Towards Normal Democracy: Theory and Prediction with Special Reference to the Developing Countries

Current democratic theorizing is based either on the classical model of democracy, which assumes that self-rule and political equality are achievable, or on the procedural democracy of the modern state, which posits that the presence of political and civil liberties is a fundamental right. The weakness of the former model lies in its assumption that self-rule and political equality are possible in modern states, whereas the latter fails to account for variations in the level of influence or power that citizens possess. Given these deficiencies, the author formulates an open-ended theory of democracy that recognizes the limitations of current democracies but allows for the fact that economic development can facilitate the process of democratic development. While acknowledging that no perfectly egalitarian democracies can ever exist, he hypothesizes that as the level of economic development grows over time, the distribution of income, knowledge, and political power among citizens of a given society will likely move toward the form of a normal or bell-shape curve, and he calls such a state of political evolution, normal democracy. Keywords: Greek city state; Modern democracies; Democratic transition; Pseudodemocracies; Normal democracy; Colonial legacy; Colitical equality; Egalitarianism. Introduction The concept of democracy has fascinated social philosophers and scientists since classical Greece. For some it is a political system that would bring about political equality and self-rule to all individuals of a given society. To others, it is a system that allows the presence of equal opportunities and rights. The two different conceptualizations of democracy are based on the experiences of the two major democratic experiments that the world has seen so far, democracies in classical Greece and in modern states. The classical model of democracy draws its inspiration from experiments in the ancient Greek city states. In such arrangements, citizens were both the rulers and the ruled; political sovereignty and power rested with the people. Each individual citizen had a right and an obligation to serve in administrative duties, chosen mainly by lot. All adult male citizens were politically active: but slaves and immigrant aliens were excluded from citizenship, since citizenship was a birthright customarily determined by descent. Women did not participate in the political process. The small size of the cities allowed citizens to deliberate and make decisions on public issues. In a manner similar to Rousseau's argument later, the purpose of government was to preserve the interests of the community and the common good. The moral development of individual citizens was a crucial aspect (see Petracca, M., 1991 for instance). In sum, the classical Greek city-state democracy came close to the ideal form of democracy, self-government and political equality. Its members were essentially kinsmen and enjoyed the same cultural heritage. By contrast, modern democracies are more populous and more diverse, both ethnically and culturally, and this makes the kind of direct political participation in deliberations that we observe in classical Greece very difficult, creating the need for a representative form of government.2 Although there is no consensus, most scholars would agree that democracy as it exists in modern states implies the presence of political rights and civil liberties (see Gastil, R., 1991; Diamond, L. et al., 1995, for instance). Political rights include the right to vote, the right to run for office, and the presence of fair and free elections; civil liberties include the presence of due process, freedom of speech and assembly, and equality before the law. In modern representative democracies, it is the leaders, not the people, who rule. Citizens control their leaders by holding periodic elections. In addition, modern democracy is also about the presence of choices and rights. Citizens are legally free to decide what to do in life, including the career they choose to pursue, the religion they want to practice, and the political group they wish to support. …