Theories of Democracy

Abstract

This chapter develops a taxonomy of theories of democracy that maps the extent to which they rely on the judgment of citizens. It aims to achieve two things. First, it sorts the vast array of extant theories of democracy into a smaller number of useful, descriptive categories. Second, it hopes that these categories will be instructive insofar as they reflect the extent to which the phenomenon of framing effects will be regarded as damaging to particular theories of democracy. The discussions cover purely procedural theories, stability theories, modified procedural theories, and epistemic theories. There is an enormous range of epistemic demands placed on political judgment by different theories of democracy. As a result, one's assessment of the relevance of framing effects to democratic theory depends heavily on what kind of democratic theory one endorses.