The is and the ought of democracy

Abstract

We academics tend to write about democracy in two quite different ways: empirically and normatively. Empirical accounts of existing democratic systems focus upon institutionalised arrangements, describing them in a ‘realist’ spirit and offering explanations for patterned and predictable events, trends and behaviour based upon what are conceived as being ‘value-free’ modes of investigation. Typically, empirical scholars of democracy pursue an instrumentally rationalist approach to political motivation and interaction. For them, democracy as a research object is not that different from the study of the planetary system by astronomers. They stick to what’s there – ‘the facts’ – beyond the bounds of which they leave matters to the theoretical conjectures of philosophers. Normative writings about democracy are prescriptive and evaluative. They highlight the values upon which democratic claims are made and justifications legitimised. They offer propositions about what democracies should be like. They do not eschew idealbased theory, arguing that it is only on the basis of normative qualities that empirical democracies can distinguish themselves from other political arrangements. In the political science literature – and especially that sub-field focused upon the study of political communication – empirical and normative accounts of democracy have not tended to sit together easily. Proponents of each complain about the limited vision of the other. Normative scholars of democracy sometimes wonder whether the relentless Review Essay