10 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition controlling denition of democracy would already have emerged. This has not been the case and the contemporary literature reects much variation and outright tension in the numerous conceptions of democracy (Munck, 2009:128129; Keane, 2009:x-xxxii). Across two thousand years of conceptual clarication, democracy, like most of the great themes of history, has deed resolution even as the greatest minds of the times struggled with it. To date, it remains a much contested concept. At best, "working denitions" of democracy have been offered by numerous scholars if only to enable their audiences to understand how they might be using the term in their particular studies. (Schumpeter, 1947; Mayo, 1960; Lijphart, 1988; Huntington, 1993: Van Hanen, 2010). Typologies and models of democracy have been attempted from the time of Aristotle (Aristotle/Barker trans., 1962:162-169) and the tradition carries on to modern times (Held, 1987:13-299; Lijphart, 1988:1-60; Heywood, 2007:75-81). Schumpeter' classic treatise on regime types, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, has provided a procedurally-oriented denition of modern democracy. He situates the critical element of democratic governance in what he calls the "democratic method." This is "that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote." (Schumpeter, 1947:269). Obviously election-focused, this denition has inuenced scholars across the years although it also has accomodated a few modications. Some scholars who earlier had endorsed the electorally-focused Schumpeterian idea of democracy have tried to refocus it by stressing the accountability of the authorities and expanded the range of applicable political processes beyond formal elections. Thus, Schmitter and Karl's formulation (2009:4): Modern political democracy is a system of governance in which the authorities or rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens acting mostly indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives. Partly endorsing this view, another scholar proposes a critically modern variation – an additional context of political freedom -- on the Schumpeterian theme: “ … a democratic political system is one in which public policies are made, on a majority basis, by representatives subject to effective popular control at periodic elections which are conducted under conditions of political freedom." (Mayo, 1960:70. Underscoring mine.) A generation later, Sen (2000) will famously argue that democracy and development are both targeted towards maximizing freedom in human societies.