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For many people in this world, ''democracy'' seems to be a name for the air that they breathe. For others it is part of the ideological discourse that the West develops in order to justify its political domination over other parts of the world, vainly concealing economic and geopolitical interests. There was a time, in the early 1990s, after the downfall of the Soviet empire, when some people thought that the final triumph of a liberal-democratic political order, in close connection with a free market economy, was near. Some even spoke about an ''end of history''. Since then, things have changed, especially after ''9/11'' and the ''war on terror''. Also, the terms in which domestic and international conflicts are stated have changed. Instead of being stated in terms of political ideologies, they are increasingly being stated in cultural or religious terms. Expressions like crusade and jih_d have returned to the vocabulary of politicians and journalists, and some people, on both sides, think that the world today is torn by a fundamental conflict between ''Western civilization'' and Islam. The critique, from many quarters, of such oversimplifications seems of little avail against the reductionist logic of a ''clash of civilizations''.
In this lecture, I will try to avoid any such simplification, and I will address, in a more realistic and sober manner, two questions that have retained their significance: 1. what is this democracy that is being propagated and 2. Why is it, according to many people, such a good thing?
It is not surprising when people expect citizens of Western countries to be committed advocates of democracy. Recently, I had an exchange by e-mail with a colleague in Constantine, Algeria, and once of the things that he warned me for was ''Western superiority''. It is easier said than done, I think, to avoid such an impression. After all, it is a fact that ''the West'' is massively present, economically and in military form, in many parts of the world. Rather than engage in political correctness, I should try, I think, to make clear where I come from, and how I perceive of myself as a political philosopher. To be sure, the following picture is entirely mine.
The Netherlands are a constitutional monarchy, in which the Queen has only ceremonial functions. Although the royal family traditionally belongs to the Dutch Reformed Church, there is no ''established church'' or preferred religion. The country has a system of representative parliamentary democracy, with a two-house parliament. There is a rather strict separation of legislative, executive, and judiciary power. Referenda have been introduced recently, but the government is reluctant in this. The government, led by a prime-minister, is accountable to parliament. The ''house of representatives'' is elected every 4 years in elections in which a large number of parties participate. There are a few relatively large parties, but none of them is large enough, in practice, to form a government by itself. Therefore, after elections negotiations are started which lead to a coalition government. It is easy to found a political party: recently, a party that defends animal rights entered parliament with two seats (out of 150), and an attempt was made to create a party of paedophiles. Many people consider such cases, especially the second, excesses of political freedom.
One of the hot, in fact overheated topics in Dutch politics and in public debate is related to the presence of a substantial Muslim minority (5.8 % of the population). Those who in the past would blame ''foreigners'' for everything that went wrong, now blame ''those Muslims''. One populist politician is making his career with an agenda that opposes the ''islamization'' of the Netherlands. His anti-Qur'an movie ''Fitna'' caused a storm of protest, not only in Islamic countries, but also in the Netherlands. Fortunately, it was a complete flop. Most Dutch people think that freedom of expression should be granted to everyone, but many feel that it should go along with decency and respect for what is sacred to other people. What has happened, in my country, is an ''islamization'' of many social and economic problems. This public debate, and hence the ''public image'' abroad, does not reflect social reality. Most Dutch citizens who are Muslims come, in roughly equal numbers, from Turkey and Morocco, and for most of them their ethnic identity, as Turks or Moroccans, is much more important than their shared religion. They usually go to different mosques, for example. Small radical groups make it easy to ignore that the vast majority of ''Dutch Muslims'' is hard-working, law-abiding, and essentially minding their own business. Their participation in society and politics, when compared with native Dutchmen with similar social and economic status, is not significantly lower, and their acceptance in public life is a fact. The present cabinet, for example, had two ministers, one from Turkey and one from Morocco, who both are practising Muslims. One of them recently left the cabinet in order to become mayor of the largest city in the Netherlands, Rotterdam. There are small groups in society who oppose this: radical Muslims who claim he is not a good Muslim, and native Dutch who feel threatened in their identity. Most people, however, simply think that he is the right person to be mayor.
Many people, including myself, hope that these problems will fade. As a citizen, I can worry about such issues and I can try to contribute to their solution. As a philosopher, I can try to make sense of them, using, on the one hand, empirical data about social reality instead of prejudices, and, on the other hand, trying to understand the situation with the help of philosophical categories. As a political philosopher, I think that my reflection on the concrete situation that is mine, i.e. ''where I come from'', should transcend that situation in the direction of more general ideas and conceptions, but not by jumping to a quasi-neutral position from which things are evaluated and judged. There is no neutral position in political philosophy.
