ABSTRACT
Democracies face two sets of problems, which may be distinguished as pitfalls and pathologies. The pitfalls are especially threatening while democratic norms and institutions are not yet well entrenched and forces hostile to democracy remain strong enough to capitalize on the difficulties of transition. The pathologies appear once democracy is firmly established, and may well be endemic because they arise from the very experience of autonomy. The breakdown of the balance of autonomies appears most dramatically whenever the liberty that is indispensable to democracy degenerates into license, at its worst becoming a reckless disregard for civilized values. Another class of paradoxes arises because democracy also embodies communal autonomy. The stage is set for a conflict between majorities and minorities. Intense nationalism involves so much that is exclusive and threatening to minorities that it can only inspire sub-nationalism among groups which feel their identity threatened by assimilation.
