CHAPTER 1

Democracy: Components and Types

Democratic government—or any form of government—is not required

unless humans congregate in such a way that task differentiation becomes
necessary to sustain the community. An allocation of powers to service a
community can be democratic or undemocratic, but the strong and rich
have tended to dominate throughout most of human history. The idea of
democracy, as presently understood, only arose relatively recently and its
development is fascinating.
Some scholars utopianize “tribal democracy” (Paley 2002), which has
been claimed to have existed in pre-Babylonian Mesopotamia around
2100 bce (Jacobsen 1943: 159–72) and in certain parts of India from
1500 to 400 bce (Robinson 1997: 22–23; Keane 2009: xi). However, the
best evidence indicates that democracy first existed, albeit for fleetingly, in
city-states of Greece, where the idea arose that the people, not the elites,
should determine the actions of governments. The idea of democratic rule
has now become an aspiration for humanity.
But democracies are difficult to form. Some democracies are over-
thrown in coups by authoritarian, elite-run cliques. Others suffer civil
wars. Many flounder, struggling like fish placed on dry land or elephants
dancing on the edge of a precipice, nearly collapsing because the people
are unable to communicate with those who run the government suppos-
edly on their behalf.
There are many examples of democracies floundering, as itemized in
Appendix A. Among the most prominent cases are the difficulties faced in

© The Author(s) 2019 5

M. Haas, Why Democracies Flounder and Fail,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74070-6_1
6 M. HAAS

forming coalition governments after World War II in Belgium, Fourth

Republic France, Italy, Spain, and Thailand. More recently, efforts to cre-
ate democracies in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iraq have been unable to pass
the test of political inclusiveness. As for Nepal, nine months of disagree-
ment between political parties delayed the delivery of vital humanitarian
relief pledged by sources worldwide after the massive earthquake of 2015
(Hammer 2016). But the more surprising example is the United States,
where moderates in the two main political parties have had a majority of
votes in Congress (Haas 2012b: ch. 7), yet compromise legislation has
rarely been passed.
Something is very wrong when countries that value the idea of democ-
racy cannot put their ideals into practice and thus allow the will of the
people to prevail. As the present volume will demonstrate, one reason for
such problems is the mistaken belief that the forms of democracy necessar-
ily produce the substance of democracy. A politics of mass society exists
when ordinary persons cannot make their voices heard because interven-
ing institutions of civil society (interest groups, media, political parties) are
either nonexistent or serve their own interests in pressuring government
rather than representing the will of the people. “Pseudo-democracy” exists
when a country has procedures of democratic government but lacks sub-
stance—that is, when government fails to carry out the will of the people.
The most important question within democratic theory is to determine
the conditions for achieving substantive democracy, but that question is
rarely asked (cf. Miller and Stokes 1963; Clausen 1973; Jacobson and
Carson 2016; Sinclair 1997: 231; Dengwerth 2014). Instead, there is a
tendency to tolerate mass society politics, which is dangerous because
pseudo-democracies can easily fail, and human suffering is exacerbated
when the needs of the people are ignored.
Accordingly, the present volume addresses democratic theory from a
long-neglected perspective. First, the term “democracy” needs to be defined
in terms of its major components, as in the present chapter (cf. Terchek and
Conte 2000). Second, alternative types must be identified in order to dis-
cover why the term “democracy” means different things in different cul-
tures. But most important is to develop a paradigm in which all the pieces
fit together in order to explain why democracy flounders and fails. That
macro-theory is the Mass Society Paradigm (Chap. 2). Having established
the basic definitional and theoretical framework, in-depth evidence is pre-
sented to explain why the French Fourth Republic fell (Chap. 3), how one
of the most prosperous countries in the world—Singapore—has a form of
procedural but not substantive democracy (Chap. 4), why the United States
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 7

is no longer a paragon of democracy (Chap. 5), and how globalized world

politics is dangerously undemocratic (Chap. 6). Finally, remedies will be
prescribed (Chap. 7).
The best place to begin the quest is in Athens, where democracy existed
for a time before floundering and failing. The story of democratic theory,
thus, starts at the beginning.

Plato and Aristotle on Democracy

In about 700 bce, Lycurgus introduced reforms in Sparta that involved
freedom of speech and equality as well as two representative bodies repre-
senting all the people, despite requiring everyone to live in military
encampments (Pomeroy et al. 1999: 143, 152). Following similar reforms
of Solon of Athens in 594 bce (Robinson 2003: 54–55, 76–98; Raaflaub
et al. 2007: 60–68), Cleisthenes of Athens established what was then
called “democracy” in 507 bce (Clarke and Foweraker 2001: 194–201).
During the time of Plato, the people—nonslave males at least 20 years
old—would assemble to decide the business of government on the basis of
a show of hands and even swords, and the wishes of the majority consti-
tuted the decision of the day. Those holding office as well as the composi-
tion of juries were determined by lot from among those 30 years old and
above (Keane 2009: 4–77). Athens was one of several Greek city-states
that adopted democracy (ibid.: 89–155).
In The Republic (360 bce: Book VIII), Plato gave a poor rating to
democracy, noting that demagogues with some intelligence could sway
the uneducated masses, who in turn would feel free to disobey the law,
resulting in anarchy. He favored aristocracy, with rule by a philosopher-­
king whose governance would be based on reason and wisdom and who
would serve as a guardian of the state (Dahl 1989: 52). However, Plato
identified an inexorable process in which aristocracy would begin to
degenerate within one generation after its establishment into timocracy
(rule by less qualified heirs of the philosopher-king), oligarchy, then
democracy, and finally tyranny. Democracies, by allowing economic free-
dom, would inevitably lead to considerable inequality, and eventually the
rich would take control, finally resulting in tyranny.
Aristotle, in Politics (350 bce: Book IV), categorized many types of
democracy and oligarchy. “Polity” was proposed as the highest form of
government because it was characterized by a regularized system, known
as a “constitution,” and rule was in the interest of the common good.
8 M. HAAS

Among perverted forms of polity, he approved most highly of democracy.

