Democracy: positive and negative

“The changes which the meaning of the concept of democracy has undergone (…) are contributing (…) to deprive the term ‘democracy ’ of clear meaning and turn it into a word-fetish used to clothe with an aura of legitimacy any demands of a group that wishes to shape some feature of society to its special wishes” Hayek, F., 1998, Law, legislation and liberty (Routledge, London), Vol. 3, p. 38 1 Generally speaking, it is possible to identify two opposite ideas of democracy. The first one is based essentially on majority rule. The second one is based on the continuous effort to limit the application of that rule (and therefore group decisions) as much as possible in society. On the one hand, these two ideas of democracy are based on very different concepts of law, of equality before the law and of liberty, among other things; on the other, they have quite different implications. Democracy intended as that political system based on majority rule is essentially a very simple concept: the only limit to the existence of group decisions is the existence of a majority to support them. A decision approved by a majority is therefore considered “democratic