Doubt and democracy were made for each other, and this is one of democracy's central paradoxes. Doubt is joined to democracy's revolutionary origins. In ancient Athens and with its rebirth in eighteenth-century Europe and America, democracy was the consequence of questioning the legitimacy of the authority and power exercised over people against their will or without their participation. In this sense, doubt about the legitimacy of external authority was coupled with confidence in the people's capacity to govern themselves. However, democracy has embodied a continuing suspicion about that very capacity. Detractors and defenders of democracy alike recognized the people's vulnerability to the temptations of power, manipulation, and special interests through which the tyranny of the many merely supplants tyrannical monarchs. From the criticisms of Plato and Aristotle through the worries of America's Founding Fathers there has been fundamental doubt about the capacity of the demos for self-rule.

It is tempting to think that the revolutionary origins of democracy are of historical interest only, that doubt and democracy were merely linked at moments in time.