"Democracy can never be secured - because it is not a system just to be implemented, but a way of life to be pursued" In 1945, the Danish civil society leader and advocate of democracy, Hal Koch, wrote these words in the aftermath of the Second World War. Denmark had just emerged from five years of German occupation during which democracy had been curtailed, and it was against this backdrop that Koch asked, and attempted to respond to, the question: What is democracy? Having served as a "classic text on democracy" in Denmark fr more than 75 years, the book has at last been translated into English, making its careful reflections and challenging questions available to an international audience.