Going to try to keep this non-bloggy, but it could delve into that territory, so I apologize if I don't stay on-message.
Democracy has been, since the Enlightenment, becoming more popular in discussions on politics, with most Western countries (and many non-Western countries) at least claiming to be democratic; indeed, democracy has become a sort of "unquestioned good", and it is this among other things I want to address in this post.
Firstly, the question of democracy as universally desirable or good, I think, is a self-defeating one. Democracy is inherently relativistic; policy isn't decided based on ideological reasons or even necessarily according to merit, but according to what is supported by the majority (or plurality) of people in the society. This is self defeating because, when even what is desirable is relative, then whether democracy is desirable is also relative, and most democracies only maintain themselves as democracies (and this is debatable, as I shall go into later) through legal force, grounding themselves on an ideology that, at its core, is not democratic.
The main way, as previously mentioned, to prevent relativism from rendering democracy into continually degenerating, is a republican structure based on core principles. Two problems present themselves here, firstly, as mentioned before, that these core principles aren't democratic, by nature. The nature of things like civil rights, is that it violates the principle of majority-control. The second problem, is that, as pointed out by Robert Michels in his formulation of the Iron Law of Oligarchy in 1911. The argument made by Herr Michels is that the organization of large republics inevitably creates hierarchy, on the bases that 1) political organization requires people to devote their lives to it (i.e. political organization is not a part-time endeavor), 2) that, because political organization requires time and training, it is not open to everyone, as the great mass of the population must work on other things, 3) because only a small class of people will be able to spend their time running the political organizations, they will eventually come to be the only people who actually know how to run the political machine, becoming a political elite, and 4), because the political elites are the only people with the organization and expertise to run the political machine, they will be the only choices. Michels also includes the point that the weight of a single vote in a large enough society is so little, that it is a poor investment to actually spend your time and money educating yourself on the political process simply for the purpose of voting. As evidence of his assertion that even democratic institutions will be subsumed into the oligarchy, he provided the examples (later, not in his original book) of how the radical socialist and Marxist parties, with the exception of the Bolsheviks, rallied behind their wartime governments in the First World War, even though this would undoubtedly lead to the deaths of millions of working-class people for the gain of the existing political structure, not the workers. Michels used this "Iron Law" to explain why there have been so few long-lasting democratic institutions throughout history (because they would either collapse into mob rule or rule by a political elite).
So, we are faced with two premises:
1) Pure democracy is not inherently desirable, and
2) Large republics are oligarchies, not democracies
I, personally, am fairly convinced by these arguments, but I think it is foolish to rely solely on one's own faculties to assess an argument, especially when you are already biased in-favor or against it. Because of that, I direct the following questions to the largest internet community I am a part of (outside of 4Chan):
1) Is democracy inherently relativistic? If not, how does it avoid becoming so?
2) In-practice, do existing political organizations (specifically, political parties) adhere to the Iron Law of Oligarchy (i.e. are they ruled by a politically educated elite).
3) Are there large, successful governments, either historically or currently-existing, that did not rely on the organization which, according to Michels, creates oligarchy in all cases?
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