of democracy with the idea of political representation. This innovation allows for the implementation of self-rule in large-scale territorial states with mass populations.
3. Third Transformation: Beyond the Nation State: This is the current challenge posed by globalisation, internationalisation and transnationalisation, which blur the state’s core features (people, territory, legitimacy) and raise the question of democracy’s future.

To assess how closely a system adheres to the democratic idea, Dahl established a set of ideal standards for a democratic process, which serve as the procedural blueprint for self-governance:

• Effective Participation
• Equality in Voting (equal weight/counting value)
• Enlightened Understanding (access to comprehensive and relevant information)
• Final Control Over the Agenda (The populace ultimately decides policy)
• Inclusion of Adults (Universal suffrage)

The critical challenge is that since these principles (participation, freedom, equality, accountability) are considered normatively equal but often stand in a necessary trade-off with one another, no single system can perfectly realise the ideal. This results in a first conclusion: Each political order is only a selective implementation of the democratic idea.

The Institutional Architecture and Design

The transition from the procedural ideal to a functioning government requires a concrete institutional architecture. This structure, which Dahl termed polyarchy (the rule of the many), represents the real-world implementation of the ideal standards in large territorial states. However, the specific form that architecture takes is subject to significant variability and is also driven by cultural context and historical conflict resolution processes.

The Necessary Institutions of Polyarchy

For a political system to meet the minimal requirements of a modern representative democracy, it must possess six key institutions:

• Election of officials (free, fair and regular)
• Freedom of Expression
• Access to alternative sources of information
• Associational Autonomy (Freedom to form political groups)
• Inclusive Citizenship

Variability in Constitutional Design

Crucially, the specific shape of the institutional design is not dictated by a universal blueprint but is fundamentally dependent on the cultural form and unique historical path of a nation. This is the socio-genetic imperative: Democracy is not simply installed; it is a path-dependent system that grows out of the specific structural conditions, historical conflicts and pre-existing institutional legacies of a society. The way a nation chooses to resolve its most profound historical conflicts – be it between state and church, capital and labour or centre and periphery – determines its development.

Therefore, the institutional design is always a product of an ongoing socio-genetic process and not a static, universally applicable model. The empirical variation in democratic implementation is categorized through typologies that primarily focus on the relationship between government branches and methods of conflict regulation:

1. Structures of Government (Executive-Legislative Relations)

The primary distinction lies in the separation of powers and the reliance on legislative confidence:

• Parliamentary System: Characterised by a “double executive” (separate Head of State and Head of Government) and the crucial feature that the Parliament can remove the government (e.g., via a constructive vote of no confidence). Mandates are compatible, and high factional discipline is functional for unity between the government and the majority.
• Presidential System: Characterised by a “closed executive” (Head of State and Head of Government are the same person, e.g., Turkish President). The parliament cannot remove the executive, nor can the executive dissolve the parliament, creating a fixed term and mandate incompatibility.
• Semi-Presidential System: A hybrid (e.g., France) featuring a directly elected President with considerable powers alongside a government that requires the confidence of the parliamentary majority.

2. Methods of Conflict Regulation

Typologies based on how conflicts are managed are particularly relevant in deeply divided societies (Cleavages):

• Competition Democracy (Westminster Model): Political power is concentrated in the majority. Conflicts are resolved through political competition and majority rule.
• Consensus Democracy (Lijphart) or Concordance Democracy (Lehmbruch): Political power is shared, distributed and limited. Conflict regulation relies on negotiation and consensus-building (power sharing). Features include oversized coalition governments, protection of minorities (veto rights, unanimity principle) and proportional representation in offices.

A further approach emphasises the institutional limits to policy change through Veto Points. These are “points of strategic uncertainty” (e.g., second chambers, constitutional courts) that can overturn or modify decisions. Majoritarian democracies possess a minimum of these points, favouring policy change, while consensus democracies possess a maximum, favouring policy stability.

The existence of such wide institutional variability confirms that democracy is not a static blueprint. Since its emergence in the classical era, democracy has proven to be a flexible political technology capable of adaptation, which sets the stage for the analysis of its inherent performance gaps and legitimacy challenges.

Problems and Performance Gap

Besides the aforementioned problems that arise from the semantic use of the term democracy, or the democratic idea, which will be discussed in the next section of this paper, it is now to evaluate existing problems in performance and effectiveness, that are not solely democratic phenomena but must be discussed for a comprehensive observation.

