Democracy requires elected officials to act free of unelected and external control.

Evidence

Schmitter and Karl adopt the Dahl list of prerequisites and add two more necessary conditions: “Popularly elected officials must be able to exercise their constitutional powers without being subjected to overriding (albeit informal) opposition from unelected officials [e.g., army]…. The polity must be self-governing; it must be able to act independently of constraints imposed by some other overarching political system” (1991, 81). — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 1498

Categorization

• XREF: Maps onto the reader’s existing notes on sovereignty and on the Somali/Italian trusteeship material where real legislative power remained vetoed by an external administrator.