Procedural Democracy and Social Structure

Abstract

A number of methodological problems in relation to democracy studies are analyzed. The author considers procedural democracy problems from the institutional and rational – choice points of view. Analyzing advantages and disadvantages of such approaches, the author comes to conclusion that the institutional features of the democratic structure have an important character. They include the variants of individual and collective strategies of social development, which involves a range of social options, which are available for social actors, problem of the “free rider”, which the procedural democracy tries to resolve, and “failures of democracy” which are considered as a product of social structure. The author believes that ideological understanding of democracy should be rejected and that we need more institutional studies of democracies.