The article examines the nature, specific features, political content and forms of democracy. It elucidates the principles and values of democracy in its liberal form, in comparison with other conceptions and practices of its implementation. Democracy is treated here not only as a political regime, but as a broader social phenomenon. The author analyses the main approaches to understanding liberal democracy as a social phenomenon that is best able to ensure the broadest possible inclusion in political communication and interaction of those social strata that emerge in the course of social advancement and the growing complexity of society. Accordingly, the factors that actualise democratic processes in the contemporary world are also considered.
The article offers a historical and theoretical exploration of the unfolding and diffusion of the idea of democracy and of the political practices through which these processes are realised. The author analyses what is regarded as the main trend in the evolution of democracy as a phenomenon, namely the greatest possible, for a given historical period, expansion of the range of social groups involved in politics through the recognition of their interests as public. It is noted that when the state recognises the interests of a particular group as public, this means that the state endorses and protects these interests, thereby turning this group into a legal subject (subject of rights). In the absence of such recognition of the public character of their interests by the state, newly emerging groups remain invisible to politics as a sphere of governance and are excluded from political discourse and interaction.
It is argued that the deliberate expansion by the state of the circle of subjects of public law promotes the democratisation of the political regime, enriching and strengthening civil society by creating additional opportunities for their harmonious interaction. The enrichment of civil society is understood primarily in terms of increasing the number of recognised social groups within which the individual appears as the bearer of a growing plurality of interests whose protection is guaranteed by the state. It is emphasised that such an orientation of state activity can be regarded as a process of expanding freedom, which constitutes the core value of liberalism. Such state activity represents the consummate outcome of the implementation of other democratic procedures by the established state institutions and presupposes the institutionalisation of the idea of social and political tolerance towards new socio-political actors.
The article points to the particular role in this process of the incremental democratisation of the state, understood as the political organisation of society as a whole, through the development of appropriate institutions and the conscious orientation of their activities towards expanding the scope of political interaction so as to take into account the greatest possible number of interests in the adoption of generally binding political and administrative decisions, and in bringing newly emerging groups to the status of legal subjects within the state. The boundaries of the circle of political subjects characteristic of particular historical epochs, starting from the era of modernity, are tentatively identified. The main principles and norms governing the formation and implementation of rules for an all-encompassing and unrestricted political dialogue within society, between society and the state, and among states are generalised as the core idea of the value dimension of democracy. It is argued that, in this sense, the advance of democracy may be regarded as a measure of social progress.

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