ABSTRACT
The shortest definition of democracy I can think of is willingness to leave office when defeated at the polls. Even shorter as a criterion of the existence of democracy is alternation of political parties in office. All models of democracy include competition for office based on civil liberties and fundamental freedoms. Beyond, that, however, they differ according to the major criterion used to assess the degree to which there can be said to be democracy. In contemporary discourse, both among political theorists and political activists, the basic split is between those who view democracy as a process, a self-organizing system, that enables individuals to carry out their plans, and those who view it as having a substantive purpose.1
