Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy 7 A distinction is also drawn by some theorists between the sovereign citizenry, "the people", and those that effectively govern theoretically in their behalf, the authorities. (Schmitter and Karl 2009: 4) There is even a view that the term political rulers might be more appropriately reserved for the authorities or administrations in power that actively govern. An issue raised by this distinction is to what extent democratic administrators actually rule in behalf of their constituencies and what recourse the sovereign people have when these ruling authorities betray their democratic commitments. A. 1.1.2 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 office. 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 officials 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 definition 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 officials 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 specific 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.