But in studying several constitutions among various types of governments,
he approved most highly of democracies because members of the middle
(propertied) class, who could think for themselves, constituted a critical
mass within the population to counter potential demagogues and thereby
ensure political stability. Such democracies, however, acted in the interest
of the middle class, not necessarily the common good. Aristotle disap-
proved of another form of democracy—rule by the poor, the most numer-
ous class in a political system, which meant allowing everyone a vote
(except for slaves and women).
Athenian democracy did not last. Oligarchs effected a coup in 411 bce,
but they were overthrown and democracy was restored in 403. Then, when
Athens lost the Hellenic War of 323–322, political control passed to
Macedon. Later, the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 ce deprived Athenians
of self-determination. The democratic experiment was not revived for nearly
two millennia, although forms of democracy appeared in Rome and some
city-states of Northern Italy during the tenth century (Dahl 1970: 5).
John Keane (2009: 85–88) attributes the later rise of democracy to the
writing of George Grote (1846–1856), whose friends included Jeremy
Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In utilitarian terms, all three viewed
democracy as providing the greatest good to the greatest number since
laissez-faire capitalism had gained favor over the pettiness of oligarchic
feudalism. According to the fascinating thesis of John Ferejohn and
Frances Rosenbluth (2016), the industrial age brought about govern-
ments with the power to aggrandize themselves by attacking others and
thus they needed the support of the working class, leading to democracy
and nationalism—the very reasons why Athens developed democracy.
When the idea of democracy returned in the nineteenth century, the
concept was adapted to much larger societies than city-states, so democ-
racy became a more institutionally complex form of government.
Nevertheless, the building blocks of democracy were slowly constructed
by politicians and theorists, as discussed next.

Components of Procedural Democracy

For a country or any other entity to be classified as a “democracy,” certain
procedures must be in place, whence the term “procedural democracy” is
derived. Constitutions, representative legislatures, voting rights, and bal-
lot secrecy are the most important. But procedural democracy is not
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 9

­ substantive democracy” unless the demands of the people are actually

“
heard by representatives in legislatures and executives and acted upon for
their benefit. What may be called “functional democracy” is the presence
of at least two processes—popular participation and government account-
ability (Bexell et al. 2010; Dingwerth 2014; Kuyper and Squatrito 2017).
For democracy to have substantive meaning, public opinion must be
reflected in the passing or modifying of laws, adopting or amending a
constitution, and in concrete efforts of executives to implement laws.
Democracies often grow gradually, reform by reform, so a review of essen-
tial procedural components is needed to demonstrate whether any coun-
try can honor the struggle that has occurred over millennia and live up to
these high standards.

Constitutions Stone tablets containing laws have existed since the Code of
Hammurabi in 1754 bce, the Ten Commandments of Moses (1462 bce),
and perhaps even earlier. It has been claimed that Lycurgus of Sparta
authored the first written constitution in 700 bce, followed by the Athenian
reforms of Solon in 594 bce (Raaflaub et al. 2007: 37). Aristotle was the
first to define “constitution” as higher than ordinary law, describing how
power is allocated by laws to different branches of government without
necessarily being encoded in a unified written document.
Rome sent a delegation to Greece in 454 bce to study the reforms of
Solon and others (Livy 27 bce [2002]: 23; Durant 1942: 23). Four years
later, Rome proclaimed the famous Twelve Tables, with a system of gov-
ernment resembling Sparta somewhat more than Athens (Balot 2009:
194). The Roman Codex came in 438 ce, with the purpose of consolidat-
ing similar laws, but the Roman Empire fell in 476. Thereafter, legal codes
were compiled in Western Europe, such as those by various Germanic
peoples and the Franks, and the Code of Æthelberht of Kent in 602. In
Eastern Europe (Fine 1994), constitutions were issued in Serbia (1219)
and Hungary (1222).
Several constitutional compilations were made outside Europe. King
Ashoka of India established constitutional principles, the Edicts of Ashoka,
during his reign (269–232 bce). Japan’s Prince Shō toku offered a consti-
tution comprising seventeen articles on social morality in 604 ce. The
Prophet Mohammed authored the only surviving written constitution,
the Constitution of Medina, in 622, to regulate the city-state of Medina in
order to end bitter fighting between various clans in the town, with an
10 M. HAAS

agreement among Jews, Muslims, and pagans living there (Watt 1956).
The Ming Dynasty adopted a legal code in 1375. A fourteenth-century
charter has been reconstituted from oral tradition in Mali (Naing 2006).
And Ethiopia adapted a code written by a Coptic Egyptian sometime in
the following century.
In the later Middle Ages in Europe, Catalonia promulgated a basic
document in 1283. Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, issued the Golden
Bull of 1356 (Scott 1999). Sardinia followed in 1392. Possibly the oldest
written document still in force established a separation of powers for San
Marino in 1600, based on a town statute of 1300.
The Iroquois Confederation may have the oldest surviving unwritten
constitution. Although there was a constitutional basis for the Iroquois
League, it is disputed whether the League’s Great Law of Peace influenced
the writing of constitutions in the English colonies of North America
(Jennings 1988: 259 n. 15; Grinde 1992). The first North American writ-
ten constitution was adopted in 1639 by the Colony of Connecticut.
When Oliver Cromwell seized power in England in 1648, two constitu-
tions were written, but Cromwell would not allow himself to be con-
strained by words in a document; his overthrow in 1658 quashed the
constitutions. Other constitutions were adopted by Ukraine (1710),
Corsica (1755), and Sweden (1772). The North American colonies
adopted the Articles of Confederation in 1777, though they were not rati-
fied until 1781. The Constitution of the United States, written in 1787,
was ratified in 1788. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Constitution
was adopted four months before the French Constitution of 1791. Since
then, nearly every country has adopted a constitution.
However, the founders of the Constitution of 1787 explicitly rejected
“democracy” (Morris 2010). And Alexis de Tocqueville (1840: Sec. 4, ch.
IV) warned that democracies tend to fail because governmental institu-
tions always seek to accumulate more and more unchecked power.
Britain has no specific constitutional document. The English Constitution
(1867), a book written by Walter Bagehot, codifies laws and practices that
amount to the same thing, though Parliament can reverse anything that
Bagehot found to be at a higher level than ordinary laws.
The concept of a constitutional separation of powers was already a real-
ity in many places before it was advocated by the Baron de Montesquieu
(1748). Not all constitutions are alike in design or philosophy. Some have
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 11

been based on natural law, while others have been conceived as a social
contract between the people and government. When democracies floun-
der, one reason is that nothing happens when one branch of government
blocks another, preventing the normal operations of government. The
most crucial institution is the legislature, which tends to retain the power
of the purse and can therefore withhold payment to the executive and
judicial branches of government.

