Democracy is the realm of the indeterminate; the future is not written. Conflicts of values and of interests are inherent in all societies. Democracy is needed precisely because we cannot agree. Democracy is only a system for processing conflicts without killing one another; it is a system in which there are differences, conflicts, winners and losers. Conflicts are absent only in authoritarian systems. No country in which a party wins 60 percent of the vote twice in a row is a democracy.
A Thought on Democracy
Getting ready for my Chinese politics class (PSCI 247), I was rereading the work for today, chapter 2 from Adam Przeworski’s Democracy and the Market (1991), and came across one of my favorite thought-provoking paragraphs (p.95)
Democracy is the realm of the indeterminate; the future is not written. Conflicts of values and of interests are inherent in all societies. Democracy is needed precisely because we cannot agree. Democracy is only a system for processing conflicts without killing one another; it is a system in which there are differences, conflicts, winners and losers. Conflicts are absent only in authoritarian systems. No country in which a party wins 60 percent of the vote twice in a row is a democracy.
Is he right? Is he wrong? How?