DEMOCRACY
The word comes from Latin translations of Aristotle’s demos, meaning ‘territory” or people” as a group. and km/ten, which means “rule”. But whatever its linguistic roots,democracy as we understand it today is a product of the Enlightenment, based on what Kant termed autonomy, again from the Greek, a law (nomos) that you impose on yourself. In short, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. This is practically synonymous with sovereignty in the popular imagination, but sovereignty, as the German philosopher Carl Schmitt argued, is the power to suspend the law and to place oneself above the law, or, as Jacques Derrida wrote: The abuse of power is constitutive of the idea of sovereignty”. It is a tribute to the power of the democratic ideal that when governments deny democracy, they feel obliged to claim that it is for some greater good. Suspending elections, for instance, is presented as a hid “to protect democracy”. Today, many see democracy as a form of modern civilization. Beyond the mere freedom to vote, it incorporates accountability of government, civic freedoms, the rule of law, and so on. Some see democracy as a form of identity and a byword for market freedom, which is not just to be shared, but protected and spread as a counterweight to tyranny.
