Democracy

Through this collection of essays, Roy criticizes the structure of representative democracy for the ways in which it ultimately puts too much power in the hands of too few. This division of power fosters a political and ideological climate in which fascism, sectarianism, and even genocide are able to flourish. Roy’s criticisms of democracy are targeted at the structure of government as it currently exists in the world. This is stated in the first paragraph of the introduction, in which Roy writes: “By ‘democracy’ I don’t mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are” (1). This introduction alerts the reader to the existence of two democracies: democracy as it is practiced and manifests itself in the world, and democracy as it is talked about in liberal discourse. The latter is the ideal...