ABSTRACT
Democracy as a "political thesis" is best and brilliantly distilled by the works of Robert A. Dahl of Yale University. Dahl focuses on "effective participation," which puts him in the camp of the Enlightenment vision, in which legislation and education are fused as the source of democratic wisdom. James Gibson of Washington University in St. Louis follows on the heels of the earlier work of the late Aaron Wildavsky in presenting democracy primarily as a series of cultural factors that filter into the political system. Gibson believes in the gradual development of democracy, comparing that incremental approach to postponing gratification at the personal level. Democratic rule, he argues, requires that the people grant authority to their ruler. The notion of culture as central to democracy returns the debate to its nineteenth-century roots in Kant and Hegel, where one must choose between the free conscience and the well-ordered state.