Representative Legislatures New rulers for centuries had a habit of calling

for an assembly in their towns to introduce themselves, welcome the
masses, and announce new rules. From pre-historic times, assemblies were
held to agree or disagree with the local rulers in considering such major
decisions as whether to go to war (Gomme 1880). Some indigenous peo-
ples still maintain such democratic forms as assemblies and councils of
elders (Haas 2014c: ch. 6).
Parts of India and Mesopotamia as well as Athens and Sparta had
assemblies. The Senate of Rome, which existed from 753 bce to 603 ce,
represented propertied interests, but was entirely advisory. When Rome
no longer controlled the eastern part of the empire, the Senate was estab-
lished in Constantinople in 395 and lasted about one thousand years, until
the city was taken over by the Ottomans in 1453.
Gatherings in small towns in England, Ireland, and Switzerland began
during the seventh century (Tittler 1991). The custom of town halls in
contemporary New England follows the same pattern, beginning with the
Mayflower Compact of 1680.
The first legislature founded in the common era with members elected
as representatives was formed by the Republic of San Marino in 301.
Viking settlers of Iceland set up the Althing, a parliament, in 930, but the
country was taken over in 1262 by Norway, which in turn became a col-
ony of Denmark in 1380. The Althing was abolished in 1800 but restored
in 1848. The Isle of Man claims to have the world’s longest continuously
functioning parliament, the Tynwald, which officially began in 979,
though with earlier roots. When William the Conqueror arrived to take
control of England in 1066, he sought the advice of a council of Saxon
nobles and Catholic priests but retained absolute power. Communities
built around rivers set up management “water boards” in the twelfth cen-
tury, with all adult males having the right to construct canals and dykes
with their own labor (Keane 2009: 193).
12 M. HAAS

The Kingdom of León, which formed the Cortes in 1188 to solicit war
funding from the nobles, merged into the Kingdom of Castile in 1230
(O’Callaghan 1989). Other Spanish provinces followed suit (Catalonia,
1218; Aragón, 1274; Valencia, 1283; Navarra, 1300). When trade in the
North Sea boomed after 1158, merchants in guilds in the trading cities
formed the Hanseatic League, which for the next 300 years routinized
rules of commerce.
When Prince John signed the Magna Carta in 1215, he agreed under
duress to transfer some of his decision-making power to a council of
twenty-five barons, representing major landholders in England. When
John later tried to disavow the arrangement, civil war broke out. After he
died in 1216, regents of John’s successor, Henry III, agreed to the Magna
Carta, but the council was not accepted until the barons forced the king
to allow a fifteen-member body in 1258. Three years later, when the
arrangement was again disavowed, another civil war broke out. In 1265,
the Earl of Leicester declared that elections by property owners would be
held to form a parliament, and the new body was accepted by Edward
I. During the reign of Edward III, the parliament became bicameral, with
the upper house composed of nobles and higher clergy, the lower house
consisting of burgesses and knights. Both houses of the bicameral parlia-
ment as well as the monarch had to approve laws. Although future mon-
archs tried to marginalize the parliament, members resisted. When Charles
I was deposed and executed in 1648, Oliver Cromwell took over, ruling
until he was defeated in 1658. The monarchy and parliament were then
restored, the latter extending its power gradually.
In 1302, Philip IV of France convened the tricameral Estates General
to gain approval for raising taxes. Priests elected clergy to the First Estate.
The king decided which nobles would belong to the Second Estate.
Delegates within cities favored by the king elected “commoners” to the
Third Estate. But the Estates General was seldom convened and did not
serve as a check on the king.
Other legislative bodies also emerged with some powers in Eastern
Europe and Scandinavia. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
formed a legislature for nobles in 1505. Sweden’s Riksdag began in
1435. The first representative body in the New World was the Virginia
House of Burgesses in 1619. William Penn established a similar body
in Pennsylvania in 1682. In 1707, England and Scotland merged, and
the British parliament was firmly entrenched in the process. The
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 13

American and French revolutions of the late eighteenth century

­established representative bodies that became models for the world.
But few of the early parliaments were representative in the democratic
sense, varying in the amount of power they were allowed to have and
how members were chosen (Keane 2009: 179–92).

Civil Society The concept of civil society has Greek and Roman origins,
but Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1820 [1991]: 80) revitalized the
concept in the eighteenth century (Anheier et al. 2001: 12). Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1762) used the idea to refer to the stage after humans emerged
from the “state of nature.” Alexis de Tocqueville (1835–1840) celebrated
civil society as central to American democracy. But Karl Marx (1843/44)
discounted the idea as too “bourgeois.”
The first contemporary use of the term “civil society,” according to
Norberto Bobbie (1976), is from Antonio Gramsci (1957). But the most
influential exponent of the necessity of civil society for democracy has
been Jürgen Habermas (1996: 8.3.2). Civil society, as employed herein,
consists of a plurality of informal groups (pressure groups in particular),
media to provide information, political parties, a legal basis for public
redress of grievances, and a private domain outside government control
(cf. Cohen and Arato 1992; Berry 1996; Strøm 1996).
Bruce Sievers (2010) has claimed that philanthropy is a vital compo-
nent of civil society, since many noneconomic pressure groups otherwise
could not exist. Other elements that he believes are vital to make the insti-
tutional elements work are a belief in the common good and tolerance. He
has traced the origins of modern civil society to the sixteenth-century
Dutch republic and Benjamin Franklin’s Junto Club of 1747 (ibid.: 90).
Some early modern cities built walls around their perimeters and, par-
ticularly in Machiavelli’s fifteenth-century Italy, became bastions of the
revival of Greek-type city-states. But there was an important difference—
the recognition of a civil society consisting of clergy and guilds (ibid.:
198–207). Members of city councils were sometimes selected to represent
various organized occupational groups. Italian city-states that traded with
other cities needed to have contracts to reduce uncertainty in transactions,
thus requiring lawyers, as commodities were considered property, and
property owners were also included in the various governing structures.
Civil society can only exist when people have the leisure time to meet
and discuss matters outside of governmental institutions. Because the
14 M. HAAS

