ABSTRACT
This chapter draws together the explanatory theories to provide an overall, updated account of how democracy works. It identifies the assumptions which most research on democratic representation has to make. Systematic political science integrates the working assumptions of that body of political research on the basis of which a set of interrelated predictive explanations of political processes can be generated and validated – in particular for democratic policymaking. The importance of mutual recognition acknowledges the influence which other states’ actions have on internal politics, particularly with globalization. The free formation of political parties – as guaranteed in democracies – ensures that at any one time the policy preferences of all significant opinion groupings are contained in some existent party’s policy programme. Alternations of plurality parties in government pull previously enacted policies, tending to one extreme, across the centre of the party-defined policy segment towards another extreme, during the current inter-election period.
