"The Theory of Democracy Revisited" is divided into two parts, each of which is self contained. Volume I deals, in the main, with issues that have surfaced in the last decade while Volume II covers themes whose discussion began in ancient Greece. The two volumes, however, also differ in their respective underlying threads. In volume I the contemporary idea of democracy is examined. The classical theory of democracy did not draw, in any systematic manner, a distinction between ideal system and reality. Today, however, we are all highly sensitized to the hiatus between the ideal and the real. The normative (prescriptive) theory, now, by and large, applies to, and elaborates on, the ideals and values of democracy while empirical (descriptive) theory describes how democracies actually perform. The crucial problems thus become: to what extent and in what manner are ideals realized and realizable. This is very much the focus of Volume I. Volume II is more historical and considers the endless debate on power, coercion, liberty, equality, laws, rights, justice, representation, that shaped the vocabulary of politics from Aristotle to Tocqueville.
Part 2 The classical issues: what is democracy? definition, proof, and preference - are definitions arbitrary?, a criticism of conventionalism, words as experience carriers, the search for proof, a comparative evaluation; Greek democracy and modern democracy - homonymy, not homology, direct or polis democracy, individualism and freedom, old and new, the modern idea and ideal, a reversal of perspective; liberty and law - freedom and freedoms, political freedom, liberal freedom, the supremacy of law in Rousseau, autonomy - a criticism, the principle of diminishing consequences, from the rule of law to the rule of legislators; equality - a protest ideal, justice and sameness, predemocratic and democratic equalities, equal opportunities and equal circumstances, egalitarian criteria, treatments and outcomes, the maximization of equality, liberty and equality; liberism, liberalism, and democracy - overlaps, an unfortunate timing, property and possessive individualism, liberalism defined, liberal democracy, democracy within liberalism, democracy without liberalism; market, capitalism, planning, and technocracy - what is planning?, what is the market?, capitalism, individualism, collectivism, market socialism, democratic planning, democracy, power, and incompetence, the role of the expert, the government of science; another democracy? - the good society of Rousseau and Marx, democracy and the state in Marx and Lenin, popular democracy, the theory of democratic dictatorship, democracy and demophily, the war of words; the poverty of ideology - the exhaustion of ideals, inevitables and evitables, the witch-hunting of ideas, novitism and beyondism, epilogue.
