The struggle for democracy: paradoxes of progress and the politics of change

When political factions compete over the right to act in the 'people's' name, who is to decide? This problem was left unresolved by the great seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theorists of popular sovereignty and their critics, and it is little closer to being solved today. This book defends a new democratic theory that finally provides an answer. It argues that familiar attempts to define democracy in terms of timeless principles or institutions can only fall into paradox when faced with struggles over democratic founding and change

When political factions compete over the right to act in the 'people's' name, who is to decide? This problem was left unresolved by the great seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theorists of popular sovereignty and their critics, and it is little closer to being solved today. This book defends a new democratic theory that finally provides an answer. It argues that familiar attempts to define democracy in terms of timeless principles or institutions can only fall into paradox when faced with struggles over democratic founding and change.

In The Struggle for Democracy, Christopher Meckstroth looks at history and context in the development of democratic theory to provide a principled way of sorting out deep conflicts over who has the right to speak for the democratic people. He tests this theory by applying it to contemporary debates over same-sex marriage, military intervention, and gun control. He finds that sometimes democracy requires minority rule and that sometimes history provides the key to determining what the democratic people have decided in the present.