"The change of scale and its consequences—representative government, greater diversity, the increase in cleavages and conflicts—helped to bring about the development of a set of political institutions that, taken together, distinguish modern representative democracy from all other political systems, whether nondemocratic regimes or earlier democratic systems. This kind of political system has been called polyarchy, a term that I use frequently. Polyarchy can be understood in several ways: as a historical outcome of efforts to democratize and liberalize the political institutions of nation states; as a distinctive type of political order or regime different in important ways not only from nondemocratic systems of all kinds but also from earlier small-scale democracies; as a system à la Schumpeter) of political control in which the highest officials in the government of the state are induced to modify their conduct so as to win elections in political competition with other candidates, parties, and groups; as a system of political rights (discussed earlier in chapter 11); or as a set of institutions necessary to the democratic process on a large scale."
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Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (1989), Ch. 15 : The Second Democratic Transformation: From the City-State to the Nation-State
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Polyarchy
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