6: Democratic Transitions: Creating, Protecting, and Sustaining the Good Society

Democracy provides the most supportive political context for establishing, protecting, and sustaining a society that maximizes individual freedom while respecting the limits imposed by the requirements of social responsibility. It is not true that political systems which concentrate decision power in a few hands can never be benign. But without a continuing check on the government by the governed, the likelihood that such an authoritarian system of governance will remain benign for very long is vanishingly small. The commonly expressed dictum that power corrupts (and absolute power corrupts absolutely) seem unfortunately to have been repeatedly borne out by the human experience.