Democratising Democracy. On the Flexibility of the Concept of Democracy

The scope of democracy is contested. Is it the relation between government and the governed (electorate or citizenry), or is it confined to characteristics of the constitution, or is it rather the state of society, or even a way of life? But also the idea of democratisation is contested. In international governance circles it is the act of making undemocratic countries democratic, based on institutionalized criteria of what constitutes a democracy. In political theory the idea of democratising democracy have been aired from time to time in recent decades, giving new meaning to democratisation and democracy. Democracy should not only be “broadened” to more countries or more spheres of society but also “deepened”, where it is already existing to a certain degree or in some form, thus illustrating the flexibility of the concept of democracy. The paper maps the discursive usages of democratisation in ordinary language, vocabularies of business life, parliamentary debates, media, fiction and literature. The aim of the mapping of discursive usages is to demonstrate the scope of the rhetoric of democracy and democratisation to different speres of public communication, like “democratising design” (IKEA advertisement), “democratising culture” (governmental white paper), “democratising science” (university conference), “democratising innovation” (book title), “democratising motherhood” (newspaper article etc.) etc. The aim of the analysis is to determine how the rhetorial usages of the word democratisation and the concept of democracy can be related to specific actor types and specific aims of persuading not only voters but also customers, clients, public employes and citizens in their daily life.