First, it is necessary to separate the term legitimacy from democracy. The legitimacy of governmental form is, similar to the concrete constitutional design, a product of the socio-genetic development of a culture, and thereby not fixed to a set of values or ideologies (e.g. Adaptation of the Socio-Cultural Habitus through structural changes). This can be illustrated by several examples, like Confucianism, hereditary succession or a council of elders. Legitimacy is therefore bound to the ideologies of a people at a specific time, while the constitutional design also influences the belief system. In conclusion, legitimacy is a dynamic value, which is shaped by the normative ideologies of a people on one hand and on the other hand, it is also influenced by the outcome and dynamics of the policy and polity of that specific nation.

Legitimacy is necessary for voluntary compliance of the governed, allowing the political system to minimise coercion. This voluntary acknowledgment, termed political legitimacy belief by Max Weber (German sociologist), is a crucial source of Diffuse Support. As David Easton (Canadian political scientist) outlined, Diffuse Support is a durable, generalised “goodwill” that is not tied to current policy output. This form of support is essential for the persistence and survival of a political system because it allows the system to endure periods of temporary performance weakness.

While the Diffuse Support inherent in the legitimacy belief, the Specific Support, the contrary concept by Easton, highlights the second crucial pillar that affects the persistence of a governmental system, namely effectiveness. Effectiveness, as the instrumental ability of the system to achieve generally accepted goals (e.g., security, prosperity) and solve structural conflicts, directly increases short-term popular acceptance, or the Specific Support. While high effectiveness can significantly strengthen the belief in legitimacy, the mere existence of high performance will not inherently guarantee a system’s survival if the underlying normative idea is absent. On the other hand, a strong belief in political legitimacy secures the persistence of a system for a period of ineffectiveness, but no system can survive when the outcomes are consequently insufficient.

In addition to these more theoretical concepts, a key factor in democratic stability is its socio-economic foundation. As Seymour Martin Lipset demonstrated, a democracy’s survival depends not only on its institutional design but also on a society’s level of development and openness. Higher affluence, education and a strong middle class help manage structural conflicts, enhance the system’s problem-solving capacity, and build the legitimacy reserves needed to withstand political crises. From this, one can also infer that strong socio-economic performance generates short-term legitimacy through effective output. This aligns with the idea – reflected in the Essydo’s Hierarchy of Happiness – that people’s sense of well-being increases when their basic needs and security are met. Socio-economic development can therefore function as a starting impulse: once material stability and a minimum level of prosperity are secured, societies become more receptive to democratic norms, participation and long-term institutional consolidation.

While the debate of a profound crisis in the democratic principles, the legitimacy belief, has not been empirically confirmed in established democracies (one exception will be highlighted in the last section), a different, functional threat persists, namely, ungovernability. This diagnosis suggests that the system’s core danger is not ideological rejection, but systemic overload. Ungovernability arises from two interconnected pressures: the inflation of public demands and expectations and growing claims for participation from the citizenry. When these demands outpace the political system’s effectiveness, the system risks paralysis. This crisis is functional, targeting the system’s performance, but it also affects the legitimacy, from a semantic perspective. If the system fails to produce sufficient Specific Support, it also affects the Diffuse Support as analysed above, and thereby the normative value of the democratic idea, threatening to exhaust the very “good will” essential for its long-term persistence.

How should we actually approach democracy?

Most importantly, the dual-use of the democratic term needs to be stressed. Here, public demands and expectations for participation are normatively backed by the idea of democracy, while the democratic government cannot fulfil these demands technically. The essential aspect is that the issues a state has to face do not stem from democratic ideas, but from structural dysfunctions that root deeper than the idea of democratic principles. This paradox leads to a continuously growing decrease in democratic legitimacy belief, which can be observed in recent studies (Fao & Monk, 2016), showing that, especially in younger generations at the later stages of the systemic maturity cycle, the legitimacy of democracies tends to shrink.

Here, let us refer back to the initial quote: “May it not be true, as has been well said, that ‘the belief in democracy presupposes belief in things higher than democracy’?” How shall we understand this? The idea of democracy and democracy as institutional design are, and must be understood, as one and the same thing: a possible design of a governmental structure, which does not provide an answer to our most profound normative questions. The ideals and concepts of democracy are to be implemented in the constitutional design. It is not for us to direct our lives towards a more ‘democratic’ existence, nor its inherent principles. As we, the people, are the end, and not the means of societal structures, democracy has to serve us. The moment we focus on the form of our organisation, we stop striving for what is really meaningful. The quote is to be understood as a challenge and a warning; we must constantly improve as a society to develop a system that reaches beyond the democratic principles.

How such a system can possibly look like, and which institutional and normative changes have to be done to face the structural dysfunctions, is a sphere that is partly targeted in the scholarly community, but constitutes the very core of Essydo Politics.