Philosophy is the quest for truth, not its possession, and this applies to political philosophy as much as it does to other branches of philosophy. To engage in this quest is not politically neutral, because one inevitably participates in a particular way of acting and speaking. Perhaps I am helped in understanding this by my own experience as a student, in the 1980s, in what then was the Soviet Union, where I was confronted with a different ''system'' and a different society from what I was used to. Too often, I think, philosophers either are focused on their own surrounding situation and their thinking becomes parochial, or they take the big step to a ''cosmopolitan'' position that loses sight of the real differences that shape social and political reality. The ''right'' approach, to my mind, is one that transcends the first without claiming to have reached the second. Another word for this is open-mindedness, which is not the same as absence of prejudices, but rather the recognition of the fact that a typical feature of prejudices is that you do not see them. Open-mindedness thus means the readiness to let others point out your prejudices.
It is against this background that I approach the topic of democracy. The remainder of this lecture is divided into two parts. The first part tries to answer the question ''What is democracy?'' The second part addresses the question ''What is democracy good for?'' In the conclusion, I will address the world-wide perspective indicated in the title.
1. What is democracy?
There are many definitions of ''democracy''. The well-known statement that there are as many definitions of philosophy as there are philosophers, can easily be transposed to democracy: there seem to be as many definitions of ''democracy'' as there are political theorists who write about it. How to make a choice here, how to decide which definition is the best? In the case of democracy, one might argue that it has to be decided uponÉ democratically! Is not, as Jacques Derrida argued, democracy a matter of perpetual self-invention and self-contestation? While there is some truth in this, it is more appropriate to say that the question ''What is democracy?'' is answered, again and again, by the theorists who attempt to define it and in the discussion among them about such definitions.
Over longer periods of time, one can write a history of a concept like ''democracy''. It is doubtful, however, whether the changes and transitions in this history reflect an advancement of insight in the matter at hand. Much rather these changes reflect:
- the changes in the development of democracy itself;
- the polemics between intellectuals, a polemics with a logic of its own;
- the variety of dimensions and aspects of democracy.
- At this point, I would defend the hypothesis that the theoretical
conception of ''democracy'' (and of other political phenomena) must itself be plural, and that in this sense there indeed is something democratic about the very notion. Any definition of democracy, on the grounds just indicated, can only be a stipulative one, and the criteria by which to judge it must be those of practical philosophy: its intuitive plausibility, its being informed by past philosophical discussion, and its capacity to clarify things that otherwise remain obscure.
Against this backdrop, I propose a definition of democracy as consisting of three dimensions:
a. the institutional dimension of a ''regime'', i.e. a set of institutions, repertoires, and practices;
b. the dimension of democracy at the level of society at large;
c. the dimension of a suitable ethos, consisting of principles and virtues.
These three dimensions do not imply each other, but they do tend to reinforce each other. Depending on the angle from which one looks at them, each of them can appear as the most important one. In what follows I will address them in the indicated order.
a. The traditional way of looking at democracy is as out of several possible ''constitutions''. The Greek word politeia points to the form of the polis, usually translated as city-state. Authors like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero distinguished ''constitutions'' on the basis of two criteria: the number of rulers and the presence or absence of law. These two principles together yield a set of six forms, three of them virtuous, three corrupted:
In the virtuous forms, those who govern do so by law, in the interest of the polis as a whole and oriented towards justice, in the corrupted forms they treat the polis as if it were there to serve their own interest. Aristotle formulated the ideal of a virtuous ''political community'' , which can be seen as an aristocracy with maximum participation, or as self-rule by virtuous citizens. Plato distinguished a 7th form, which he called 'scientific government.' Cicero, finally, also distinguished a 7th form: mixed government, which he held to be superior and which he believed to have grown out of the historical experience of the Roman kingdom and republic. With these three ''best forms'' the basic alternatives of later discussions are given.
