essay on democracy

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Powers behind control: An essay on democracy
Peter L. Hupe

Department of Public Administration
Erasmus University Rotterdam [e-mail] To be presented at the Annual Work Conference of the
Netherlands Institute of Government, held at Erasmus University Rotterdam, October 29, 2004
Workshop 3: Institutional Rearrangement of the Public Domain

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Abstract
In contemporary Western democracies the role of government is not what it used to be. In the public discourse some authors claim to observe a ‘relocation of politics’, while others speak of a ‘democratic deficit’ in general. In this essay the relationship between democracy and governance is explored on a macro-level. The argument is that performance in the public domain and the decisions underlying it no longer in a direct way can be traced down to expressions of societal demands. This is because both the relationships between society and democracy and between politics and performance have become looser. In particular, the hierarchical relation between democracy and government has been replaced by a more horizontal pairing of democracy and governance. As the latter has multiple dimensions, entailing a range of activities performed at various spots by a variety of actors, it appears that democracy, as well, cannot appropriately get substance and form in a singular way anymore.
Enhancing the visibility of who is involved in the processes leading to public decisions, combined with enlarging possibilities for accountability, ‘multilocalisation’ provides a conceptual perspective for rethinking contemporary democracy. 2

1. Introduction
There once was a time in which the representative organs of democracy were seen as firmly anchored in society. In and around these organs, politics functioned as the intermediary process between society and government. The realisation of the collective goals agreed upon was taken care of by

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