Some sociological aspects of democracy

Democracy, as a term, has presented an interesting topic for social scientists, starting from Plato and Aristotle up to nowadays. Even today it is a popular word, a term, a political regime, a political program, a goal to strive for, an ideology, a movement - depending on the way it is understood. It should be noted that in the last decade it was one of the most used word, not only in scientific and political debates, but also in daily life. Plato defined several different forms of democracy, but stressed that the worse one is where governs the will of majority, not the laws. Aristotle said that validity of democracy may be estimated in the way how general and objective rules, expressed in the law, are respected. In the 18th century, when democracy was defined as the government of majority, the rights of political, ethnical and religious minorities were to be guarantied. In the 18th and 19th century two classical theories on democracy were expressed in the following options: a) liberal democratic model of protective democracy and b) developmental democracy. Contemporary forms of democracy are expressed through democracy of competitive elitism and democracy of pluralism and neopluralism. After plural and neoplural democracy, the democracy of new right wing and the participative democracy of new left wing appeared on the stage. At the end of 20th century there was an attempt to make a synthesis of contemporary democracy in a form of autonomous democracy. The final parts of this paper indicates basic weaknesses of democracy: a) absolute equality of all the citizens regardless to their numerous personal differences; b) limits in manifesting democracy; c) possibilities of destroying democracy through a democratic decision for the worst possible form of autocracy.