Democracy: Historical and Semantic Transformations

Abstract

If a price was awarded to the survival artists in the history of political concepts, democracy would be very far upon the list of nominees. Until today, the concept has successfully resisted every attempt to relegate it to a dusty museum shelf. As a matter of fact, it did survive exactly because it has been so vehemently contested. In a rapidly changing world, this contestability seems to be rather extensive these days, as there are plenty of adjectives that suggest alternative conceptualizations of democracy: deliberative, procedural, liberal, republican, radical, informal, global, constitutional etc. But what makes the language of democracy so enduring? Is there besides all different conceptualizations a semantic core of democracy? Through which linguistic changes do different conceptualizations of democracy try to reshape the meaning as well as the practice and institutional design of democracy? What is the relation of democracy to concepts such as representation, equality, liberty, rule of law, reason and civil-society and through which semantic moves have political theorists tried and still try to reshape these relations? The panel will explore historical as well as contemporary conceptualizations of democracy, with a special focus on the broader semantic as well as specific rhetorical moves, by which the meaning of democracy is recast.