One question, however, must be added: if law is what distinguishes the good from the corrupted forms, where does this law come from? From a wise lawgiver like Solon, from the gods of the Olympus, from the philosopher who has perfect knowledge of the Idea of the Good, from Jahweh / God / Allah, from historical experience, from the works of political theorists, from religious authorities, e.g. the Pope, John Calvin or a council of ayatollahs, from an intellectual elite, from a vanguard party, or from the will of the people as it happens to articulate itself?
b. A second important dimension of democracy is its social basis. Alexis de Tocqueville, around 1830, expressed this ''sociological'' sense of democracy when he argued that the United States of America were a democratic society, based on the principle of equality, and that therefore democracy was its natural political form, contrary to the situation in his native France, where the new, democratic political regime struggled with the social heritage of the ancient rŽgime. In his analysis, American society Ðwhite male American society, to be sure- appears as essentially homogeneous. According to Carl Schmitt, a society must be a homogeneous people in order to be capable of democracy. Combining Schmitt and De Tocqueville, I think the point is that democratic government requires some form of homogeneity, but that it can be either ethnic, or linguistic, or socio-economic, or religious, or indeed a shared commitment to the political system itself. If such a common basis is absent, democratic government will quickly turn into a dictatorship of a majority over one or more minorities, even when it retains the formal characteristics of democracy. Theorists like Chantal Mouffe point to a basic homogeneity, which consists of the shared acceptance of the same political institutions, repertoires, and values. This is a form of homogeneity that allows for maximum heterogeneity and difference: 'The antagonistic dimension is always present, it is a real confrontation but one which is played out under conditions regulated by a set of democratic procedures accepted by the adversaries.'
c. The third dimension is the ethical one. In her conception of liberal democracy, Mouffe points to the 'ethico-political values' or 'principles' that 'inform the political association,' and limits herself to mentioning two such values: liberty and equality for all. It is clear that this principle is key to understanding liberal democracy, but, first of all, there is more to it, and secondly, liberal democracy and democracy are not identical. So what about the ethos of democracy in itself? Tariq Ramadan mentions four principles: rule of law, equality of citizenship, universal suffrage, and the establishment of rules that enable change or removal of the people in power. Note that only the third of these principles is specifically democratic: citizenship can be very limited, rule of law expresses the constitutional rather than the democratic principle, and the principle of non-violent change of government is not limited to democratic systems. The basic principle of democracy is the principle of popular sovereignty: if the ''will of the people'' is the only source of legitimacy of political power, we can speak of ''pure democracy'', if there are other sources, e.g. a constitution that guarantees equal rights and liberties for all, a religious body that represents the Divine Law of the religion in question, or a party that embodies a particular social ideal, e.g. socialism, we can speak of liberal, religious, and socialist democracy respectively. Democracy very rarely occurs in ''pure form'': all governments that have achieved a stable existence over time have been mixed governments, so when we say ''democratic government'', we mean ''government in which the democratic element is prevailing''. This is yet one more reason to place ''democracy'' not in an either/or dichotomy, but to consider it, first of all, as a quality of institutions, repertoires, and practices, that can be present to a varying extent.
To these institutional principles, one should add, I think, a set of civic virtues which, again, are not endemic to democracy: acceptance of plurality of opinion, acceptance of the legitimacy of the adversary's claims and demands, openness to argument, fairness in debate and negotiation, and, last but not least, the readiness to take one's loss and to accept the temporary hegemony of an adversary. The realization of those principles in institutions, the implementation of the above virtues in practices, and their articulation in democratic repertoires is what generates the form -always filled with ''real life'' content- of a democratic polity. The bottom line of this form is formed by the institutional principles: in times of crisis, when virtues lose their force and repertoires contest the very political order of society, they may be what save the polity.
The main task of democracy is the capacity to transform antagonism into agonism. In the words of Iris Marion Young: 'Modern societies are rife with conflict deriving from injustice, greed, bias, and value difference. Democracy is a set of institutions that transforms mere exclusion and opposition to the other in engaged antagonism within accepted rules.' To avoid confusion, this ''engaged antagonism within accepted rules'' is the core meaning of agonism, and it points to the fact that (democratic) politics and debate are not simply about discussion and deliberation, however important these are, but are struggle, albeit civilized or, as Mouffe calls it, tamed. This ''taming'' involves an ethos, a set of internalized norms that act as the virtues of those participating. Democracy is ''strong'' to the extent to which this ethos is not only a matter of nilly-willy accepting, but of positively embracing the ''rules of the game''.
