Studying democracy from a sociological perspective

In this chapter, an introduction to the reasons that led the authors to propose this volume, an attempt is made to explain to the reader why a sociological reading of democracy may be fruitful for a better understanding of its current criticalities. The focus is on mature Western democracies, not on those recently formed or in the process of formation. To this end, the chapter retraces the main contributions that sociology has made in giving perspective and explanation to the social foundations of democracy. Thus, the main contents and results of the research of Tocqueville, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber, Thomas H. Marshall, Parsons, Barrington Moore Jr., Rokkan, Eisenstadt, and Tilly are briefly reviewed and illustrated. These authors, pure sociologists, outlined what we can call the main ‘original features’ in the relationship between modern society and democracy. In fact, the concept of modernisation is the common thread that runs through their explanations of the development of democracy in its social and cultural foundations. The chapter then goes on with the aim of highlighting what aspects this important tradition of studies has left us today as aspects that still constitute unresolved problems in the relationship between modernity and democracy. In particular, it highlights how the theme of trust - understood not only politically but also in the Luhmannian sense of ‘social good’ of interchange - constitutes an element that in the history of modern democracies fluctuates, with direct consequences on the functioning and legitimisation of democracy. Closely connected to the theme of trust is that of identity, also a social good that nevertheless experiences a dwindling ‘marginal utility’ for the strength and solidity of democracy. Democracy, an open system by definition, can only rely on the identity levels of the community it represents on the condition that this identity, beyond certain levels of intensity, is not a ‘defensive’ or ‘closed’ identity but is also open and inclusive, under pain of causing the democratic system to lose its essential characteristics.