Getting democracy into focus

Getting democracy into focus
John Dunn
20 - 10 - 2005

The very potency of democracy as word and idea creates an impulse to extend it beyond plausible limits, and this is at the root of the flaws in Anthony Barnett & Isabel Hilton’s article. John Dunn, professor of political theory at the University of Cambridge, continues openDemocracy’s debate.

Anthony Barnett & Isabel Hilton’s article “Democracy and openDemocracy” raises many urgent issues and virtually all the political tastes they express and recommendations they offer are effortless to share. What is less compelling is their decision to lump all their approvals and disapprovals together and equate the result with democracy correctly understood. If there is a way to understand democracy correctly (quite an elusive idea in itself), that certainly can’t be it.

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