One way of looking at democracy is to see it as a game, based on shared acceptance of a set of rules. Democratic politics is a game indeed, and its working does depend on shared acceptance of the rules of the game, but we should always realize that people are in it not just for the game, but for the money, too. Every game is ''tamed struggle'', but not all games are ''just fun''. In a democracy, the counting of the votes -be it in elections or in parliament- ends the battle, leaving winners and losers, but it does so only for the time being, and the losers can accept the victory of a majority over them because they have the confidence that there will be a new game with new opportunities to win. Still, the real gains and losses are not in the game, but outside of it, in society, and when parliaments start to resemble debating clubs, they lose social credibility, because they no longer do what they exist for in the first place. It is important to distinguish between the fact of the establishment of a place where social antagonism is being represented and transformed, out in the open, secondly, the fact that in this arena there a particular set of rules and virtues at work, and, finally, the fact that the stakes in the game are the stakes of society.
This points to an important difference between this agonistic model of democracy and so-called consensus-models. It is true that majority rule does not necessarily yield the right decisions -nor does consensus, for that matter-, nor necessarily decisions that satisfy the needs, perceived or real, of society. This means, to my mind, that in both cases it is demanded from citizens of democratically ruled societies that they attach value to the way in which decisions are arrived at, irrespective of the content of those decisions. The disadvantage of the consensus-model -and of traditional models like African consensus-democracy- is not only that it may take long before consensus is reached, which is at odds with the urgency of many issues, but also that it suggests that there would be no irreconcilable differences in society. The advantage of the agonistic model is that it recognizes that the outcome of political struggle cannot satisfy society, not because of human failure, but because every decision generates new difference. The aim of democratic politics is not universal satisfaction, but practical decisions that enjoy support because of the way in which they have been reached.
What, then, is democracy? The best definition that I can arrive at, on the basis of the above considerations, is the following: democracy is a quality of a ''regime'', i.e. a set of institutions, repertoires and practices, and a ''regime'' marked by this quality is, under conditions of relative homogeneity and equality, the best possible form of government, provided it is matched by a set of democratic civic virtues.
2. What is democracy good for?
Why would democracy, under certain circumstances, be the ''best possible form of government''? The central argument that I want to develop in this second part is that democracy is an important ''good'', a bonum as Scholastics would call it, but not a bonum in se, a ''good in itself''.
In the preceding section, I have argued that democracy is not so much a thing or an entity, but a quality of political systems and decision procedures. To the extent to which this quality is present in those systems and procedures, we can in call them ''democracy'', but it would still be more appropriate to speak of a democratic system. This may seem academic, but I believe that this usage of the term has the advantage of not having to divide systems into democracies and non-democracies. Such a dichotomy is not very helpful because it fails to do justice to the fact that the degree of democracy is never fixed forever, but fluctuates. The reason for this is that democracy is about political power, and political power is transformed ''societal power''. Not all power is political power -quite the contrary: society is filled to the brim with all kinds of economic, social, moral, and cultural power. Political power is transformed societal power, it is public and directed power, and democratic political power is power that admits its own legitimate contestation to the extent to which it is inclusive.
Like any political system, a democratic system is not only about deliberation or the best solution for given practical problems (however important both may be), but always-also about decision and power, just like a knife is always-also about cutting and about force, and not only about making a beautiful object or preparing food for consumption. Every decision fails to do full justice to the social reality that it is about, hence there always remains a measure of injustice (which can re-enter the process at a later stage in the form of a demand or a contestation), and this is why the game must and will go on. This ''game'' provides means for the key task of politics, which is to deal with real and potential conflict in society. As such, politics, including democratic politics, is an important instrument, but it is not a cure for all ills: it is a dangerous illusion to think that politics can eliminate conflict in society. There is a mistaken tendency, in political philosophy, to place nearly exclusive emphasis on difference of world-view or ideology, at the expense of recognition of conflicts over means and resources. Politics, to my mind, ultimately is about the ''real needs of society'' and about the ''common good'' in its complexity from stable currency to military safety and from cultural expression to clean water.
This is not, of course, to deny the importance of finding an answer to the existing plurality of potentially conflicting world-views. According to John Rawls, arguably the mainstream liberal political philosopher in the West in the second half of the 20th C, the public culture of democracy, with its 'political and social conditions secured by the basic rights and liberties of free institutions' inevitably leads, in the long run, to a 'diversity of reasonable comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines,' and that these doctrines are 'conflicting and irreconcilable.' Consequently, a central question of Rawls' political philosophy is'how is it possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?'
