This is part one of a two-volume set.

"...[Sartori] reviews the major democratic theories of our time and canvasses astutely the salient issues among them. Sartori synthesizes a theory of his own which he proffers as a new mainstream view to his readers. His trenchant and swift-moving argument moves deftly among competing schools of thought. The book's greatest strength lies in Sartori's demonstration that prescriptive and descriptive theories (the ideal and the real) must be blended, to be valid, in an integral whole—in theory of the democratically possible. The clarity and dramatic power of this erudite work render it very accessible to undergraduate students."

– William T. Bluhm, The University of Rochester

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Part 1. The Contemporary Debate

1. Can Democracy Be Just Anything?
The Age of Confused Democracy
Description and Prescription
Political and Other Democracies
Outline
A Coda on Theory

2. Etymological Democracy
The Meaning of People
The People in Mass Society
Power of the People and Power over People
Limited Majority Rule
The Lincoln Formula

3. the Limits of Political Realism
What is Pure Politics?
Warlike versus Peacelike Politics
Facts and Values in Benedetto Croce
Mosca, Pareto, and Michels
Realism versus Rationalism
Rational Democracy and Empirical Democracy

4. Perfectionism and Utopia
The Misunderstanding of Deontology
Myth and Utopia Reconsidered
Self-Government and the Politically Impossible
The Role of Ideals
Maximization, Opposite Danger, and Inverted Results
The Revolution as Myth
Ideals and Evidence

5. Governed Democracy and Governing Democracy
Public Opinion and Government by Consent
The Issue of Consensus
The Formation of Opinion
Autonomy versus Heteronomy of Public Opinion
Electoral Democracy
Participatory Democracy
Referendum Democracy and Knowledge
Government and Ungovernability

6. Vertical Democracy
Majority Principle and Minority Rule
The Tyranny of the Majority
Election, Selection, and Mal-Selection
Minorities and Elites
Minority Rule: From Mosca to Dahl
The Iron Law of Oligarchy
The Competitive Theory of Democracy
Anti-Elitism
Polyarchy Defined Normatively

7. What Democracy Is Not
Contraries, Contradictories, and Degrees
Authoritarianism, Authority, and Power
Total State, Semocracy, and Absolutism
Totalitarianism
Dictatorship and Autocracy

8. A Decision-Making Theory of Democracy
The Nature of Political Decisions
External Risks and Decisional Costs
Outcomes and Decisional Contexts
Intensity of Preference and Majority Rule
Committees and Unanimity
Committees, Participation, and Demo-Distribution
Consociational Democracy
A Coda on the Cost of Idealism

Notes

Part 2. The Classical Issues

9. What Is Democracy? Definition, Proof, and Preference
Are Definitions Arbitrary?
A Criticism of Conventionalism
Words as Experience Carriers
The Search for Proof
A Comparative Evaluation

10. Greek Democracy and Modern Democracy
Homonymy, Not Homology
Direct or Polis Democracy
Individualism and Freedom: Old and New
The Modern Idea and Ideal
A Reversal of Perspectives

11. Liberty and Law
Freedom and Freedoms
Political Freedom
Liberal Freedom
The Supremacy of Law in Rousseau
Autonomy: A Criticism
The Principle of Diminishing Consequences
From the Rule of Law to the Rule of Legislators

12. Equality
A Protest Ideal
Justice and Sameness
Predemocratic and Democratic Equalities
Equal Opportunities and Equal Circumstances
Egalitarian Criteria, Treatments, and Outcomes
The Maximization of Equality
Liberty and Equality

13. Liberism, Liberalism, and Democracy
Overlaps
An Unfortunate Timing
Property and Possessive Individualism
Liberalism Defined
Liberal Democracy
Democracy within Liberalism
Democracy without Liberalism

14. Market, Capitalism, Planning, and Technocracy
What is Planning?
What is the Market?
Capitalism, Individualism, Collectivism
Market Socialism
Democratic Planning
Democracy, Power, and Incompetence
The Role of the Expert
The Government of Science

15. Another Democracy?
The Good Society of Rousseau and Marx
Democracy and the State in Marx and Lenin
Popular Democracy
The Theory of Democratic Dictatorship
Deocracy and Demophily
The War of Words

16. The Poverty of Ideology
The Exhaustion of Ideals
Inevitables and Evitables
The Witch-Hunting of Ideas
Novitism and Beyondism
Epilogue

Name Index
Subject Index