Democracy as a Global Hybrid Concept? A Suggestion of Two Core Concepts in Order to Systematically Open the Black Box of Democracy as a Global Hybrid Concept

People have conceived of democracy in different ways across time and space. The diversity of meanings of democracy contributes to an overall picture of democracy as a hybrid concept. A new research strand has recently started to systematically analyse the multiple meanings of democracy all over the globe. In order to delimit the research field, one needs a commonly shared ‘core concept’ of democracy as a starting or working definition. We have already suggested such a definition: democracy understood as self-rule of the free and equal. We still need to justify this definition, though. In this paper, our first aim is thus to justify this very definition as useful for this new research agenda with reference to the western tradition of democratic thought and by critically discussing alternative ‘minimal’ definitions. In this section we will, firstly, argue why a minimal concept serves better for global comparative research than a more elaborated, or even maximal concept, and, secondly, we will distinguish different types of conceptual minimalism in democratic theory: a) justificatory minimalism: reduction of the value basis of democracy Dahl; Bidner/Francois/Trebbi), b) procedural exclusivism: exclusive focus on democracy’s procedural dimension (Schumpeter/ Przeworski/Beetham), or c) the search for a concept of democracy before or below the stage of liberal democracy (Josiah Ober). This latter type is a combination of elements from a and b. We discuss this variety of minimalism and derive our conceptual proposition from discussing the variety of conceptual minimalisms. Once a minimal definition has been agreed on, it is possible to empirically analyse the multiple meanings of democracy. Empirically depicting the global variety of meanings of democracy should, however, not be done as l’art pour l’art, but with a specific goal in mind: the aim of integrating the multiple meanings of democracy at least into a systematically related bundle of core concepts or a specific configuration of democracy, understood as a globally oriented and transculturally grounded new concept of democracy. While the aforementioned minimal concept of democracy is a necessary condition for conducting the intended of global-comparative type of research, the second concept is the inductively developed result of this research and is intended to change our view on democracy – up to its treatment within normative democratic theory. Our second aim in this paper is thus to answer the questions of a) how we could methodologically reach such a new concept of democracy and of b) how this new concept of democracy could look like. Therefore, we will, first, discuss the methodological potentials of the grounded theory methodology and, second, suggest a concrete new, globally oriented and transculturally informed, concept of democracy which is based on our first analyses of the multiple meanings of democracy.