By: Stephen Turner

Stephen Turner — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:49:25 +0000

This is a welcome corrective to the traditions which Hong identifies: to talk about democracy in the 4th way requires us to stand outside local democratic practice and ideals, and think about the non-political conditions, especially the moral and cultural traditions, that make these practices work. The non-exportability of these practices is an older concern that needs to be taken more seriously. But not simply as a negative lesson. To think in the 4th way includes thinking about the possibilities implicit in different traditions, and also about why adopting certain models of democratic practice will have very different effects in different settings. Exclusion is implicit in democracy—majority rule, however it is constructed, creates minorities. How to mitigate the damages of majority rule, and whether to do so is the major task of democracy itself. This requires going beyond traditional normative universalism and the merely empirical. But also not into the merely utopian.

Comments on: 🦋 What counts as democracy? A critical reflection on The Science of Democracy 2.0

By: Stephen Turner