ABSTRACT
The quality of democracy has become the flavor of the year or perhaps of the decade among students of democracy-and not just among those studying new democracies. This widespread academic exercise presumes two things: the presence of valid evidence of citizen dissatisfaction with their performance and the existence of valid standards for measuring the quality of these democracies. Citizens are the central and most distinctive component of all real-existing democracies. Academic specialists may agree on what practices best correspond to the historic ideals of democracy, but this is no assurance that citizens will agree with such an assessment or that they will voluntarily take advantage of the equal opportunities offered them. Multi-national enterprises, international financial institutions and, at least in Europe, multi-layered regional governance arrangements have imposed a complex mixture of constraints and opportunities that greatly limit economic and social policy agendas and the capacity to regulate and tax capitalists and their firms.
