ABSTRACT
At the turn of the fourth century B.C., after a democratic counter-revolution had dislodged the Athenian oligarchy known as "The Thirty", the philosopher Plato repented his earlier disdain for the democratic constitution. Democracy offers the radically different promise that freedom need not be sacrificed for order because the constitution guaranteeing both is supported not by force alone but also by the express and regular consent of the governed. This promise of freedom accounts above all else for the new appeal of democracy, especially in the wake of modern experience with various specimens of autocracy, ranging from oligarchy and authoritarianism to the most extreme form, totalitarianism, in which the aim is to control virtually the whole of social life. At bottom the ideal of democracy is gaining in appeal in so many countries because of a growing awareness that the autocratic alternatives are all unappealing as a long-term political formula.
