These apparent contradictions in American democracy suggest more than a simple gap between theory and practice. They signify the profoundly fictional character that the democratic ideal assumes in the public mind. The very slipperiness of the term permits its exploitation by a range of politicians, bureaucrats, and philosophers for purposes ranging from electoral sloganeering to military intervention. For this reason, an initial step in the salvaging of participatory politics may well entail an analysis of democracy's crisis of meaning. This entails asking such questions as whether democracy functions primarily as a form of decision making or as an instrument of popular empowerment, whether democracy constitutes an abstract ideal or an achievable goal, or whether democracy emerges from within a group or can be externally imposed.