| Abstract: | In a recent paper John D. May has nominated Responsive Rule for a definition of democracy. Responsive Rule prescribes necessary correspondence between governmental acts and the wishes with respect to those acts of the persons who are affected. In this paper the definition is criticized for being unclear on a vital conceptual issue and for not fully expressing the essence of democracy. On the one hand it is maintained that democracy's subject population remains undefined as the meaning of the word affected' is unclear, and three distinctions are brought forward to illustrate the problem of separating affected persons from persons not affected. On the other hand May's identification of democracy with equality in the weight of wishes is called in question, and it is maintained that wishes should meet a qualifying criterion. Three procedures for identifying qualified wishes are discussed, and it is suggested that information must be included in a conception of democracy in order to separate rational wishes from irrational wishes. |
