Conference paper

The Democratic Ideal and Historical Experience

Peter Kielmansegg ; University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

Abstract

The author believes that the democratic principle of legitimacy has definetly won over all other forms of legitimization in the 20th century becuase it is the only one that can be coordinated with the conditions of modernity. The modern is based on individuality and rationality which constitute the core of the modern political set-up. The process of the modern dissolves the conditions for a stable democracy come into being everywhere. The solving of conflicts through consensual rules, which means solving conflicts through the form of legal regulation, is included by the author among the basic presuppositions of a successful democratic mode of political practice. This is where the unremovable link between the constitutional state and democracy resides. All attempts to exclude democracy from its symbiosis with the constitutional state would destroy democracy itself. This is the basic experience of the twentieth century concerning democracy.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

112136

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/112136

Publication date:

1.12.1992.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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