ABSTRACT
From a politically correct point of view, this chapter may again be considered to contain strong language. What I am about to offer is an argument against the holiness of one of the 20th Century’s holy cows: mass democracy as we (still or yet still) know it. Between the lines, I argue that we did not and do not even ‘know’ real mass democracy in the form of equal and universal access to power. It was never wholeheartedly brought into practice, never truly an ideal of the 20th Century, but at best a noble lie. Yet there are ideals behind it: mass democracy understood as equal and universal access to decision-making is a means to an end, the end being defined – slightly rhetorically – by what I shall call the Bush criterion for civilization. The Bush criterion demands representation of all, but representation is a complex concept which allows multiple interpretations. Examining the reasons why the two most prominent conceptions of representation – substantive and descriptive – would be valuable, I claim that we can only make a direct case for substantive representation, only in the context of mass democracy, and only in the sense that mass democracy is one possible environment in which substantive representation may be possible. Finally, I argue that the political basis of mass democracy is disappearing due to processes of political pluralization, and that cures for the defects of political pluralization cannot, except with considerable imagination, be construed as new versions of mass democracy as defined here. I end by suggesting two ideal types of more practical interpretations of the ideals behind mass democracy.
