As a political scientist, I sometimes have to refer to the Aristotelian conception of democracy as a deviant regime, a regime above which the dangers of demagogy and populism are constantly looming, and yet, as Aristotle made it clear in the Nicomachean Ethics, democracy is the “least worst” of all deviant regimes, all the more so because the ideal form of government, polity in the Greek philosopher lexicon, is midway between democracy and oligarchy, and unfortunately does not come into existence very often — at least it did not in Aristotle’s time. I would argue that representative democracy of today fits the description of that ideal and ancient polity. Ultimately, although potential deviances serve as a reminder that the best necessarily has the potential to engender the worst and thus prompt citizens as well as political parties to consider vigilance as a duty if not a virtue, the practice of modern representative democracy by humankind over the past two hundred plus years in all corners of the planet does seem to confirm Churchill’s now famous verdict that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
