The current de-democratization process in which the world now apparently finds itself ". . .represents the longest continuous period of deterioration in the nearly 40-year history of Freedom House's annual assessment of the state of political and civil liberties in every country of the world". As Gilley (2010: 161) observes, ". . .the hottest books on democratization these days concern not democratic advance but authoritarian resurgence". An increasing number of scholars are challenging the basic conception or understanding of democracy underlying the last two decades of democratization. They question the concept of democracy that has informed democratization to date, and argue that the decline in democracy in the world that we now see is due to the "type" of democracy that has been championed and promoted. Other scholars critical of the concept of democracy underlying democratization focus less on neo-liberalism and more on the need to find an alternative notion of democracy that can be used to inform democratization efforts in the future. Among the alternatives proposed is the notion of developmental democracy, a type of democracy that is contrasted with the political democracy approach that has characterized USA democratization efforts to date. In this article, the author briefly compares and contrasts the two types of democracy: political and developmental democracy.