Ce este democraţia?
What is Democracy?

Summary/Abstract: “I’m going to tell you an imaginary story. And I’m going to ask this question: is the story that I will imagine the triumph of democracy or its ruin? The story begins with a country which has painfully emerged from terrible periods of tyranny, established what looks like a path to a mature democracy. It has free elections, with near universal suffrage, it has a free and independent press representing opinions across the range of the political spectrum, it has a constitution which embeds fundamental rights of individuals against the majority, it has constitutional court active, indeed from time to time zealous, in its enforcement of the constitution. The Constitution itself is regarded as the fundamental law, and it provides that it cannot be amended except through a vote of two-thirds of the Parliament.Then one day this rather agreeable story is broken by the election of a government which through a large majority, but also through the structure of districting, does elect two-thirds of the Parliament and sets about to change the character of the nation. It enacts a press law establishing a council whose members are entirely appointed by the government….It enacts other laws unconstitutional laws, for example in violation of property rights for pension funds. It changes the jurisdiction of the constitutional court again by parliamentary vote in order retrospectively validate its unconstitutional legislation. Worse, it proposes to call a constitutional convention to thoroughly rewrite the constitution so as to solidify its own power. Is this the triumph or ruin of democracy? Legitimacy in the modern world means democracy. Democracy means government by the people, or rather government by a majority of the people….But the majoritarian conception is so impoverished, if I'm right, that it gives that government no legitimacy at all. That government has set the country on a road to the ruin of democracy because it has subverted the most basic principles that would entitle the community to claim that it’s a partnership of self-government. When the spirit of liberty dies in the hearts of men no law, no court, no constitution can put it back. But there’s something we have to add, which is that when the spirit of liberty still lives in the hearts of men and women then low, courts, and the constitution are the indispensable oxygen, indispensable to keep that flame of liberty still alive.”

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