the sufficient condition for the reproduction of a political democracy refers to the citizens level of democratic consciousness and as david gabbard  karen appleton point out "the responsibility of cultivating the democratic consciousness requisite to this conception of citizenship falls to paideia" which involves not simply education but character development and a well-rounded knowledge and skills ie the education of the individual as citizen which alone can give substantive content to the public space this is particularly so because democracy can only be grounded on the conscious choice of citizens for individual and collective autonomy thus it cannot be the outcome of any social economic or natural "laws" or tendencies dialectically leading to it let alone any divine or mystical dogmas and preconceptions in this sense neither representative democracy nor soviet democracy meet the conditions for political democracy and are simply forms of political oligarchy where political power is concentrated in the hands of various elites ie professional politicians and party bureaucrats respectively