poorest people in society have little time for such pursuits, they often
engage in mob violence against rulers when they perceive them as inatten-
tive to their needs. Street demonstrations were hallmarks of the French
and Russian revolutions, but thousands of less spectacular uprisings have
occurred throughout history. What is clear is that protesters usually do not
recognize any intermediate institutions to ask for help in redressing griev-
ances. With the advent of pressure groups and political parties, as well as
media reporting their grievances, politics could settle down into dialog.
The origins of civil society can be attributed to the acceptance of inde-
pendent businesses within nation-states—that is, wealth created apart
from the feudal or monarchical rulers, who relied on military force to
coerce obedience. Acceptance of civil society came easily at first, as long as
rulers could tax businesses and get more revenue from them than from
ordinary people. But that put businesses increasingly in the driver’s seat of
the destiny of their countries—with very different interests to protect than
those of the rulers. In due course, monarchists and advocates of democ-
racy began to organize all over Europe (Keane 2009: 472).
Political parties emerged in Britain during the 1680s among those who
were for (Tories) and against (Whigs) the idea of a Catholic as monarch—
a symbol of the dispute over whether monarchical power should be unlim-
ited or limited, respectively (Jones 1961). Although James Madison
opposed the idea of political parties as “factions” in his Federalist #10
(1787), civil society par excellence emerged in the United States during
the late years of the presidency of Federalist John Adams because the ordi-
nary people who fought in the American Revolution were shocked upon
witnessing a federal government of elites, by elites, and for elites. Groups
were then formed to agitate for a greater role for the masses than the
Federalists would allow. Cleverly, Thomas Jefferson decided to aggregate
some of those groups into the Democratic-Republican Party.
Later, the existence of pressure groups outside political parties
impressed Alexis de Tocqueville (1835–1840; Keane 2009: 302–06),
who argued that an autonomous civil society is the very foundation of
democratic government. After all, competitive parties needed to attract
support, and the most efficient way was to curry favor with pressure
groups, which formed so that politicians would listen to them. But
American political parties soon began to impose party discipline on their
members in Congress and state and local legislatures, while their British
counterparts were also mired in factionalism (ibid.: 301).
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 15

Meanwhile, factories hired workers, who streamed into the industrial

towns from the countryside, and trade unions arose to articulate demands
on their behalf. Even though factory workers found government unre-
sponsive to normal politics, they were able to join protests in 1848 across
Europe, after some read the prediction of Marx and Engels in the freely
circulated Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) that the proletarian
overthrow of capitalism was inevitable. Civil society, in other words, was
firmly established by the mid-nineteenth century in many parts of Europe
and the United States.
For Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus (1976), Robert Putnam
(2000), and many other scholars, intermediate institutions are vital to
democracy (e.g., Eisenstadt 1996a). Not only do such institutions assist
the people in learning how to participate in public life, but they build
trustworthiness about government (Sally 1995) and a sense of citizen reci-
procity (Gutmann and Thompson 1998: 52–53).

Democratic Selection of Executives There are at least three ways of choos-

ing executives in a democracy—by lot (sortition), direct election, or indi-
rectly. Elections for the legislature may involve either single-member or
multi-member districts, or proportional representation of political parties
for seats in parliament (Lijphart 1996). Public participation in such pro-
cesses is essential to ensure government accountability.
In Athenian democracy, ordinary people were selected by lot for gov-
ernment posts as well as juries. Elections were introduced in 1454 in
Poland–Lithuania, whereby the monarch was elected by the nobles and his
power was restricted, though the country was carved up during the eigh-
teenth century by adjacent powers (ibid.: 260–63). In 1755, the people
elected Filippo Antonio Pasquale di Paoli as president of the Republic of
Corsica, honoring his victory in the war of independence from Genoa and
his skill in writing the republic’s constitution. Ironically, the failure of
Britain’s Lord (Harry) Grafton to intervene in the war in Corsica brought
down his government in 1770, whereupon his successor Lord (Frederick)
North became prime minister and adopted such a hard line toward the
resistance of colonists across the ocean that they declared independence in
1776 and chose the world’s second popularly elected president, George
Washington, in 1792. However, the constitution stipulated that American
voters in each state would choose electors, in quantities primarily based on
16 M. HAAS

the state’s population, to vote for presidential candidates, almost always as

instructed by the majority vote for president in each state. In a case of two
dynastic rivals, voters in the Kingdom of Hawai’i elected their monarchs
during the last half of the nineteenth century (Haas 2017c: ch. 13).
In some countries legislators are able to choose a country’s executive
(called the “prime minister” in most parliamentary systems), but such
countries often lack a separation of powers between the two branches of
government. In contrast with indirect popular election of executives, most
republics allow direct election by the people for president, the head of the
executive branch.
In other countries the president appoints the prime minister.
“Parliamentary republics” have presidents chosen by parliament to serve
as figureheads, with very limited powers.
The most important day in a democracy occurs when one elected exec-
utive vacates the position and allows another of a different political party
to take over the role. The first time that happened was in 1801, when
Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party succeeded the
Federalist Party’s John Adams. Subsequently, the rise of political parties in
the United States prompted members at the top to listen to those at the
grassroots level by holding conventions to select which office-seekers to
nominate as candidates on the presidential election ballot. Conventions
have also been held for lower-level offices. Gradually all party members,
regardless of their position in the party hierarchy, gained the right to vote
in primaries.

