ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some elements of an orienting theoretical framework which can provide a guide for approaching, and integrating, certain key issues regarding the problem of democratization. The essential verdict, in light of historical experience from 1789 to 1989, is that democracy and the market economy are potentially compatible and even inescapably complementary, but also in necessary and permanent tension. This is a possible and necessary marriage, but an inherently difficult one. Centuries of historical experience have suggested a set of basic institutional requirements for a democratic regime, which can be touched on here only selectively and schematically. In a community of any size and complexity, democratic government must include a representative system in which power-holders are ultimately accountable to popular election. The argument that democracy in the West has been simply a sham, whether advanced from the standpoint of Marxism or elite theory or deconstruction, is wrong and pernicious.
