ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges the claim that the concept of democracy is too vague, contested, or culturally variable to be meaningfully defined. The chapter shows how the rise of democracy, as a universally praised ideal, has weakened conceptual clarity, allowing the term to be stretched to cover almost any valued outcome. Tracing the historical evolution of democracy from a pejorative label to a political mantra, the chapter demonstrates how definitional scepticism fuels unrealistic expectations and misguided claims about democratic failure. Against this backdrop, it is argued that democracy has an undisputed core: rule by the people through free and competitive elections. Building on classic formulations by Schumpeter and Dahl, the chapter distinguishes between autocracies, and low-quality and high-quality democracies, while insisting that elections remain the defining institutional feature of democracy. The chapter also warns against conflating democracy with prosperity, justice, or other good policy outcomes—confusions that undermine democratic accountability rather than strengthen it. By re-establishing a clear, electoral definition of democracy, the chapter provides the conceptual anchor for the book’s subsequent analyses, and highlights democracy’s unique achievement: enabling peaceful transfers of power without bloodshed.