Extension of the Franchise Historically, most legislatures represented males

in the propertied classes and therefore were not parts of democratic politi-
cal systems. As the rights to vote and run for office were extended to more
citizens, true democracies arose on the world stage.
The Corsican Republic granted limited suffrage to all male citizens over
25 in 1755. But the country lost its independence in 1769. France granted
universal manhood suffrage in 1792, but voting was later restricted and it
was only restored in 1875.
Pitcairn Island, a British colony, allowed women to vote in 1838
(Keane 2009: 541). In 1840, the Kingdom of Hawai’i was the first inde-
pendent country to grant all citizens, including women, the right to vote
for seats in the lower house, but they could not vote to elect members of
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 17

the upper house of the legislature nor for the position of hereditary mon-
arch, who still retained veto power. Over the years, however, the constitu-
tion was changed (Haas 2017c: ch. 13). Pressure from White business
interests resulted in the female vote being rescinded in 1852, and the
constitution was amended in 1864 to restrict voting to property owners
and the wealthy. When the Native Hawaiian people demanded a more
democratic constitution, a coup occurred in 1893 preparatory to annexa-
tion by the United States.
Universal male suffrage was adopted in Switzerland (1848) and
Colombia (1853), though restrictions were later imposed in the latter
country. The Colony of South Australia granted universal male suffrage in
1855, and other Australian states followed soon thereafter. Next, universal
male suffrage was adopted in Greece (1864), Spain (1869) and unified
Germany (1871). Other countries introduced universal male suffrage dur-
ing the 1890s (Austria, Belgium, Brazil, and Norway).
The Republic of Franceville, an island of freed slaves, allowed universal
voting in 1889, four years after France occupied the island and the rest of
the adjacent territory, now known as Gabon. (Franceville and Gabon were
incorporated into the colony of French Equatorial Africa in 1910).
Thanks to the suffragette movement, voting rights were granted to
women. New Zealand granted everyone the right to vote in 1893, though
women could not run for office until 1919. Finland granted all adult citi-
zens, male and female, full suffrage in 1906.
Gradual extension of the vote beyond property owners occurred in
England—in 1832, 1867, 1884, and 1918. Female property owners
could vote from 1918; their property ownership requirement was
dropped in 1928.
Each state of the United States is constitutionally empowered to grant
voting rights separately from the other states. All states had abolished the
property ownership requirement by 1856 (Keyssar 2000). Racial restric-
tions ended in 1870, but were imposed upon Chinese in the United States
during 1882. Women were able to vote in 1920, poll taxes were abolished
in 1964, and the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971, two years after
Britain did the same. Nevertheless, most voting is optional. True democ-
racy is only possible in the twenty-four countries that have mandatory
voting laws or those with voter turnout near 100 percent.
18 M. HAAS

Secret Ballot Ancient Greece and Rome used secret ballots in some but
not all situations (Smith 1875; Saalfeld 1995: 531). Secret ballots were
instituted during the French Revolution in 1795, but were soon
rescinded; however, they were re-adopted in 1831. The Netherlands did
so next (1849). After Colombia began to count secret ballots in 1853,
the first of several Australian colonies adopted the reform in 1858. The
Australian Ballot, as the innovation soon came to be known, involved
private voting booths, boxes into which ballots were dropped (Scarrow
1996; Keane 2009: 524–33). By the end of the nineteenth century,
eleven more countries allowed the practice. The momentum continued
into the twentieth century, with El Salvador and Turkey finally adopting
secret ballots in 1950.

Referendum When popular voting is employed to pass specific laws, direct

democracy is possible, as in the voting of Plato’s Athens or in assemblies of
indigenous groups and others in small communities. The first modern use
of referendum evidently occurred in Graubünden, a Swiss canton, some-
time in the sixteenth century (Barber 1974: 179; Vincent 2009: 122). The
progressive movement in the United States, distrusting corrupt politicians,
instituted initiatives and referendums (as well as recalls of public officials)
by popular vote in some but not all states from the 1890s to 1919. In some
states, constitutional amendments are now adopted by popular vote.
After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles sought to redraw the bound-
aries of the former Austrian and German empires, but it allowed a majority
of citizens in disputed territories to vote in “plebiscites” in order to decide
in which of two countries they preferred to live (Mattern 1920). The deci-
sion to ban the sale of alcohol was put to a vote on several occasions in the
Canadian province of Ontario (1894, 1902, 1919, 1921, 1924) as well as
in Norway (1919). Decisions about guiding principles of the European
Union have also been offered to voters in several countries. The Brexit
vote in 2016 was nonbinding but was soon accepted by Parliament as the
will of the people.

Civil and Political Rights Historically, the Bill of Rights has been a precon-
dition for democracy, guaranteeing freedom of assembly, press, speech, and
many other rights—that is, areas of life where government is not allowed to
exercise control. The Magna Carta of 1215 and Hungary’s Golden Bull of
1222 set limits on the power of the king, granting civil and political rights
that identify areas of freedom for ordinary people.
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 19

The invention of the printing press in 1456 meant that words could cir-
culate more rapidly than before, and free presses soon emerged. After all,
nobody could oppose circulation of the Bible, the book that soon came hot
off the presses. Governmental efforts to suppress undesirable publications
were inevitable, driving anti-tyrannical pamphleteering underground. Thus,
the stage was set to establish freedom of the press so that representatives in
legislatures could be properly informed along with their constituents. After
individual civil rights had accumulated within various measures passed by
the English parliament, the English Bill of Rights codified previously estab-
lished rights along with new ones in 1689, the same year the Scottish
Parliament adopted the almost identical Claim of Right Act. A major ele-
ment of the French Revolution was the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen in 1789, followed by the Declaration of the Rights of Woman
and Female Citizens in 1790. When the Constitution of the United States
was ratified in 1788, many voters objected that the document left out rights,
so the first ten amendments to the constitution, known as the American Bill
of Rights, were ratified in 1791.
The American, British, and Scottish bills of rights all appeared before the
main political right—the right to vote—was granted to all adults. The French
bill of rights included voting rights for males, but was later declared void along
with voting rights. The next countries with a bill of rights were Venezuela
(1818) and Greece (1822). Nowadays, new constitutions incorporate bills of
rights into their text, often repeating some articles from the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was adopted in 1967. Australia
is the only Anglo-European country without a written bill of rights.
When the people exercise their civil and political rights, governments
learn about problems in the society at large. Governments that allow pro-
tests are more likely to follow the will of the people and to appear legiti-
mate in the process than are regimes where demonstrations are suppressed.
Even in authoritarian China today, hundreds of protests are allowed so
that the central government can learn about problems that have not been
addressed by local authorities; satisfactory responses to these protests
account for a considerable level of popular government support (Tang
2016). Protests in authoritarian Singapore, however, are seen as threats to
the government, as indicated in Chap. 4.

