The article explores the three right wing intellectuals Søren Krarup, Bertel Haarder and Henning Fonsmark and a selection of their central texts from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Based on Quentin Skinner's concept of the "innovative ideologists", the article views Krarup, Haarder and Fonsmark as actors who in their own way redefined the meaning of the concept of democracy and challenged current conventions on the concepts of people and elite. Krarup, Haarder and Fonsmark represented different parts of the right in Denmark, and they drew on different ideals for democracy. However, they shared the aim to confront the dominance of the social democratic conception of democracy that rested on a notion of democracy as a way of life.