Introduction

For many, democracy is a guarantee of freedom, equality and popular rule. But for some, it is the rule of the ignorant and the average person in which number counts, not merit.¹

Democracy is understood in a variety of ways. The Athenians in ancient Greece led by Pericles celebrated democracy, Plato rejected it as the rule of the ignorant and Aristotle found it as a corrupt form of polity, his balanced constitution. By the time Abraham Lincoln ended his famous Gettysburg speech on Nov. 17, 1863 in the mist of American Civil War commotions; in his last sentence he had already given both flesh and spirit to the meaning of democracy as government of the people, by the people, for the people. David Held in his Models of Democracy says that ‘the history of the idea of democracy is curious; the history of democracies is puzzling.’² Let us get a flavour of this puzzle.

The concept of democracy originated in the Greek demokratia, meaning demos (the many or the people) and kratos (power or rule).³ It is apparent that the rule of the many or the people was in contrast to the rule of the few (aristocracy) or the rule of one (monarchy). For the Greeks, and for Plato and Aristotle, democracy was one of the forms of government or constitution and was part of the cyclical alteration. For both, democracy like aristocracy and monarchy in addition to being a form of government or constitution also represented certain principles and values. Aristotle found that democracy implied spirit of political equality and distributive principle based on free birth. A democratic constitution involved distribution of public offices and rewards based not on high birth, wealth or high education, but on free birth and rule of the people. In the classical sense, democracy is considered a form of government in which the many or the people ruled, and which distributed political offices based on equality and free birth.

Classical democracy is generally identified with the democratic set up that prevailed in Athens in ancient Greece. Classical democracy generally has two main features. Firstly, it was rule of the many or the people; and secondly, it was practiced directly, i.e., people participated in person in the day-to-day operation of the political affairs and public office. Direct participation is still found in many Swiss cantons and some of the states in USA. However, in these cases, direct participation is in the form of legislation or making of law through initiative (legislation is proposed by the people instead of elected members), referendum and plebiscite (direct voting on certain issues of public importance either for making law or deciding the issue) and in the form of control on the elected representatives through recall (elected members are called back, removed by the people mid-way unlike the practice of fixed terms in our democracy). This is called direct or participatory democracy. In classical sense, democracy means a form of government directly participated by the people in policy and legislation-making.

However, by the time democracy journeyed to the modern world, the people became sufficiently large and the government adequately complex. Direct participation became impractical and affairs of the government technically demanding. By seventeenth century in Europe, absolutist monarchies were giving way to popular governments and by the close of eighteenth century the trio of Revolutions – the English (1688), the American (1776) and the French (1789), heralded the modern era of representative democratic rule. The political ideas of social contract and consent (Locke and Rousseau) rights of the individual (Locke and Paine) and representation gave philosophical and political bases to representative democracy.

Meanwhile, representative democracy required defining two things, one, who would be representatives, and two, who would choose the representatives. Apparently, the people or the general citizenry is to be the choosers and from amongst them, who so ever command their confidence and consent, the representatives. This, in turn, means giving political rights to the people for choosing. As such, democracy as a form of government came to become representative, i.e., rule by the representative delegates of the people. A group of elected representatives and not the people per se runs the affairs of the government. This is indirect or representative democracy, which we find in many countries in the contemporary times, including India. In classical sense, democracy has two forms of government, one, direct or participatory democracy and the other, indirect or representative democracy.

Subsequently, democracy has acquired various forms and has been interpreted and understood differently. Fundamentally, the concept of democracy means distribution of power in society and its implication for political power. This is to say who wields power and how it is reflected in the political set up. Liberal approach views power distribution in society as one of dispersion and distribution in such a manner that individuals and groups enjoy power and they influence the exercise of political power. Pluralist approach, a sub-set of liberal approach, assumes that society has various groups, which act as power centres and influence exercise of political power. There is an elitist approach that upholds that power distribution in society is in favour of a small minority of the people. The basic assumption of the elitist approach is that democracy as a government is a rule of elite minority and not of the people. In contrast to all these, the Marxian approach denies any possibility of democracy in a capitalist society and argues for socialist democracy. Democracy is a capitalist set is a class rule, rule of the owners over the labourers.