Configurations of Democracy

The starting point of thoughts on configurations of democracy lies in the Meaning of Democracy research. This research is based on the thesis that the actually prevailing meanings of democracy go beyond the previously operationalized understanding of democracy. The meanings of democracy are distinguished from understanding of democracy by the fact that understanding of democracy individually means different representations of a still identical object and continue to enable uniform measurement, while meanings allow for conceptual ambiguity. One of the most important tasks of comparative democracy research will be to systematically record these meanings empirically and bring them together to form a common, globally oriented and trans-culturally based democracy concept. The Western conceptual history of democracy has already undergone several comprehensive transformations of meaning. Probably the most serious transformation has been from small-scale, direct-democratic models to large-scale, representative democracy models (Dahl 1989, Keane 2009). As the next major shift in meaning, the literature discusses the expansion of the discourse on the meaning of democracy beyond the Western context of discourse, which is expected to lead to a confrontation of globally different ideas of democracy (multiple meanings) (Little 2018). Due to these developments, comparative democracy researchers have in recent years increasingly criticized the universalist concept of democracy, standardized survey research as a methodology, and a Eurocentric perspective. They refer to Eurocentrism-critical developments in political theory and Dallmayr's (1997) demand to enrich their canon with non-Western perspectives and to pursue comparative political theory (Ackerly/Bajpai 2017, Little 2018). i.e. an extreme relativistic position, that considers any empirically detectable meaning of democracy to be per se equivalent and incommensurable - because culturally different - with the traditional concepts of democracy, makes a scientific, contemporary and comparative study of democracy in the 21st century impossible. An alternative approach is proposed, taking into account these strands of discussion. Through the 'metatheoretical' perspective of perceiving democracy as a configuration of attributes, a rigid universalist view can be overcome without exposing oneself to the problem of conceptual stretching (Sartori 1991) by completely opening up the concept. The basic question of this approach is: Which attributes are associated with democracy (subjectively and objectively) and how can they be systematically compared and brought into dialogue? The overall objective of the Section on Configurations of Democracy (ConfDem) is to identify possible elements of meanings of democracy and the configurations resulting from them. This enables us to explore commonalities and differences in content as well as the distribution and expression of different meanings of democracy and to gain a deeper comparative understanding of democracy as it exists empirically in the minds of citizens and political and academic elites (worldwide). The focus should be on the measurement of meanings of democracy, which must, however, be preceded by a theoretical discussion. The aim is to meet the challenge of a mutual dialogue between theory and empiricism and to create a forum for an open discussion between normative and empirical as well as theoretical and methodological principles. Panel: The Non-Western Imprint of Meanings of Democracy In the tradition of Comparative Political Theory (CPT), this panel focuses on the question of how to define core elements of democracy given the multiple meanings of democracy all over the world. Contributions to this panel will discuss several normative conceptions of democracy that have originated in non-Western contexts in a comparative perspective and/or they will outline how basic defining elements of these different conceptions might be integrated into what can be called a "Grounded Global Theory of Democracy". Panels: Meaning of Democracy: Methods to Measure and Empirical Findings I and II The discussions and potential issues of the panel of non-western imprints provide us with insights into the challenges of ConfDem's data collection and analysis. Our key question is: How can we measure the meanings of democracy and identify key attributes? Papers proposing an inductive or a deductive approach are addressed in this panel. As with inductive approaches, deductive approaches pose different challenges, which will then be discussed in a problem-oriented manner on the basis of previous considerations and empirical research experience. The topic Empirical Findings on the Meaning of Democracy is devoted to the question of whether and, if so, in what structural form the ideas on ConfDem can be found in reality. This means that we want to know how consistent the meaning of democracy is in reality. Here we would like to discuss empirical data from different regions of the world that have been collected through an inductive or deductive methodological approach in order to capture the meaning of democracy on a global scale. References Ackerly, Brooke and Rochana J. Bajpai. 2017. Methods in Analytical Political Theory. In Comparative Political Thought, ed. Adrian Blau, 270-296. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dahl, Robert Alan. 1989. Democracy and its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dallmayr, Fred Reinhard. 1997. Introduction: Toward a Comparative Political Theory. The Review of Politics 59(3): 421-428. Keane, John. 2009. The Life and Death of Democracy. London: Simon and Schuster. Little, Adrian. 2018. Contextualizing Concepts: The Methodology of Comparative Political Theory. The Review of Politics 80(1): 87-113. Sartori, Giovanni. 1991. Comparing and Miscomparing. Journal of Theoretical Politics 3(3): 243-257.