Is there a crisis of democracy? Can we answer the question?

Political theory from its very onset has determined that democracy is inconceivable without a crisis. This applies to the ancient writings of Plato, Aristotle, Polybios to the modern era with writings of Tocqueville, Marx and Max Weber or since the 1970s the leftists Jürgen Habermas (1973) and Claus Offe (1972), the conservative Crozier, Huntington, Watanuki (1975), the leftist NeoSchmittian Chantal Mouffe (2000), or Colin Crouch (2004). The message from political theory, from left to right has been clear: Yes, democracy is in crisis. Empirical research is much more cautious. Most empirical research denies a wholesale crisis of democracy. Pippa Norris is talking about “trendless fluctuation in system support.” Both groups of political scientists hesitate to explain exactly what “crisis” means. The paper tries to develop analytically meaningful concepts of democracy and crisis, identifies the major challenges to democracy and presents preliminary results from a research project which has evaluated the negative and positive developments of well-established democracies during the last 30 years. The research results include expert judgments (democracy index), Population surveys (subjective dimension) and partial analyses of single institutions, organizations, and procedures of democracy. While single dimensions of democracy are facing major problems, others have been improved. In sum: There is no systematic evidence that democracy’s quality has declined over the last decades nor that we can meaningfully speak of a crisis of democracy. Is there a crisis of democracy? Can we answer the question? Prepared for delivery at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 29-September 1, 2013. First Draft: critical comments are welcome!