Throughout the world, scholars and international organisations have voiced their concern in recent years that democracy appears to be ‘backsliding’ . These forms of backsliding are often described as taking a different form – with open-ended coups d’état and state violence being replaced with promissory coups, executive aggrandizement and strategic electoral manipulation described as being more common.
What is Democracy?
Research is currently developing an alternative concept of democracy to the those which tend to be used by the media, policy experts and wider academia.
The real democracy approach is a broader conception which considers the extent to which people are empowered.
This concept paper sets an alternative approach for conceptualising democracy, drawing from critical realist theory:
It is being followed up with a new book with Manchester University Press. The approach defines democracy in this way:
Realist or real democracy is proposed as a societal system where preconditions exist to fully empower all citizens to realise their individual capabilities. This includes empowerment opportunities at the ballot box – but also other preconditions such as health, educational and living standards. Real democracy also separates democratic preconditions from democratic outcomes. Democratic outcomes require the absence of inequalities in power as result from the contingent interaction preconditions and human agency.
The real democracy approach has informed a number of other outputs:
Toby S. James 