Elections as part of normative conceptions of democracy

Abstract

Although an aggregative conception of democracy provides a more natural context for the production of democratic legitimacy through the practice of elections, this model does not have an advantage among the normative conceptions of democracy to accommodate the electoral practice. Deliberative and contestatory models, which do not seem to give an important role to the elections in the generation of democratic legitimacy, nevertheless grant or ought to grant such a role after a more detailed examination. They need to be examined from the perspective of deliberation and contestation. For deliberative democracy, elections provide an important input for the production of deliberative decisions; in turn, a deliberative process must precede electoral decisions. On the other hand, for contestatory democracy the elections ought to be seen as an available impugnation tool. In short, the democratic legitimacy of elections can be productively linked to these models mentioned, and should not be necessarily function through the mere authorization of representatives or the mere aggregative programming of a political process controlled by elites.