Conclusion

Abstract

AbstractPreviously understood as a regime type among others with, at best, limited potential for good in the concrete, the idea of democracy has been transformed into an ideal in the imagination of many prominent Western intellectuals. Guided by this abstract and idealized notion of democracy, political leaders pursue legislation and foreign and domestic policies that promise to bring about a new age of liberation and equality. Yet in practice, policies guided by such idealism often undermine democracy. Democratist proposals to alleviate the ills of historical democracy may take the form of subtle and democratic-sounding ideas like the “civic exchange” or “dialogue” of deliberative democracy, or they might be more overtly antidemocratic, such as Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information, meant to proselytize a war that he interpreted as the final battle before the dawn of a new age of peace and democracy. In all cases, democratists would rather defer to their own interpretation of what the popular will ought to be than what it actually is.