Democracy, Golden Ages and Balancing Acts—Comment on Flinders, M. (2015) The Problem with Democracy

Abstract

This article comments a recent article by M. Flinders on the Problem with Democracy, recently published in this journal, with two main aims. The first is to identify some indicators that can be used to assess comparatively the significance of some of the seven problems identified by the author. Then, having classified the latter in three main streams, the article focuses on two of them, which I call respectively the 'representative linkage' and 'governance mechanisms'. My argument is that the health of democracy is related to complex balancing acts, whose dynamics emerge in a long-term perspective, which allows some myths of 'golden ages' to be identified.