Democracy

Anthony Arblaster first examines the history of both the theory and practice of democracy, and the fierce opposition it so often provoked. He finds that through most of history democracy meant what we now call direct' democracy the people governing themselves directly through participa tion in the processes of decision-taking and policy-making. The representative type of democracy we are now familiar with was a relatively late arrival on the scene.

Arblaster finds the core of the idea of democracy in the notion of popular power, and in the second part of the book he explores the meaning of this and the problem it involves. Drawing on the classical writings of Rousseau, Paine, and John Stuart Mill, he shows how wide the gap between their idea of a fully democratic society and the limited realities of the Western democracies of today. Democracy, he argues, remains a relevant ideal and a challenge to conven tional political thinking.