Conceptualizing and Measuring Modern Democracy 7 political governance appear to be remarkably promising (Grossman, 1995). Political Participation and Popular Control. In democratic Athens of the 5th century B.C., the citizens (politai) could directly participate in all dimensions of governance because of their relatively small number. Serving in turn as they were chosen by lot, they could be legislators, administrators and judges. Each citizen also had a perennial function as he votes to elect fellow citizens to public ofce. It is unlikely that this situation can be replicated in modern polities. For practical purposes, most citizens in modern democracies have been largely limited to the exercise of voting ofcials into positions of authority and related work. Nevertheless, this active even if only periodic political participation is critical in modern democratic theory. Voting, particularly in conditions of demonstrably competitive elections, often is used as a democracy indicator. To many theorists, the regular conduct of elections is a sine qua non of democracy; it probably is the most popular choice among several candidates for a minimalist denition of democracy (Schumpeter, 1947; Huntington, 1993). The public's political participatory roles seldom involve them in active legislation, executive work and judicial exercises – all functions now devolved to their elected representatives or to a bureaucracy, over whom they hardly have any direct control and whose technical work they often are even unable to understand, much less perform. Still, modern democratic theorists hold citizen participation as an urgent necessity for sustained democratic governance (Pateman, 1970). Beyond involvement in formal processes of governance like elections, recall and referenda and rendering actual government service either as elected ofcials or appointed administrators, citizens are seen as also participative in governance through membership and active work in numerous civil society groups, in nonstate organizations that have a direct interest in monitoring and assessing specic performance areas or sectoral programs that government is directly responsible for. The importance of civil society as a forum for political participation has increased in saliency as people developed a more active interest in democratic governance, administration performance and issues of political accountability. Popular control is a logical objective of political participation and is manifest in the act of citizens freely selecting their authorities, monitoring and assessing their political performance and, ultimately, exacting accountability from them. Mayo (1960:62-65) makes a distinction between the inuence of citizens over policies and their control over policymakers and notes that effective popular control requires the operation of a whole range of political freedoms (e.g. "freedom of speech, assembly, and organization as well as running for public ofce"). Political Equality and Freedom. Among those classied as a polity's active citizenry, democratic theorizing lays down a principle of political equality.