The challenge of cacophony – CPT and inductive universalism as a measure a for sustaining sense in CDR

Accepting the critique that the current hegemonic definition of (liberal) democracy originates in western thought and is hence parochial might lead to a different scientific problem: the cacophony of democratic conceptions pairing with a highly complex and multifaceted terminological field. In my paper I will discuss the capabilities of Comparative Political Theory to alleviate this problem and find the common melody within this ‘Cacophony’. Therefore, I will first elaborate on the possible cacophony of democratic concepts. If we, scholars of democracy, admit that our formerly applied concepts originated particularly in the western political thought, we are obliged to reconsider our yardsticks, which we used to discuss about democracy hitherto. For confronting this issue, a starting point is to wonder, why democracy is still a point of reference. I argue that democracy is universal but in a different sense – like Max Weber discussed the term of western modernity. The concept of democracy has no universal ahistoric truth. Rather it is a concept, that evokes responses from any society hitherto, be they affirmative or hostile. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is, that the erosion of the legitimacy of ancient regimes and their ‘nontemporal’ justifications like the western divine right of monarchies or other higher principles like T’ien ming (the Mandate of Heaven) provoked new rationales. Since then scholars are confronted with a plethora of different approaches and conceptions of democracy. But how can we reach a concept of democracy that is suitable for research in Comparative Democracy Analysis, i.e., that offers a yardstick to measure different societies and political regimes in the sense ‘more or less democratic’ or ‘differently’ democratic? For being applicable for further research Comparative Political Theory can offer a solution by carving out a new inductive universal conception of democracy. I argue that this conception must be radial (or maybe with multiple cores), which can include incoherences and contradictions. It will have manifold peripheral features, while the discovery of its core remains the main intellectual endeavour. Therefor it must take into account the different utterances about democracy. They can be distinguished into two forms. First, there are the expressions, that name themselves ‘democratic’. They might be contradictory or they might be "disguised" as democratic. They will at least contribute to the peripheral features. Second, there are concepts, that feature democratic aspects, though they do not name themselves that way. They should be included into analysis, while the peripheral features are the accompanying yardstick. At the end, I illustrate this by discussing, why the Islamic concept of Shura contributes to this inductive universal meaning of democracy. Through CPT, we might be able to extract the common core of democracy from the cacophony. Finally, I propose a preliminary, potential common 'melody' of democracy. This framework equips us with the ability to measure various societies and political regimes in terms of being 'more,' 'less,' or 'differently' democratic.