More than leaving its contents and particulars unspecified, the bare concept of democracy (or the concept of bare democracy) features no continuous or consistent account of why the people ought to rule, only the negative one that we should not be ruled by others. Even Rousseau, nearly singular in Western political thought for closely specifying why democracy alone secures (or recovers) the moral dignity of man, theorizes democracy as a way not to violate this dignity, rather than by delineating democracy's positive political value. Democracy alone is "the form of association … under which each individual, while uniting with the others, obeys no one but himself, and remains as free as before."

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 403