Preface to the Third Edition

Although it is easy to overgeneralize from one time period and from the culture of one’s homeland, the development of the third edition of Models of Democracy is written in unsettling times. The events of 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003) have created a ripple of change across the globe. Democracy, which seemed relatively untroubled in the 1990s, is experiencing intense pressures, from within and without. Security challenges, the ‘war on terror’, the attempt to impose ‘regime change’ on Iraq and to transform other Middle Eastern countries have been accompanied by a widespread sense of unease about whether democracies can deliver security to their citizens, whether they can sustain prosperity in tumultuous times and whether they embed ideals that can be defended adequately against, on the one hand, widespread despondency and apathy within and, on the other hand, fierce opponents, who do not hesitate to use indiscriminate violence, from without. The rise of fundamentalist elements in Islam, alongside the development of Christian and Jewish fundamentalist groupings elsewhere, raise questions about the legitimacy of contemporary political institutions, the separation of church and state, and the very possibility of democracy in the face of challenges to its underlying conception of human beings as free and equal, as active moral agents, with capacities for self-determination and political choice. There is a marked risk that in Western democracy a concern with security above all else will undo some of the important achievements of democracy and certain of the rights and liberties it presupposes. And there is a risk that cultures and religious forces that oppose the separation of politics and religion, state and civil society, will see ‘democracy’ as one of their enemies.

Elsewhere, most recently in Global Covenant (2004), I have analysed some of these trends and reactions. In Models of Democracy my aim is to clarify why democracy is so important in human affairs, why it is so contested and why, despite its vulnerabilities, it remains the best of all possible governing arrangements. Democracy is not a panacea for all human problems, but it offers the most compelling principle of legitimacy – ‘the consent of the people’ – as the basis of political order. It is important to understand this principle and the many debates it has given rise to, if an attractive and defensible conception of democracy is to be promulgated in the century ahead.

Given the difficulties of the present period it is easy to forget that, if there was ever an age of democracy, it is the present one. State socialism, which appeared so entrenched just a few decades ago, has crumbled in Central and Eastern Europe. In many of its essentials, democracy appears not only quite secure in the West but also widely adopted in principle beyond the West as a suitable model of government. Throughout the world’s major regions there has been a consolidation of democratic processes and procedures. In the mid-1970s, over two-thirds of all states could reasonably be called authoritarian. This percentage has fallen dramatically; less than a third of all states are now authoritarian, and the number of democracies has grown. Democracy has become the leading standard of political legitimacy in the current era.

The tale of democracy from antiquity to the present seems, therefore, to be a relatively happy one. In more and more countries citizen-voters are, in principle, able to hold public decision-makers to account, while the decision-makers themselves represent the interests of their constituents – ‘the people’ in a delimited territory. However, the tale of democracy does not conclude with such developments. Although the victory of democratic movements across Central and Eastern Europe was of great moment, as was the transformation of political regimes in other places like South Africa, these events have left unresolved many important questions of democratic thought and practice. Democracy, as an idea and as a political reality, is fundamentally contested. Not only is the history of democracy marked by conflicting interpretations, but also ancient and modern notions intermingle to produce ambiguous and inconsistent accounts of the key terms of democracy, among them the proper meaning of ‘political participation’, the connotation of ‘representation’, the scope of citizens’ capacities to choose freely among political alternatives, and the nature of membership in a democratic community.

These are significant and pressing matters, and the stock of a great deal of contemporary political debate. But even these important concerns by no means fully define the current agenda of democratic thought and practice. For any engagement with the contemporary meaning of democracy has to examine additional questions – questions not only about the ‘internal’ or ‘domestic’ character of democracy, but also about its ‘external’ qualities and consequences. This is so because one of the most conspicuous features of politics in the new millennium is the emergence of issues which transcend national democratic frontiers. Processes of economic globalization, the problem of the environment and the protection of the rights of minorities are increasingly matters for the international community as a whole. The nature and limits of national democracies have to be reconsidered in relation to processes of environmental, social and economic globalization; that is, in relation to shifts in the transcontinental or inter-regional scale of human social organization and of the exercise of social power.

Of course, there is nothing new about the emergence of global problems. Although their importance has grown considerably, many have existed for decades, some for centuries. But now that the old confrontation between East and West has ended, regional and global problems such as the spread of AIDS, the debt burden of the ‘developing world’, the flow of financial resources which escape national jurisdiction, the drugs trade, international crime and terrorism have an urgent place on the international political agenda. None the less, profound ambiguity still reigns as to where, how and according to what criteria decisions about these matters can be taken.

Democratic theory’s exploration of emerging regional and global problems is still in its infancy. While democratic theory has examined and debated at length the challenges to democracy that emerge from within the boundaries of the nation-state, it has not seriously questioned whether the nation-state itself can remain at the centre of democratic thought. The questions posed by the rapid growth of complex interconnections and interrelations between states and societies, and by the evident intersection of national and international forces and processes, remain largely unexplored.

The challenges facing democratic thinking now are both numerous and substantial. Models of Democracy, as published initially in 1987, had two prime purposes: the first, to provide an introduction to central accounts of democracy and, above all, to those of the Western tradition from ancient Greece to the present day; the second, to offer a critical narrative about successive democratic ideas in order to address the question, raised directly towards the end of the book: what should democracy mean today? These remained the objectives of the second edition, published in 1996, but in order to ensure their thorough execution it became necessary to revise the original text in a number of ways. Models needed revision in order to take account of transformations in politics some of which were either unanalysed or unanticipated by the first edition. It needed revision, moreover, in order to examine the considerable research and scholarship undertaken in political thought in the last decade, some of which has changed our understanding of aspects of the classic democratic heritage as well as of contemporary political ideas and notions. And it needed revision because the author of Models had altered the balance of his views in some respects, alterations which could usefully be reflected in a new text.

A similar set of issues lies behind the third edition. It has been updated to take account of political changes that are now shaping our world, and in the light of new theoretical and historical work that alters how we should interpret aspects of earlier political traditions. It has been revised because debates in political and social theory have led to new innovations in democratic thinking. Thus, a new chapter has been added on deliberative democracy (chapter 9), which is concerned with the quality of democratic reasoning and the justification for political action. Deliberative theorists focus on the development of citizenship, on how to encourage ‘refined’ and ‘reflective’ political preferences and on political rationality as inseparable from the idea of justification to others. These are important notions worthy of careful analysis in a separate chapter.

The first two editions of Models of Democracy emerged, in part, as a set text for an Open University course, ‘Democracy: From Classical Times to the Present’. Many of my colleagues at the Open University offered detailed commentaries on them. I would like to thank, in particular, Donna Dickenson, Bram Gieben, David Goldblatt, Paul Lewis, Tony McGrew and David Potter for their extensive advice. Moreover, in the preparation of the first and second editions I benefited enormously from the comments of...