Beyond the democratic state: anti-authoritarian interventions in democratic theory

 
demoi
,” a move which also opens the door to transnational forms of democracy. Hardt and Negri 
(2004) reject the term entirely and suggest the “the multitude” replace “the people” as the 
constitutive unit of a non-sovereign and global democracy. Whereas, “the people” constitute a 
political body
that can authorize a sovereign ruler, “…the multitude is 
living flesh
that rules 
itself” (
ibid
. 100).
But, how does this “living flesh” rule itself? What does “the multitude’s” self-
governance look like? To begin to answer this question, in the following section, I sketch out 
what I take to be one of the most compelling contemporary accounts of self-organization and 
self-governance. After briefly defining governance, I present an overview of the key lessons 

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from Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning 
Governing the Commons
. Her work, which notably 
is grounded in a fairly conservative rational choice framework, contends that something 
resembling anarchism – self-organization without recourse to either the state or the market – is 
possible, in certain contexts. Ostrom’s work, therefore, is critical for thinking through the form 
that self-organization and self-governance might take. However, her work also has serious 
limitations for assessing “the multitude’s” capacity for self-rule. Not only are Ostrom’s case 
studies of successful self-governance based on relatively small communities (rather than the 
transnational and global communities that comprise “the multitude”), but they are often quite 
homogenous. Indeed, they seem to fit more closely with the old radically democratic ideal of the 
face-to-face assembly that characterized the Athenian 
polis
or the New England town hall 
meeting, which I mean for direct action and networks to displace. Moreover, their relatively 
small size and homogeneity do not correspond to the realities of our global, complex, and 
pluralistic societies.
And, as I show in section III, it is precisely the facts of difference and diversity that are 
the starting point for a range of contemporary democratic theories. Difference and diversity are 
the jumping off point for theorists of democracy because they are generally seen as both a fact 
and a problem for democracy – as something, therefore, that needs to be addressed or overcome.
I review two primary sets of responses to these concerns. The first response, articulated in 
varying ways by the democratic theories of Rawls and Habermas, seeks to overcome difference 
in order to enable the 
demos
to form a body capable of ruling. As Ferguson (2012, 12-29) has 
argued, democratic theorists generally – and, on her account, wrongly – assume that some kind 
of commonality is crucial for democracy to function. Thus, it is not surprising that one school of 
thought would be to find ways to constrain, or otherwise make safe, the pluralism that 

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characterizes contemporary politics and polities. However, I argue that these efforts to minimize 
difference in the name of consensus are wrong-headed. Rawls disguises liberalism as 
“reasonableness” and then proceeds to use that criterion to exclude people and ideas from public, 
political life. Habermas, while leaving the political terrain more open to diverse actors and ideas, 
prioritizes the need to reach agreement at the end of a diffuse, discursive process. Thus, both 
democratic theories are, ultimately, oriented toward commonality and unity against difference 
and diversity. The second response, articulated by Mouffe, is to foreground difference and reject 
the ideals of unity and agreement. She argues instead for an “agonistic model of democracy” 
(Mouffe 2000, 80-105) characterized by ongoing conflict and contestation over basic political 
matters, including matters of inclusion and exclusion. The facts of difference and diversity, for 
Mouffe (
ibid
. xii), speak to “the conflictual nature of politics and the ineradicability of 
antagonism.” While, I am in basic agreement with Mouffe on this point, I think her analysis 
leaves her open to the charge that she provides little in the way of a positive prescription for 
governing – or at least acting together – in the context of ineradicable antagonism.
If one accepts the basic tenets of Mouffe’s argument – that is, if one sees difference and 
diversity not as problems to be overcome, but as the core of democracy itself – is there still a 
way to theorize governance in such a context? To ask this differently, in the absence of a 
cohesive political body called “the people” is self-governance still possible? Hardt and Negri 
(2004, xiv) summarize the quandary nicely: 
The people
has traditionally been a unitary conception…the people 
reduces…diversity to a unity and makes of the population a single identity: ‘the 
people’ is one. The multitude, in contrast, is many. The multitude is composed 
of innumerable internal differences that can never be reduced to a unity or a single 
identity…Thus 
the challenge posed by the concept of multitude is for social 
multiplicity to manage to communicate and act in common while remaining 
internally different
(xiv; second emphasis added). 

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My aim in the second half of the chapter is to provide one response to this challenge, and 
to see what may come from an engagement between a theory of self-governance and a theory of 
agonal democracy. The primary mechanism for fostering the goals of both – enabling self-
governance in the context of difference – is networks as a form of political organization. In 
section IV, I offer an account of decentralized coordination and networked organization. While 
it would be a mistake to characterize networks as perfectly egalitarian – and indeed, there are 
different kinds of networks, some much more hierarchical than others – “distributed networks” 
provide a form of organization that enables coordination and common action in the context of 
dispersed power and difference. I theorize networks as valuable precisely because they enable 
cooperation without consensus
and 
action without agreement
. More broadly, this points toward 
a 
democracy without (unified) decision
.
In section V, I consider the applicability of networked self-governance on two very 
different geographic scales. First, I discuss the potential to mobilize networks on a transnational 
or global level in order to “scale-up” democracy. Here, I consider the possibilities for networks 
to function as coordinating mechanisms for democratic action across borders. In certain 
respects, this is the most challenging level to think about because of the manifold problems 
associated with global democracy. However, it is also the level at which much theorizing about 
networks as occurred. Indeed, what is often taken to be most inspiring about networked forms of 
organization is there potential to foster transnational or global democracy. However, the 
democratic desirability and utility of networks extends beyond its transnational potential. As I 
will argue, networked forms of organization can also be usefully conceptualized and applied at 
lower levels of governance, as well. So, in this sense, I “scale-down” networks and think about 
their utility on a much smaller scale, such as when people share a similar geographic space.

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Whereas others have theorized the democratic potential of networks on a transnational scale, I 
theorize their potential as an alternative to the general assembly. In this sense, I argue against 
“direct democracy” and for “network democracy.” Whereas Occupy and other social 
movements emphasize consensus forms of decision-making when sharing a common space, I 
argue that networks – precisely because they enable people to decide differently – can be 
meaningfully applied locally, as well. Finally, in section VI, I conclude by connecting the 
various themes of the chapter – self-governance, the challenges of pluralism, and the possibilities 
of decentralized , networked organization together. I explain how, and to what extent, networks 
can foster self-governance in the context of difference and discuss the implications of this for the 
way we conceptualize democracy.