To recapitulate, classical democracy includes mainly two broad categories: direct democracy and indirect democracy. The first is also known as participatory democracy because of direct participation of the citizens in assembly to conduct legislative and policy-making functions. The second is known as representative democracy because of indirect participation of the citizens through their elected representatives in legislative and policy-making functions. The liberal democracy is generally identified with representative democracy, though there can be direct liberal democratic methods also, as they obtain in Swiss cantons and some of the American States.
Within the predominant liberal-representative democratic practice, different principles of justification have been attributed to democracy. While Jeremy Bentham and James Madison justify democracy as a government for protection of the individual from dominance of authority and groups through checks and balances, John Stuart Mill justifies it on the basis of development of human personality and moral and intellectual development. These, the protective and the developmental democracy, are variants or part of the liberal democratic arrangement.
Besides, various other names have been given to democracy on the basis of justification and suitability to particular regime and condition. These include, ‘People’s democracy’ to generally designate the governmental set up in countries with the dominance of single communist parties, such as China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.; ‘Guided democracy’ or ‘Basic democracy’ in which representative part of democracy is combined with some form of direct or grass root participation of the people. Ayub Khan advocated basic democracy in Pakistan and Guided democracy was advocated in Indonesia. Many critics have denied democracy the status of rule of the people. They have argued that there is only one possibility; democracy as rule of the elite where elite gets periodically confirmed. Sometimes, it is treated as negotiation amongst groups and groups of elites. As such, elite competition and negotiation amongst groups of elites are treated as forms of democratic practice.
One of the important points of discussion and focus in debate on democracy has been who rules and how legislative and policy making is influenced; alternatively, whether democracy is a rule of the people, or of the majority, or of elite minority or various groups negotiating with each other or of the dominant class. This sociological question leads us to how different observers have described it. Except Marxian conception of democracy, all the other theories that we will discuss below have emerged in the twentieth century. However, all of them share one common focus, that of influence on and exercise of power in decision-making by social groups or classes. Understanding of distribution of power in society changes the understanding of operation of democracy. In classical sense, democracy was either the rule of the people or the majority and its objectives were defined in terms of ethical principles. Recently, democracy has been analysed in the perspective of socio-economic power relations. We call them recent theories of democracy because of their interpretation of perceived changes in liberal democracy in twentieth century and their sociological orientation.
The following theories can be discussed as recent theories of democracy including the Marxian theory:
- Elitist theory of democracy
- Pluralist theory of democracy
- Marxian theory of democracy
Both elitist and pluralist theories of democracy uphold the liberal portion of liberal democracy. But they seek to revise the democratic portion of it. They agree with the basic liberal tenets of constitutionally limited government, private ownership of property and capitalist economy. However, they find changes in the process of people’s participation in the political process and decision-making. For elite theory, political participation is a mere periodic ceremony for selecting elite to let them decide further. For pluralist theory, decision making involves plurality of groups rather than the people or the majority per se. Thus, the recent theories are focusing on the changed context of participation and form of decision-making. The radical democrats and New Left thinkers have advocated participatory democracy. This highlights the insufficiency of socioeconomic condition to enable a truly democratic participation in the liberal democratic set up. Marxian theory pronounced the limitation of liberal democracy as being bourgeois democracy working within a capitalist economic system.
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