Post-democracy: Principles and ambiguities

Abstract

The “post-democracy” concept appeared in critical literature at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its initial purpose was to consider what could come after democracy in the context of a paradigmatic change of superstructure: if modern democracy was born with the nation state in a governmental logic, how could one imagine its evolution in an unsettled and globalized governance? Post-democracy offers both a normative and an analytical answer: only a subtle understanding of the destabilization mechanisms of the democratic order will allow an efficient fight for the safeguarding of our political and social assets. Yet there is no uniform theory concerning post-democracy at the present time; as for its line of analysis it sometimes covers contradictory fields of law, political science and philosophy. Taking this into consideration, we have chosen to confront the principles of post-democracy with their own ambivalences in order to attest to the quality of their diagnosis and conceptual soundness.