What is Democracy? Different aproaches to the concept. Democracy as a Political Regime

Abstract

This paper is the first result of a more extensive work intended to perform
a critical analysis of the concept of Democracy as it is applied in legal and
social sciences. As political, legal and philosophical contents developed in many
doctrinal studies —and also in concrete political practices— assume a common understanding
of the scope of the term, this paper attempts to decode and separate the
ideological axiom underlying this concept. It also shows the influence that a deeper
and more complex characterisation may have on our idea of political regime, theory
of representation, republic, electoral systems, collective decision-making, material
equality, political freedom, division of powers, and system of checks and balances.