The Democracy Sourcebook

by Robert A. Dahl, José Antonio Cheibub, Vaclav Smil

The Democracy Sourcebook offers a collection of classic writings and contemporary scholarship on democracy, creating a book that can be used by undergraduate and graduate students in a wide variety of courses, including American politics, international relations, comparative politics, and political philosophy. The editors have chosen substantial excerpts from the essential theorists of the past, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the authors of The Federalist Papers; they place them side by side with the work of such influential modern scholars as Joseph Schumpeter, Adam Przeworski, Seymour Martin Lipset, Samuel P. Huntington, Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen. The book is divided into nine self-contained chapters: "Defining Democracy," which discusses procedural, deliberative, and substantive democracy; "Sources of Democracy," on why democracy exists in some countries and not in others; "Democracy, Culture, and Society," about cultural and sociological preconditions for democracy; "Democracy and Constitutionalism," which focuses on the importance of independent courts and a bill of rights; "Presidentialism versus Parliamentarianism"; "Representation," discussing which is the fairest system of democratic accountability; "Interest Groups"; "Democracy's Effects," an examination of the effect of democracy on economic growth and social inequality; and finally, "Democracy and the Global Order" discusses the effects of democracy on international relations, including the propensity for war and the erosion of national sovereignty by transnational forces.

Genres: Politics

568 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2003

About the author

Robert A. Dahl was one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century, best known for his foundational work on pluralist democracy and the concept of "polyarchy." A Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University, Dahl advanced empirical approaches to political science and reshaped understandings of democratic theory through both descriptive and normative lenses. He argued that political power in democracies is distributed among multiple interest groups rather than centralized in a single elite, a view he expounded in seminal works such as A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956) and Who Governs? (1961), the latter based on a case study of New Haven, Connecticut. His concept of polyarchy described modern representative democracies as systems characterized by key institutions like free elections, inclusive suffrage, and civil liberties.
Born in Inwood, Iowa, and raised in Skagway, Alaska, Dahl drew early insights from his experiences among working-class communities. After earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington, he completed his Ph.D. at Yale in 1940. He served in World War II as a reconnaissance platoon leader in Europe, earning a Bronze Star. After the war, he returned to Yale, where he taught for four decades and held leadership roles including department chair. Dahl also served as president of the American Political Science Association in 1966–67.
Throughout his career, Dahl explored the conditions and values essential to democratic governance. He articulated five criteria for evaluating democratic processes—effective participation, voting equality, enlightened understanding, control of the agenda, and inclusion. He also identified seven institutional requirements of polyarchy, such as elected officials, free and fair elections, and associational autonomy. In his later work, including Democracy and Its Critics (1989) and On Democracy (1998), he examined democracy’s advantages over other forms of governance, such as fostering political equality and safeguarding personal freedom.
Dahl remained critical of American political structures, particularly the U.S. Constitution, which he saw as undemocratic by contemporary standards. In How Democratic Is the American Constitution? (2001), he critiqued the framers’ limitations, while acknowledging the practical challenges of reform. He continued to address issues of political equality in On Political Equality (2006).
Dahl was the recipient of numerous honors, including two Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Awards and the inaugural Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. His legacy lives on in both theory and practice, with the American Political Science Association establishing the Robert A. Dahl Award in his honor. He passed away in 2014, leaving a lasting imprint on the study and practice of democracy.

Reviews

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This edited work, "The Democracy Sourcebook," is a good reference source for differing perspectives on democracy. The volume provides historical context as well as more contemporary reflections on the subject. The editors, Robert Dahl, Ian Shapiro, and Jose Antonio Cheibub, have done their work well in assembling this set of readings in one book.

Any edited volume is going to have some unevenness. One could surely quibble with why some works were included and others excluded. That said, though, this still represents an important resource for those interested in democracy. The book is divided into 9 sections. The following paragraphs will briefly note what is included in some of these.

Section 1 is critical, for setting the stage for the remainder of the work. The animating question is deceptively simple: How do we define democracy? The oldest reading is from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract." Other key readings are excerpted presented in this volume, such as Schumpeter, Przeworski, Gutmann, Diamond, Pateman, and one of the editors, Dahl. The reader who confronts these works will get a much better sense of the diverse readings of exactly what democracy is--and what is at stake, depending on the definition that one selects. The difference between Schumpeter and Pateman represents a major debate, for instance.

The second section explores a critical issue: What factors affect the development of democracy? Classics such as Lipset's "Political Man" have excerpts appear in this section. So, too, other key figures such as Huber et al., Huntington, Przeworski et al.

Other sections follow, with rich representation from the Federalist papers, published during the American constitutional debates (perhaps these are even overrepresented), with discussion of the differences between presidential and parliamentary democracy, the nature of representation, the role of interest groups, and so on. A rich and diverse array of works that address the multiple issues raised by a study of democracy.

This is, in the final analysis, a rich resource for trying to better understand the nature of democracy and the various issues at stake. There are some articles which I think might better have been included; I think that too many numbers of the "Federalist" series are provided. Nonetheless, this is a valuable resource.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Want to get a sense of differing views of democracy? The book includes classic writing by Rousseau and Mill as well as more contemporary essays, by such scholars as Przeworski and Huntington. I found this a rich resource while I was developing a book on democracy. Thus, I would give it high marks.

[mharipin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important introduction for those who really eager to learn and 'comprehend' democracy in its normative sense. Democracy, anyone?

[Juneight · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good (although not a complete) collection of readings on democracy!