Other Practices and Rights Among other components of democratic sys-

tems (cf. Emerson 2011), the most important is whether there are com-
petitive elections involving two or more candidates running on different
platforms—clusters of goals to be achieved in office. Details about regis-
20 M. HAAS

tration requirements and voting circumstances can also be important,

depending on how they are enforced. Access to courts, where governments
may be held accountable to the law, is another important right. Rule by
law, not an institutional procedure, is vital to a democracy that avoids arbi-
trary rule by those in power who consider themselves above the law.

Implications The point of recounting the historical development of so many

components is to demonstrate that the attainment of democracy has been a
hard-won advance in human history that should not be discarded. The prac-
tices and procedures of democracy have been constructed over many centu-
ries. Whereas many scholars narrow their focus to such structures as interest
groups, legislatures, political parties, and executives, they rarely connect
their findings to a broad theory of democracy. The components described
above are necessary conditions for procedural democracy, but they are insuf-
ficient for substantive democracy—in which government responds to the
will of the people rather than pleasing narrow special interests.
But even dictatorial rulers often boast that they provide “democracy”
for their citizens. The use of the term “democracy” varies so widely that
some countries claim to be democratic when they are anything but. It is
important, therefore, to review the various types of democracy.

Types of Democracy1
Democracies flounder and fail when they are procedural but not substan-
tive, a distinction rarely identified in discussions on the subject. A proce-
dural democracy has all the forms described above. In a substantive
democracy, those same forms are present, and the will of the people is
carried out by government. Abraham Lincoln (1863) most eloquently
defined the latter as “government of the people, by the people, and for the
people.”
Yet most discussion on democracy fails to address that fundamental
distinction; other terms are used instead that cloud their meaning. Clarity
is needed so that the term “democracy” will not mean different things to
different people. Appendix A provides a list of dozens of types of democ-
racy, some of which are proposed as possible ways to address the present
crisis of democracy, but what is needed here is to distinguish between the
most common types.
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 21

Direct democracy is exemplified by Athenian democracy in which voters

were free to attend assemblies and where decisions were made by majority
vote, though those qualified to vote were limited by age and sex and did
not include slaves. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) could not image how
any other arrangement would be democratic; otherwise, elites would pre-
vail. A smidgen of direct democracy exists when citizens are allowed to
vote to adopt or repeal constitutional amendments and laws. However,
Americans promoting Progressive Era reforms of the initiative and the
referendum did not anticipate the day when advocates of Yes or No could
spend millions on campaign ads, aiming to gain support from citizens who
are ignorant and manipulable by avoiding deliberation within legislatures,
where foolish proposals may be rejected (cf. Glencross 2016). Modern
“direct democracy” has clearly been subverted by plutocratic power. But
so have other types of democracy.
Assemblies in large countries are impractical, so those desiring democ-
racy in revolutionary France and the United States conceived of legisla-
tures composed of persons elected by the general public. The public was
then expected to tell parliamentarians what they wanted, and the result
would be representative democracy.
But the original representative bodies represented propertied interests,
not the general public, and thus only offered deliberative democracy. Even
when the franchise was extended to more citizens, Edmund Burke (1854)
and others considered that legislators were delegates, not representa-
tives—that is, chosen for their superior wisdom. Today, wherever legisla-
tors have been identified as not listening to the public, the reason has been
that election victories depend on donations from plutocrats, whereupon
the interests of the elites prevail over those of the public. Moreover, many
countries have representative bodies but lack other procedural compo-
nents, so they are often rubber stamps for executives.
Then along came the idea of liberal democracy, which added civil and
political rights and the rule of law to the procedural forms within a repre-
sentative government formed from victors in competing political parties.
The freedom to vote, ignored within the use of the term “representative
democracy,” makes democracy much more attainable. Lacking civil and
political rights but maintaining the forms constitutes illiberal democracy
(Zakaria 1997).
When Robert Dahl (1956) began to address the subject of democracy,
he argued that ideal democracy was unattainable, so he sought to theorize
something that was “next best.” Living in New Haven, a medium-sized
22 M. HAAS

town in Connecticut, he decided to observe how decisions were made in

the city council. Instead of plutocracy, which sociologists were claiming
was the actual form of rule in the United States, he observed what he
called polyarchy (1961). City council meetings were attended by leaders of
community groups competing to determine policies, with government
determining which groups would be rewarded—and by how much—in
the final decisions. However, some groups got far more rewards than oth-
ers, and no rewards were doled out to groups not represented at the meet-
ings. Moreover, nondecisions maintained the status quo behind the scenes
(Bachrach and Baratz 1963). Although he tried to shift leftward in his
later thinking, Dahl (1982) was still committed to the logic of polyarchy,
with outcomes determined by which groups had the most resources.
The civil rights movement in the United States was a manifestation of
the major fallacy of polyarchy—that some groups were given little atten-
tion within policy-making. Polyarchy, which legitimated plutocracy, was
hardly the “next best form of democracy.” Many alternatives have emerged,
but there has been no consensus on the best replacement, so there has
been a reversion among scholars to liberal democracy as the standard form
of democracy (Rawls 1971).
To accommodate underrepresented and underfunded minorities, vari-
ous scholars have proposed a variety of alternatives to what Pierre van den
Berghe (1981) identified as Herrenvolk democracy—maintenance of liberal
democracy only for the favored ethnic group. One is participatory democ-
racy (Cook and Morgan 1971), which allows hearings open to verbal
input from the general public. Other scholars favor cellular democracy
(Foldvary 2002), grassroots democracy (Kaufman and Alfonso 1997),
inclusive democracy (Fotopolous 1997), or demarchy (Burnheim 1985).
An extremely important contribution came from Arend Lijphart
(1999). His concept of consociational democracy, wherein minority groups
have a veto over decisions, promotes policy-making by consensus and
avoids interethnic struggles. He identified six European countries that had
already adopted that form of democracy. The state of Hawai’i should be
added to the list (Haas 2016).
Other alternatives include the idea of economic democracy (Marx and
Engels 1846), proletarian democracy (Lenin 1914, 1917), and the social
democracy of the welfare state (Roosevelt 1940). Vaclav Havel (1978) has
suggested popular democracy, in which the state redistributes property and
wealth to create a more equal society.
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 23

