Democracy is an idea. It is deployed as an analytic concept, a normative ideal, a political prescription, and an empirical description. Its meanings slide among these usages. The idea of democracy is real in its far-reaching consequences. Democracy is, therefore, also a process. (1) The first part of this essay, on democracy as idea, starts from the argument that political such as democracy are essentially contested: we cannot, therefore, necessarily agree on their meaning. Their meanings will depend on the ways in which they are used in specific historical contexts. This perspective opens a bridge between historical narrative and conceptual analysis with which both historians and political philosophers tend to feel uncomfortable. It then explores the elementary forms of democratic politics and the non-democratic conditions of democracy. It critically examines alternative conceptions of democracy, showing that they cannot get round the essential contestedness of the concept. It rejects the teleological assumptions implicit in theories of democratization. The second part, on democracy as process, explores the themes of nationalism, community, class, development, economic strategies, international debt, and multi-party elections and their implications for democratic politics. The conclusion argues that democratic politics requires us to create scope for permanent dialogue. DEMOCRACY AS AN ESSENTIALLY CONTESTED CONCEPT In 1956 W. B. Gallie argued that aesthetic, ethical, and political such as Art, or Democracy, are essentially contested. (2) Though we may agree broadly on the elements that constitute a concept and on classic exemplars of its meaning in use, we cannot always expect to reach agreement on its meaning or its proper application. These will be a matter for continuing argument. We cannot necessarily agree on an ineliminable core or find an anchor or lay down the outer limits to a concept. (3) The contest is over its essence. (4) Since essentially contested concepts are used to appraise works of art, private and public actions, or social institutions, the contest may appear to be over the ways in which we each use them to suit our own aesthetic, moral, or political arguments. Are we confusing different by attaching the same word to them and arguing past one another? Gallie's argument has deeper roots than the observation that we suit our to our political purposes. Essentially contested concepts, such as democracy, liberty, state, or power, are complex clusters. (5) They share family resemblances; like Wittgenstein's thread, their strength does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres. (6) Their past and current usages include different elements, which are often in tension with one another. We may disagree on the relative weighting and priority of different elements, or on the ways in which they need to relate to one another. These are incomplete in themselves. They acquire their full meanings only when they are deployed in specific arguments and are used in specific social and historical contexts. There is thus scope for continuing dialogue as we each advance reasons for our preferred conceptions and applications of concepts. There are better and worse arguments, but no or best possible answers. (7) THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICS Alternative conceptions of democracy elaborate Lincoln's aphorism: Government of the by the for the people, and of the conditions needed for its realization. (8) They do not resolve the problems of complexity and ambiguity. L. Diamond, J. Linz and S. M. Lipset define democracy as meaningful and extensive competition ... for ... positions of government power through regular, free, and fair elections ... inclusive political participation in the election of leaders and policies, such that no major social group is prevented from exercising the rights of citizenship. …