A more expansive conception recognises that elections occur only intermittently, that officials who are elected may not hold effective power in the country and that real political choice and accountability require much broader pluralism and freedom. Pseudo-democracy may be mistaken for electoral democracy because it allows legal opposition parties, multiparty elections and often a greater degree of pluralism and openness in civil society than the typical authoritarian regime. In a pseudo-democracy, the ruling party so hegemonically controls the levers of power that opposition parties have no chance of winning power at the national level. Still, if we view democracy in developmental terms, as emerging fragments or parts by no fixed timetable or sequence, then the presence of one fragment can provide space, experience, initiative or inspiration for the emergence of others. From this perspective, every increment of democratic progress is significant and should be encouraged.
Democratic consolidation is a vital concept for theory and policy concerning democratic development.
Democratic development is an ongoing process. There is no perfect democracy, and no point at which we can or should become apathetic towards democracy. Democracy can always become more responsive, more inclusive, more accountable, more transparent and more just - in terms of distributing political resources and influence relatively equally among all groups of citizens. One of the extraordinary facts about our world today is that 61 per cent of the regimes in the world could be classified as electoral democracies because they have relatively free and fair, and certainly regular and constitutional, elections in which multiple political parties contest. This percentage has grown from 27.5 per cent in 1974 and 46 per cent just in 1990.