The Internet has opened up more possibilities for direct input from citi-
zens to government. Among the possibilities are interactive democracy
(Hassard 2009), monitory democracy (Keane 2009), and network democ-
racy (Sørensen and Torfing 2007).
Yet some observers claim that the heyday of democracy is over. In what
they call the “post-democratic” world (e.g., Crouch 2004), there will
inevitably be a reversion to other regime types. If Plato’s prophecy is cor-
rect, the oligarchs will take over failed democracies, since they already
control much of the wealth in democratic systems.
The term pseudo-democracy refers to government forms that pretend to
be democratic but fall short because they provide the procedures but not
the substance of democracy. A semi-democracy exists when some but not
all of the procedures of democracy are present. It is important to realize
that many countries complacently or deliberately fool the people into
thinking that they live in a democracy when they do not—even as democ-
racy slips away gradually.
The variety of approaches, including others defined in Appendix A, testi-
fies to the fact that there are enormous difficulties in translating the will of
the people into government action—problems that can result in the floun-
dering or replacement of democracy. And there are many reasons to oppose
governments run by the people—or representatives of the people.

Opposition to Democracy
Thus far, the virtues of democracy have been assumed a priori. Among
many justifications for democracy is the view that ordinary people have a
better quality of life (Barber 1996). Aside from dictators who resist
­democracy to stay in power, there are several serious intellectual criticisms
of democracy, beginning with Plato, who gave the concept a bad reputa-
tion. The main argument is that democracy inherently flounders and thus
only works on the basis of highly questionable assumptions. The following
are more specific arguments against democracy:

Bureaucratization Because the people demand a lot from government in

a democracy, the result is a bureaucracy staffed by professionals that grows
and is impervious to public accountability (Lowi 1969; Redford 1969).
What then arises is the “administrative state,” in which unelected public
officials maintain an equilibrium among themselves and may not change
even when new laws are passed (Baumgartner and Jones 2015).
24 M. HAAS

Chicanery Because less affluent citizens command a majority in any coun-

try, they should be expected to win elections and then tax the rich to
relieve their economic problems. But they do not do so in most democra-
cies. The reason is that the affluent run elections aimed at diverting atten-
tion from voters’ economic self-interest to such “dirty tricks” as election
campaigns characterized by false allegations, promises that cannot be kept,
disrespect for opponents, and gerrymandered districts (Daley 2016).

Corruption Office-holders may consider themselves accountable only to

the voters who elected them, and they will not campaign harder to get the
support of more than a plurality or majority of votes. When their support-
ers are relatively ignorant of what is really going on, the result can be cor-
ruption. Democracy creates “pockets of monopoly power where politicians
and civil servants have discretionary power” (Rose-Ackerman 1996).
Financial support is essential for running media-based campaigns, so
office-holders will feel obligated to reward those who provide funding for
expensive publicity, as long as their corruption remains unexposed or is
rationalized by the same fools who voted for them in the first place.

Culture Bound Leaders of some countries argue that democracy only fits
Western culture. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, as discussed in more detail
in Chap. 4, was an outspoken exponent of the idea that democracy is alien
to Asian countries, especially those where Confucian values prevail. But
the eagerness to embrace democracy in Indonesia, the Philippines, South
Korea, and Taiwan, despite Confucianism having many followers in the
latter two countries, contradicts this view.
Meanwhile, Russians close to President Vladimir Putin say they prefer
their own system and oppose democracy as inappropriate for the country
(Dimbleby 2008). Efforts to impose democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq,
where the regimes have failed for various reasons, have also produced a
negative opinion of democracy (Keane 2009: 846; Torabi 2012; J. Lynch,
M. Lynch 2016).
Jacques Maritain (1949; cf. Haas 2014c: 58–73) once said that true
democracy has to be based on Christian rather than secular values, arguing
in effect that democracy is inappropriate for non-Christian areas of the
world (Keane 2009: 852). More recently, Jürgen Habermas (2006) has
linked the rise of democracy and human rights to Christianity’s emphasis
on love as an important addition to the Jewish focus on rule of law. Indeed,
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 25

the unjust crucifixion of Jesus provided a model for what later became the
quest to advance the human rights agenda (Haas 2014b: 19–20).

Imposed Opponents of democracy point to countries where the United

States has installed or supported puppet rulers. Opposition to govern-
ments with democratic forms in Afghanistan and Iraq has been based on
the fact that they were created under American military occupation
(J. Lynch, M. Lynch 2016; Klaas 2017).

Inefficiency When voting is a mere popularity contest among personalities

rather than being about issues that need to be addressed, societal prob-
lems will not be resolved and everyone will suffer (Sutter 2002).
Thucydides (431 bce) and many other observers have complained that
democracies make stupid decisions because they give voice to the unedu-
cated masses. The people often demand too much from government,
which can therefore outspend the resources available and become insol-
vent, whereupon a coup is welcomed to restore financial order. Democratic
leaders are subject to so many pressures that they have to move incremen-
tally rather than decisively (Keane 2009: 855–64). After all, the people in
a democracy assume that they are sovereign, not the political class, which
is held at bay by checks and balances within a culture in which political
equality is the norm.

Iron Law of Oligarchy Even when the main decision rule is to respect the
will of the majority in a democracy, executive authorities tend to be sur-
rounded by cliques. Even Robert Dahl (1989: ch. 19) admitted that there
is a tendency toward minority rule, though the first scholar to find minor-
ity domination was Roberto Michels (1911) in his study of political parties
in Europe. The same finding evidently applies to the United States today
(Frank 2016).

Majoritarianism Democracy assumes that government decisions should

be made by a majority rather than a small minority. However, majority rule
without minority rights can be a recipe for persecution and even ethnic
cleansing (Kesavan 2018).

Mob Rule Plato’s critique of Athenian democracy pointed to ochlocracy—

that demagogues swayed the masses to vote for unwise leaders and poli-
cies. One critique of the Weimar Republic of Germany (1919–1933) was
26 M. HAAS

that Adolf Hitler knew how to appeal for votes by making bold promises
(Brock and Scott 1989: 213), but voters discounted his hidden agenda,
which unfolded after he was tapped by President Paul von Hindenburg to
serve as chancellor. Four weeks later, the Reichstag was burned, ending
representative government. The mob gave him legitimacy, and the result
was catastrophic.