The question how to deal, as a society, with this plurality and possible antagonism of ''doctrines'' can, but need not coincide, with that other major question: ''How to deal, as a society, with conflicting needs, interests, desires (or: wants), ideals, and demands?'' To be sure, a political society, democratic or other, can only deal with these societal facts in as far as they are articulated as demands in the political arena (someone has to speak on behalf of X, point to Y, express concern about Z), and that is precisely what agonistic politics is about: the struggle between the articulations, in the form of legitimate political demands, of the real and potential antagonisms in society. The extent to which this mechanism works is an important measure of the legitimacy of a polity as a whole Ð and democracy is important for the public assessment of this extent. The need for this assessment implies, I think, that within the framework of a democratic constitution, everything can, in principle, be contested, except the frame itself: what of the constitution can be changed, but what cannot be contested, because it provides the very basis for legitimate contestation, is the fact, that of the constitution.
In academic literature in the West, the terms of democracy and liberal democracy are often used interchangeably. For many theorists, the two are either identical, or democracy and liberalism (in the political, not per se in the economic sense) imply each other. Two main alternatives, direct democracy and participatory democracy, certainly do have a place in the present-day world, and they may in fact well exist in a much greater diversity than we often think, and perhaps in unexpected places, but as principles of the political organization of larger political units, such as countries, they are rare. The role of referenda, a form of direct democracy, is usually limited. As for participatory democracy, such as citizen juries, it takes place mostly at a local level.
Most countries in the world that define themselves as democratic are liberal democracies. It is not surprising; therefore, if in the academic literature in the field of democracy theory, democracy and liberal democracy are identified. Thus we find, for example, the following list of characteristics of democracy according to two major theorists, Robert Dahl and Arend Lijphart:
'(1) the freedom to form and join organizations,
(2) Freedom of expression,
(3) The right to vote,
(4) Eligibility for public office,
(5) The right of political leaders to compete for support and votes,
(6) Alternative sources of information,
(7) Free and fair elections, and
(8) Institutions for making government policies depend on votes...'
This list, and many similar lists, unites two principles, the liberal and the democratic principle. However intimate their relation may be empirically, I think they should be clearly distinguished. Points 3, 4, 7 and 8 indicate the democratic principle, while 1, 2, 5 and 6 express the liberal principle. Most existing forms of constitutional representative democracy combine these two principles. This combination, however, is not as obvious as it seems. I follow those authors who claim that liberal democracy is a contingent historical combination of two essentially different principles: the (liberal) principles of individual rights and liberties for all, rule of law, and human rights, et cetera, and the (democratic) principles of equality, identity of governing and governed, and ''popular sovereignty''. This means that other contingent articulations are possible and that there can be forms of democracy that fall outside the liberal framework.
This leaves unanswered, however, the question why liberal democracy is such a strong combination of two different principles: it may be ontologically contingent, but it is certainly not accidental. Mouffe rightly emphasizes that 'their union, far from being a smooth process, was the result of bitter struggles,' and she can point to liberals, such as F.A. Hayek, who were critical of democracy, and to democrats -think, for example, of Rosa Luxemburg- who were critical of the 'bourgeois formal liberties.' But it is hard to think of lasting non-liberal democracies, and it is tempting to think that those non-liberal democracies that have existed in the 20th and 21st C, easily become ''corrupted'' - examples are the ''popular democracies'' in the former Soviet block. Arguably, the two principles reinforce each other. Still, it is important to resist the temptation to take the combination for granted and to acknowledge that real existing democracy in the world does not exhaust the full spectrum of possible forms.
To conclude this section: democracy, liberal or other, is not an end itself, but a means. If we ask what democracy is good for, the answer is that democracy does three things:
i. it lends legitimacy to political power and to those that embody it;
ii. it serves to transform societal antagonism into political agonism, thus turning opposed societal power into contestable political power;
iii. it generates commitment, on the part of a population, to their government and political system.
Conclusion: Democracy World Wide?
Is democracy, thus defined and analysed as an important means, but not a cure for all ills, something that deserves to be prescribed for the world at large? I want to suggest that it is not obvious that ''democracy'' is always and everywhere better than other regimes. I do think that it always and everywhere has advantages over its alternatives, but these may be outweighed by disadvantages, depending on the situation at hand. The preferability of democracy is dependent on conditions that themselves are not obviously preferable. The ''rise of democracy'' in ''the West'' has been intimately related to socio-economic and cultural changes: urbanization, industrialization, decreasing role of church and nobility. In the 18th C, we witness a preference for democracy in some political philosophers, but it was well into the 20th C before this became a mainstream position. Widely accepted as a social and political fact, democracy is not widely held to be a primary value in its own right; such values included justice, freedom, security, prosperity, or even diversity. Theoreticians like De Tocqueville or Max Weber, who were concerned about how freedom could survive under conditions of democracy (which they saw as inevitable), may have been mistaken in their fear, yet right in their intuition: democracy is primarily a means, not a primary value. So, if democracy is not a primary value, and if the condition of relative social equality is not a global fact, then democracy is not necessarily good for the whole world.
