Seminar – Workshop

By Dr. Dhananjay Kumar

Introduction

Political scientists differentiate many types of democracies: representative, deliberative, participative, procedural, and substantive. This seminar took up the procedural and substantive types for deliberation: one related to the institutional, minimal, electoral democracy, and second, to the substantive or effective democracy. The former is viewed in terms of institutions of democracy, political parties and other associations or organizations, periodic elections, universal adult franchise, leadership, etc. It is rarely concerned with what happens beyond elections in the social space. Alternatively, substantive democracy is viewed in the light of its diffusions in various sectors of society, redistributive justice, human capabilities and entitlements (education, health, infrastructure, etc), social capital, associated factors of trust, values, and norms, civil society, human rights, and governance. However, in the Indian context, both types of democracy are complementary and interdependent. The successful functioning of the procedural dimension of democracy requires substantive democracy also.