Democratic Tradition, Elections, and Referendum in Russia: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Abstract

The concept of democracy borders on that of democratic tradition. However, the degree to which these two concepts overlap still remains an understudied issue. Democracy is an ambiguous and expanding notion that covers much more than political regime and political rights. In fact, democracy is associated with a mechanism for realizing the totality of human rights. The paradox is that, with its numerous definitions and patterns, democracy has neither ideal model nor universal standards. As a result, most approaches to the ever-elusive meaning of democracy appear inefficient. The present study specified the meaning of democracy by clarifying the content of democratic tradition, i.e., socially-inherited forms of social management that are based on the principles of electability, public representativeness, collegial decision-making, majority, accountability and responsibility of elected representatives to the community, etc. The author applied this approach to the current problems of suffrage and referendum law.