David Runciman - Modern democracy and what we mean by it

David Runciman, Professor of Politics at Cambridge University, explores the idea of what we call democracy.

About David Runciman

"I’m a Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. I explore the history of politics and political ideas, and democracy.

My interest is in the history of politics and political ideas and particularly, democracy. Where does it comes from? How different is our democracy from democracy in the past? What might it become in the future? In parallel to my research, writing and teaching work, I hosted a weekly podcast called Talking Politics with 300 episodes between 2016 and 2022."

What we call democracy is a recent phenomenon

The idea of democracy is thousands of years old, and most people have a sense of that. Because they believe that it’s the oldest idea, they believe it must be the basis of our own politics. But the notion that what we call democracy goes back thousands of years is wrong. The thing that we call democracy is a much more recent phenomenon. It’s been around for a hundred years or less. 

Key Points

• The political system we broadly refer to as “democracy” is a “representative democracy”. It is much younger than we imagine.
• Ancient and modern democracy share an idea of political equality. But while ancient democracy was much more participatory, modern democracy is more inclusive.
• We hang onto the version of democracy from the past 50 years through fear that our societies will collapse into fascism or authoritarianism. But there are many other ways of doing democracy.