12 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition The expansion of democratic space in democracy studies has not facilitated a greater consensus among scholars regarding the nature of their subject. A particularly pungent critique relating to this ongoing confusion regarding the concept of democracy is in a theoretical volume published over 50 years ago (Mayo, 1960). Its author notes that confusion results when technical people, (whom he explicitly identies as mostly political scientists), fail to develop a shared or controlling denition of democracy. Ruing this condition, he remarks that "[a]lthough there are in the political studies, a number of technical words with xed meanings, unfortunately, 'democracy' is not one of them (Mayo, 1960;22-24)." For him, more confusion results when numerous groups load the term with "special and personal meanings"; the ideologues and the religiously-inspired bear the brunt of his criticism that "public discussions of democracy is almost a complete Babel, [with] much of the writing [being] inspirational in character, generating vague feelings of uplift about nothing in particular." Almost as great a responsibility for the general confusion may also be attributed to people who speak of democracy as if it had some "metaphysical essence or quintessence behind the word," this time it is the nominalism of Plato and similar idealists that he faults. (Mayo, 1960:22-24) Views and sentiments similar to those of Mayo's on the numerous, professional attempts to clarify the meaning of democracy are found in the extensive literature that has emerged on the subject. In 2009, the democratic theorist Larry Diamond (Diamond, 2009:229), observes: Few conceptual issues in political science have been subjected to closer or more prolic scrutiny in recent decades that this problem of "what democracy is ….. And what it is not" and which regimes are democracies and which not. We are replete with denition and standards and tools of measurement. But the curious fact is that – a quarter century into the "third wave" of democratization and the renaissance it brought in comparative democratic studies – we are still far from consensus on what constitutes "democracy." And we still struggle to classify ambiguous regimes. Given the welter of contesting and often confusing denitions, Mayo (1960: 22-24) very early suggested that it is probably the common usage of democracy in the sense of "government or rule by the people" that could minimize the intellectual confusion in his own time –a state of affairs that unfortunately has persisted up to now. Many students of democracy disagree with Mayo on this point. Those adopting a Schumpeterian view of democracy as a method of governance or rule, may acknowledge some utility of common usage in dening democracy but would insist nevertheless on clarifying democratic rule as rst of all practically equivalent to competitive elections (Huntington, 1993:6-8). Together with others who nd much that is problematic in fully operationalizing the idea of 'rule by the people' (Heywood, 2007:72-76) or in