Why Democracy?

Abstract

The value of democracy has been taken for granted until recently, but this assumption seems to be under threat now more than ever before. Democracy’s claim to be valuable does not rest on just one particular merit, and scholars tend to distinguish three different types of values. The book will primarily focus on the instrumental value of democracy (and hence not on the intrinsic and constructive value), and this chapter will explain why. This chapter will also discuss some important methodological choices, not only in order to position the book but also to justify the selection of studies and debates. This chapter will explain the choice to focus on statistical quantitative methods and the selection of the four different theoretical perspectives of democracy as an instrumental value. The book will undertake large-scale analyses of hundreds of articles published on the topic (see Appendix) and investigate the effects of democracy on peace (Chapters 3 and 4 ), corruption (Chapter 5 ) and economic development (Chapter 6 ). It is argued that the value of democracy should not be assumed, but treated as an empirical question. We need to evaluate democracy’s value. Only in this way, we can properly understand if democracy has future in our challenging times.