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中央党校考博英语真题试卷（2009年）阅读理解4

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概要：Passage 4 In this book, then, democracy – or what Robert Dahl terms polyarchy – denotes a system of government that meets three essential conditions: meaningful and extensive competition among individuals and organized groups (especially political parties) for all effective positions of government power, at regular intervals and excluding the use of force; a “highly inclusive” level of political participation in the selection of leaders and po

中央党校考博英语真题试卷（2009年）阅读理解4,标签：考研英语真题,考研真题,考研政治真题,http://www.77xue.com
Passage 4
In this book, then, democracy – or what Robert Dahl terms polyarchy – denotes a system of government that meets three essential conditions: meaningful and extensive competition among individuals and organized groups (especially political parties) for all effective positions of government power, at regular intervals and excluding the use of force; a “highly inclusive” level of political participation in the selection of leaders and policies, at least through regular and fair elections, such that no major (adult) social group is excluded; and a level of civil and political liberties – freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom to form and join organizations – sufficient to ensure the integrity of political competition and participation.
While this definition is, in itself, relatively straightforward, it presents a number of problems in application. For one, countries that broadly satisfy these criteria nevertheless do so to different degrees (and none do so perfectly, which is why Dahl prefers to call them polyarchies). The factors that explain this variation at the democratic end of the spectrum in degrees of popular control and freedom is an important intellectual problem, but it is different from the one that concerns us in this book, and so it is one we have had largely to bypass. We seek to determine why countries do or do not evolve, consolidate, maintain, lose and reestablish more or less democratic systems of government, and even this limited focus leaves us with conceptual problems.
The boundary between democratic and undemocratic is sometimes blurred and imperfect, and beyond it lies a much broader range of variation in political systems. We readily concede the difficulties of classification this variation has repeatedly caused us. Even if we look only at the political, legal, and constitutional structures, several of our cases appear to lie somewhere on the boundary between democratic and something less than democratic. The ambiguity is further complicated by the constraints on free political activity, organization, and expression, and the substantial remaining political prerogatives of military authorities, that may in practice make the system much less democratic than it might appear. In all cases, we have tried to pay serious attention to actual practice in assessing and classifying regimes. But still, this leaves us to make difficult and in some ways arbitrary judgments. The decision as to whether Thailand and Zimbabwe, for example, may today be considered full democracies is replete with nuance and ambiguity. Even in the case of Brazil, which was generally presumed democratic after the election of a civilian president in 1985, Alfred Stepan cautions that the extent of military prerogatives to participate in government and wield autonomous power put the country “on the margin of not being a democracy.” With the direct presidential election of December 1989, the transition may now be considered closed, but serious problems of democratic consolidation remain.

71. This passage probably appears in __________.
A. in the introduction of a book

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