Redescribing Democracy: a Review

Hubertus Buchstein and Dirk Jörke, 2007 Redescribing Democracy

Peter Tait

In Redescribing Democracy, the authors explore the evolution of the idea of democracy through history. They argue that participation, initially an essential element of a political system that is democratic, has been excluded for most of history and is only just, since the late 19^th century, being re-integrated.

Initially in a demos kratia, participation was the essence. Over time the idea has evolved in a few ways:

From being a bad, equated with mob rule, to an accepted way to govern, so much that even autocratic regimes call themselves democratic;

From direct participatory to representative, partially to disempower the mob but in larger polities for practical logistical reasons;

From a focus on citizen involvement to a focus on processes of political decision-making, and a focus on the outputs of that political process. That is, an evolution from participation being the end to participation being a means to good government and better societal outcomes. As the put it: the end of “enhancing the rationality of collectively binding decisions”.

In parallel they argue that consequently idealised democracy has become a promise, always offered but never delivered on.

CAPaD is using this new idea of citizen participation in a democratic political system, as a process for good governance to achieve better outcomes for society.

CAPaD’s quest then is the how of participation. Buchstein and Jörke explain that we need to focus on the actors in the political system, and judging the system on whether their actions contribute to community / citizen participation in decision making, or not. In turn then assessing if those actions lead to good governance and societal benefits.

As a corollary, they argue that many of the currently used measures of democracy miss the mark by not assessing those actions, outputs and benefits. We need to use good governance measures instead.

 

A pdf of this post can be found here.