Abstract

MIRANDA DELGADO, Rafael Gustavo. Democracy: four elements for a concept. Estud. filos. práct. hist. ideas [online]. 2017, vol.19, n.2, pp.21-35. ISSN 1851-9490.

Democracy cannot be anything. Democracy has, since World War II, a great reputation, but its concept is ambiguous, multivoices, dispersed, partial and without consensus. The aim of this research is argue in favor of four conceptual elements for a conception of democracy that goes beyond purely formalistic proposals and the minimum threshold of the mechanism of electionswhich only show us, indistinctly, a static snapshot of a moment of democracy. These are the four conceptual elements of our stipulative definition of democracy: the political system that, 1) through public reasoning and 2) elected government institutions regulated by citizen control and 3) laws, 4) looking for freedom and justice.

Keywords : Democracy; Civil society; Rule of law; Freedom; Justice.