Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy 17 This formulation has been modified by the present project collaborators to read: 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 (1) the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives and (2) their involvement in politically active civil society groups. As a system of governance, it demonstrably promotes – however slowly or gradually and even allowing for occasional, temporary reverses – a progressively human quality of life for its citizens within fifty years of a regime's formal, democratic initiation. Their modifications have been facilitated by some provocative considerations. One, the authors collaborating in the present project subscribe to a view that for a modern democracy to exist, a politically participative citizenry is a sine qua non condition; democracy's citizens do not confine themselves to formal electoral exercises, referenda or recall but increasingly and more critically also organize and act through numerous and varied politicallyimpacting civil society groups. Yet another consideration prompted a further modification of the Schmitter-Karl formulation of modern democracy. In examining the numerous current attempts at clarifying the nature of democracy, the project collaborators were struck not so much by their focus on largely procedural and allied institutional concerns as their relative inattention to substantive democratic ends—that is to say, not much is explicitly said about what democratic regimes presumably strive for and, however gradually or imperfectly pursued by them, increasingly are able to effect over time. None of the several working definitions cited in this essay makes working for a human quality of life an integral part of their definition of democratic governance. This is quite remarkable. Political, civil and economic freedoms are widely acknowledged to be proper attributes of human beings and their societies and therefore all political regimes and democratic polities in particular are expected to secure them for their citizens. The iconic stature of democracy and the numerous rhetorical flourishes of democratic constitutions worldwide attest to this humanist interest. Why then shouldn't this objective of a human quality of life also be part of what explicitly defines a political regime as a democracy?1 The addition of a time frame within which a regime must show not only a formal commitment to a human quality of life but an operational capability to increasingly meet that objective is also a vital element in this modified definition of a modern democracy. If sovereignty resides in the people and all