ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the democracy, which has spread to a majority of world's states over the past three decades, many scholars, politicians, activists, and aid administrators have gone from asking why transitions happen to asking what the new regimes are like. The rule of law is the base upon which every other dimension of democratic quality rests. There are several dozen illiberal democracies in the world today where competitive elections and popular participation coexist with considerable lawlessness and abuse of power. No regime can be a democracy unless it grants all of its adult citizen's formal rights of political participation, including the franchise. Freedom can be seen to consist of three types of rights: political, civil, and social. Political rights include the rights to vote, to stand for office, to campaign, and to organize political parties. Political competition and participation are crucial conditions for vertical accountability. Equality is an ideal that is never perfectly achieved, even in strictly political terms.
