ABSTRACT
Ideology conceals a backstage absolute which relativizes every detail of modern life and diminishes whatever it touches. The fate of democracy may suitably exemplify the deadliness of the ideological embrace so far as political concepts are concerned. Dispute about the meaning of democracy is endemic at all levels of political discussion. The process begins by positing an ideal absolute condition, isolated from other political values, as the criterion of democracy: no government is democratic which does not exactly represent the will of the people. The ideologist in politics is thus a ventriloquist, looking for dummy categories, proletariats or "minorities", which can plausibly be supplied with opinions. By contrast the term "power" is used in political science, and in constitutional politics, to refer to the capacity of some individual or group to impose its will upon the rest of the population.
