Original scientific paper
New Constitutions and Models of Democracy: The Majority Issue
Kenneth Janda
; Northwestern University, Evaston, USA
Abstract
The author presents two alternative concepts of democracy: the
procedural, which values systems according to the procedures that a
government makes use of in its day-to-day functioning, and the
substantial, which consists on the political decisions' content as the
criterion of a system's democracy. Based on these two concepts, the
theoriticians of democracy have constrcted three different models of
democracy (majority, pluralist and consensual),; the first two are on
the line of the procedural and lhe third of the substantial theory of
democracy. While the advocates of the majority model are of the
opinion that a government is primarily responsible to public opinion,
i.e. the citizens' majority, the pluralists consider democracy to be the
government of several interest groups, of which none is powerful
enough to impose its interest. The consensual model emphasizes the
need for the government to guarantee, through its decisions, human
and civil rights. This model also points out the need for protecting
national minorities by employing mechanisms which enable their
participation in the govcrnmcnL The author concludes that the latter
model would best suit the societies of Central and Eastern Europe
since they, due to their historical, social and cultural circumstances
arc not in the position to evolve Western models based on the
procedural understanding of democracy.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
110789
URI
Publication date:
2.5.1995.
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