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Democracy and Industrialisation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Ernest Gellner
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Extract

Looking at the contemporary world, two things are obvious: democracy is doing rather badly, and democracy is doing very well. ‘New states are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains.’ Democracy is doing very badly in that democratic institutions have fallen by the wayside in very many of the newly independent ‘transitional’ societies, and they are precarious elsewhere. Democracy, on the other hand, is doing extremely well in as far as it is almost (though not quite) universally accepted as a valid norm. It is almost as if its success as a norm of legitimacy were inversely related to its success in concrete implementation.

Type
Paradoxes of transitional societies
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 1967 , pp. 47 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1967

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References

(1) Aron, R., Essai sur les libertés (Paris 1965).Google Scholar

* The first draft of this paper was prepared for a conference on «The Idea of Democracy in Transitional Societies», held at the Villa Falconieri at Frascati in April 1966, under the auspices of the Social Science Research Council (of the United States of America). I should like to express my gratitude both to the Council and to all the participants. I am particularly indebted to conversations with Professors R. P. Wolff, R.P. Dore, P. H. Partridge, John Plamenatz, Giovanni Sartori, and the Honorable Charles Frankel. Needless to say, the responsibility for the views expressed is mine alone.