The essay aims at historically analysing Hans Kelsen’s theory of parliamentary democracy as it was developed between 1920 and 1932. I will seek to show how Kelsen elaborated a discourse on democracy which identified representative system, guarantees of civil and political rights, protection of minorities, dialectical relationship between majority and minority within the legislative body, political compromises, party pluralism and relativism as the key elements of that particular system. Unlike the two prevailing interpretative approaches to Kelsen’s political thought (i.e. Political philosophy and Philosophy of Law), I will adopt the perspective of the History of Political Thought, which means that I will investigate Hans Kelsen’s interpretation of the essence and value of democracy in relation to the concrete historical and political dimension he referred to. In doing so, I will seek to emphasize how Kelsen’s main political works of that time are conceptually oriented against specific political targets and how, ideologically speaking, his theory of democracy has a liberal connotation. More precisely, I will argue how the first edition of Essence and Value of Democracy and Sociology of Democracy share a clear critique of Lenin, Bolshevism and the Soviet system, whereas the second edition seems to be more strongly oriented against the emergence of Fascism and those anti-democratic forces wanting —in his country (Austria) and also out of it— to eliminate the representative political system. In both cases, my objective is to argue that Kelsen’s democratic theory should be situated within the historical-political context characterizing post-WWI Europe.