Moral Decay When different values are emphasized by opposing candi-

dates, members of the public may be divided according to the norms that
they respect and disrespect. A cafeteria of differing norms is confusing, so
moral consensus becomes impossible. When friendships become politi-
cized, spouses and siblings as well as neighbors will clash, verbally and
sometimes violently (Putnam 2000). When candidates appeal to voters to
choose on the basis of individualistic self-interest, the needs of minorities
and the country as a whole are neglected. Opposing candidates appealing
to voters’ pecuniary impulses create a slippery slope from a life of dignity
to an existence of hedonism.

Public Naïveté Those without education did not impress the Romans as
qualified to have any kind of role in government (Keane 2009: 78–79).
According to Edmund Burke (1789/90), most people lack the intelli-
gence and time to keep up with the affairs of government, and they often
lack the ability to interpret what little information they encounter. As a
result, candidates often seek to attract only a minimum winning coalition
and forget about those who voted against them (Riker 1962). Voters in a
democracy can be swayed to vote not only for the most charismatic candi-
date but also against their own self-interest; the result is dissatisfaction
with government, leading to violence. Voters can even vote for the aboli-
tion of basic rules of democracy and invite dictators to take over.

Tragedy of the Commons In a democracy, politicians enjoy being elected

and staying in office, so they will make promises to attract voters even
when the fulfillment of those promises would have a negative effect on
resource management, something identified as “the tragedy of the com-
mons” by ecologist Garrett Hardin (1968). The main idea is that every-
one pursuing their own petty self-interest will deplete a common resource.
Unrestricted fishing in a lake will mean that the lake may ultimately have
no fish. Examples abound in democracies. One office-seeker, in order to
get elected, may promise tax cuts for everyone; but that might mean that
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 27

government funds for conducting operations as usual will fall short, which
will in turn disappoint the same voters. The result can be mounting gov-
ernment debt, which will affect the credit ratings of government bonds,
and the interest rates on the bonds may have to be raised to attract buyers,
resulting in inflation that wipes out the money saved from tax cuts. The
ordinary voter favoring candidates who pledge tax cuts is unlikely to
understand the causal links that make such a promise irrational.

Tyranny of the Majority When a majority votes in its self-interest, the effect
can be a government that favors the interests of the majority and disfavors
or even represses the minority. John Adams (1788: vol. 3: 291), the second
president of the United States, may have been the first to use the term, but
the danger of majoritarian rule is spelled out in Democracy in America
(1835–1840) by Alexis de Tocqueville. When democratic elections have
zero-sum outcomes, discontent among those left outside the majority can
swell to the point of rebellion and revolution. The majority will oppose any
division of powers between branches of government as well as require-
ments for supermajorities within legislatures (Dahl 1989: ch. 11).

Unstable Candidates offer differing positions and styles to voters. If two

political parties have diametrically opposed policy preferences, the result
will be an era of X followed by an era of –X, provoking a negative reaction
leading back to X. Similarly, a timid president may create a climate in
which voters tire of the leader’s personality; at the next election, citizens
may then select someone with a brash personality. No equilibrium point is
guaranteed under democracy (Linz and Stepan 1978). For parliaments
with many political parties, which often face great difficulty in forming
majority coalitions, the answer may be for the military to impose a coup.
As John Keane (2009: 574) has observed, during the period between
World War I and World War II, few European democratic governments
lasted longer than twelve years, and they were succeeded by demagogic
authoritarian forms.

Warlike Because democracies promise more than they can deliver to the
masses, leaders confronting inevitable crises will seek to divert the atten-
tion of the people to foreign scapegoats. What has been called “diversion-
ary war” is often the only way a leader can stay in power in a crisis (James
and Oneal 1991; Pickering and Kisangani 2005; Tarar 2006; Nicholls
et al. 2010; Jung 2014; cf. Levy 1989).
28 M. HAAS

Implications All the above defects, some of which overlap, are present in
nondemocracies, except in those run by the mythical philosopher-kings.
Democracies provide hope to the masses, but they are rarely “of the peo-
ple, by the people [… or] for the people.” The masses who hope that elites
will carry out the wishes of the people are often disappointed—both when
primarily elite interests are served and when gridlock prevents anything
from being accomplished. But, as Winston Churchill (1947 [2008]) once
said, “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those
other forms.”

Conclusion
Robert Dahl’s “ideal democracy,” which sets a high standard for sub-
stantive democracy, has five elements (1982: 6): (1) Voters are highly
informed. (2) Citizens enjoy effective participation, having input to the
political process between elections. (3) Citizens have adequate and equal
opportunity to determine the most desirable policy outcomes. (4) The
people set and control the political agenda. (5) All adults are included in
the political process. Although he left out the concept of majority rule
with minority rights, Dahl felt that the five conditions would never be
met because

[t]he case for democracy in the form of political equality and majority rule
is […] strongest where competence […] is widely diffused among the mem-
bers, and where they share a substantial consensus on all important matters.
Conversely, the greater the differences in competence among the mem-
bers[,] the weaker the case of majority rule. (Dahl 1970: 57)

Historical explanations of the fate of democracies tend to be specific

to each case, as Appendix B of the present volume indicates. But the
common thread in the failure and floundering of democracy is the disin-
tegration of institutions of democracy and civil society—constitutions
promoting gridlock, self-centered pressure groups, political parties led
by elites who think only of guaranteeing their re-election, media offering
diametrically opposed perspectives to which a divided public subscribes,
parliamentarians unable to compromise, creeping denial of civil and
political rights, unaccountable bureaucrats, and anti-democratic leaders
voted into power.
 DEMOCRACY: COMPONENTS AND TYPES 29

What often explains such dysfunction is economics: A massive collapse

of democracy occurred during the economic disaster of the 1930s and
now looms as a predicted future in the age of globalization shattered by
the Great Recession of 2007/2008, and is inevitable as long as govern-
ments are unable to constrain transnational economic forces. Severe eco-
nomic inequality develops into either revolutionary ferment from below
or coups from above (Offe and Schmitter 1996).
Thus far, academic writing has presented an incomplete, unsystematic
picture of the phenomenon of democracies that flounder and fail. The fol-
lowing chapter, accordingly, provides a larger, paradigmatic perspective.