"On reading Dahl's muted encomium to polyarchy, his term for representative government, I have the same sinking feeling. Although he begins his discussion of "the democratic process" with a reference to Aristotle, this firmly establishing his argument along the practical/utopian continuum, even the ideal "criteria for a democratic process" are already a long way from what the Greeks called "democracy," since they have nothing to do with direct popular rule, or popular participation of any kind. These criteria include, at a minimum, the opportunity for something called "effective participation," which is defined as the adequate and equal (my emphasis) opportunity for "expressing preferences," including "adequate and equal opportunities for placing questions on the agenda...," and voting equality. This is the democratic process "narrowly" construed. Later Dahl added to this narrow sense two broader criteria: first, what might be called equal opportunity for enlightenment, and second, "final control of the agenda by the demos." Aside from voting equality, none of this is remotely within the realm of possibility in polyarchies as presently constituted, and Dahl is aware of this. [...] The institutions of polyarchy (in a nutshell, competitive elections and civil liberties), he says later, should then be thought of as the necessary but not sufficient precondition to "the highest feasible attainment of the democratic process." However, nothing Dahl says thereafter leads the reader to think that the feasibility level of this attainment, in any degree, is very high."