ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades, a distinction has been made between a procedural and a substantivist notion of democracy, wherein democracy is assessed by the quality of public institutions, content of rights, citizen entitlements and access to public goods. In this chapter, these two notions of democracy (especially in the context of state citizen relations) appear to be an adequate analytic framework to discuss democracy, development and issues of public governance, particularly in the context of developing countries. Indian democracy, the worlds’ largest democracy, has been showcased here to analyse the problems and prospects of democracy in the developing world. The challenges encountered by Africa’s attempts to democratize have also been discussed. The wave of democratization in the 21st century will not be unilinear—there will be setbacks as well, but public governance reforms can only be pushed for and sustained in democracies.
