Professor Nyblade’s exercise in class last week on evaluating definition’s of democracy tied nicely into Mackie and Przeworkski’s articles. When asked to evaluate definitions on democracy most of us appeared unimpressed with the specificity of the majority of the definitions listed on the sheet. We wanted definitions that were all-encompassing, per se. Thus upon first reading Mackie’s piece on Schumpeter’s ‘best’ characteristic of democracy being free competitive elections to select a leader, what came to mind was that his definition of democracy was on the specific end of continuum. If I had to evaluate Schumpeter’s definition on a scale of 1-5 I would rank it as a 2 or perhaps a 3. However, Przeworski believes that Schumpeter’s definition indirectly touches on some key qualities of a democracy, representation and equality and free elections, which aids in giving his defintion a ‘whole-boundedness’. Now if I was to re-evaluate Schumpeter’s definition I may be more leniet and give it a 3 or a 4.
My question is how would you rank Schumpeter’s definition? Do you believe it falls short of summarizing the ‘best’ attribute of democracy (elections)? Lastly do you even think it is possible to assign a ‘best’ attribute to democracy? If so what would it be?