The spread of democracy from the West across the world went along with economic domination. After the decolonization that began after World War II and ended with the last Portuguese possessions in the 1970s, parliamentary democracy was left behind by the colonial powers, but it was also embraced by the local political elites that led their countries to independence. They often had received their education in Western countries. As a result, democracy can be seen as Western import, whether it is appreciated or not: guilt by association and praise by association share the association. Such overall welcoming by some, and rejection by others, of democracy as being a Western invention, mirrors the sense of superiority that emanates from the democratic West itself. This association, however, blocks from view two facts: one is that, in the West itself, democratic government is not a once-and-for-all established state of affairs, but an ongoing project of revision and reform; the other is that local, ''grass-roots'' calls for representation, inclusion, and empowerment are easily overlooked.
I think that political institutions, repertoires, and practices get greater support, are more stable and work better to the extent to which they stem from local tradition or, when they are ''imported'', are grafted onto them. The notion of repertoires of democracy, introduced by Charles Tilly, and of their transfer comes in handy here. Repertoires are defined by Tilly as 'the limited, familiar, historically created arrays of claim-making performances that under most circumstances greatly circumscribe the means by which people engage in contentious politics.' Types of repertoires are demonstrations, petitions, sit-ins, flag burning, human chains, wake, etc.; important examples include the half hour march, every Thursday evening since 1977, of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, or the recent peaceful demonstrations by Buddhist monks in Myanmar. Such repertoires are detachable from their context of origin and can be transferred to other places.
A similar argument applies to the institutions of democracy, which also can be transferred to other places: one finds parliaments in almost every country. And the same applies to practices, which can be adopted and adapted at every level of society. However, such transfer is more likely to be successful to the extent to which it is a matter of import, and less likely to the extent to which it is a matter of export or imposition. This is why it is an illusion to want to ''bring'' democracy to another place - it still will have to be adopted there and as it where reinvented, on their own terms, by those concerned. So, while there is no democratic institution, repertoire, or practice that is a priori excluded from becoming part of the political structure and culture of any country or society, it seems that some institutions and repertoires are more fitting to a specific situation than others, and also that some fit together better than others do: what works in one place, may not work in another.
Let me end with a few conclusions. First of all, democracy is not a final solution for any fundamental social or political discord or conflict, but a way of dealing with the ever-emerging antagonisms, moral, but also economic and social, that arise in any society. There are alternatives: conflict and antagonism can also be denied, suppressed or ignored. Democratic solutions, however, have the advantage of increasing legitimacy and commitment.
Secondly, just as democracy is not a cure for all ills, it also is not a matter of one-size fits all. As long as societies are as different as they are in terms of social composition and structure, predominant religious and non-religious world-views, and local political traditions, there is no general form that can be recommended for all cases. Moreover, democratic forms of government require the active support of the populations that are governed by them, and this can only take place ''from below'', mediated through civil society and perhaps guided by local intellectual elites, but always in relation to local conditions.
In the third place, I conclude, ''democracy'', like any form of government, should be seen as a means, not as an end in itself. However it has to be cultivated and cared for, if it is to its job properly. It is for this reason that ''democracy'' is not only a regime, but also is a set of principles and virtues, which have to be implemented in practices and repertoires. This opens two pitfalls: one is the idealization and idolization of democracy as a name for the good society, which it is not, and which turns it into a major element in ideological discourses that legitimate policies which, in fact, pursue other aims. The other pitfall is that, under stable conditions of democratic government, the very instrument may be taken for granted and no longer form an object of maintenance and care. Hence, it is a matter of finding the right way between idolatry and sacralization on the one hand, neglect and indifference on the other. The remedy against the first danger must come, among others, from critical intellectuals who take a ''sober'' perspective on democracy; the remedy against the second danger comes mainly from the 'widespread and vigorous participation in political life' of at least part of the citizenry.
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* Centre for Ethics, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
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