Volume 69, 2018
Political Philosophy
Evert van der Zweerde
Pages 425-429
The Quality of Democracy
Beyond Substantive and Procedural Understandings
This paper elaborates a conception of democracy as a possible quality of all social situations in which political power is executed by some over others. Critical of proceduralist, substantivist, and ethical conceptions of democracy, exemplified by Van Parijs, Rancière and Dewey respectively, it does not propose a synthesis of those three, but aims to move beyond them, arguing in favour of an understanding of democracy as a mixing regime, consisting of a plurality of repertoires that, in each and every situation, can materialize the quality of democracy, and are therefore, themselves, an object of choice, decision, and contestation. This conception will be tested in an application to three recent cases (Tahrir Square in Egypt, presidential elections in Venezuela, and general elections in The Netherlands).