Substantiating democracy

Daryl Glaser

Chapter 2 in The Substance in Liberal Democracy, 2026, pp 22-37 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Chapter two sets the stage for Chapters 3 to 8, chapters that address innovations in democratic institutional design and how they look from the perspective of ideologically open proceduralism. It begins by discussing the binaries of form and substance, procedure and outcome, and process and outcome, considering their possible meanings and clarifying what is at stake in controversies around them. It then addresses claims that liberal democracy is merely formal or procedural, hence lacking in substance. What, the chapter asks, might demands for a more substantive democracy be demands for? In answering, it offers an anatomy of modes of democratic ‘substantiation’. Five types of democratic substance are distinguished (each in turn subdivided in various ways): substance in design, substance in implementation or embodiment, substantive political equality, substance in purpose or telos and substance in decision-making process. A key question for this book is how liberal democracy ‘handles’ these substances. Which does it require, welcome or accommodate, and on what terms? Which must it resist? Preliminary conclusions include that liberal democracy, like all models of democracy, requires certain substances; that liberal democracy can welcome or accommodate additional substances beyond those it requires, on certain terms that need to be specified; and that there is no ideological divide (say between liberal and radical theories) in terms of which model is formal or procedural, which is substantive. Rather, what distinguishes rival democratic models is the different ways they understand democratic substance and the different normative weights they attach to different substances.

Keywords: Form; Procedure; Process; Substance; Formal democracy; Procedural democracy; Substantive democracy; Liberal democracy; Democratic reform/innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035333011
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