Although this is less often commented on in the academic literature, democracy is as much about opposition to the arbitrary exercise of power as it i… - Ian Shapiro

Wealthy people used to find democracy frightening. The reason was simple: the poor, once enfranchised, should be expected to soak the rich. This fear bred elite resistance to expanding the franchise, particularly beyond the propertied classes. Nor did this fear, and the reasoning behind it, go unnoticed on the political left.

An enduring embarrassment of democratic theory is that it seems impotent when faced with questions about its own scope.

No conception of democracy as geared toward reducing domination can ignore the relations between the political system and the distribution of income and wealth.