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

Complexity and Scale
But, is this ideal of self-governance no longer possible in the context of our diverse and 
complex societies? Direct and participatory forms of democracy, the argument goes, made sense 
in small, isolated and homogenous communities. Only in such circumstances could we expect 
people to participate in face-to-face meetings, reach consensus and enact policies that promoted 
the common good. Rousseau – the “theorist 
par excellence
” of participatory democracy 
(Pateman 1970, 22) – would not be optimistic about its prospects for the contemporary world.
Moreover, empirical studies of Vermont’s town hall meetings, which is perhaps the clearest 
contemporary example of the old radical democratic ideal of the face-to-face assembly, 
demonstrate convincingly that the degree of democratic participation is inversely related to the 
size of the town: the bigger the town, the lower the rates of participation (Bryan 2004, 69-81).
Thus, the conclusion seems to be that radical democracy, at least insofar as it is understood as an 
inclusive, deliberative, face-to-face assembly is wholly unworkable given contemporary 
conditions. We have too many people and these people are too diverse and have too little time.
Moreover, contemporary issues are too numerous and too complex, requiring a great deal of 
specialized knowledge and expertise, to be solved by participatory democratic assemblies. In 
short, the size, pluralism and complexity of our current situation suggest to many observers that 
the radical democratic ideal is impossible. Must we conclude, therefore, that radical democracy 
is doomed?

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20 
Habermas (1996, 471) puts the challenge this way: it is not clear “how a radically 
democratic republic might even be conceived today.” Given the realities of the world today – 
the facts of globalization and pluralism, for example – what would it even mean to conceptualize 
(let alone practice) radical democracy? The theory that I develop in this dissertation is an 
attempt to conceptualize a radical democracy that is relevant to, and feasible in, our world today.
Under contemporary conditions, how might citizens actually shape the world around them and 
determine the conditions of their lives? In other words, this dissertation is meant as one possible 
answer to Habermas’s question: What might ‘rule by the people’ – radically conceived – actually 
look like today? Answering this question will lead me to upset a number of assumptions about 
what democracy looks like. Indeed the model of democratic politics I sketch in subsequent 
chapters suggests that democracy can and should look very different from its current, state-
centric forms. A vibrant democratic politics need not involve such standard notions as clearly-
bounded polities, elections, or even unifying decisions. Moreover, in developing this argument, I 
will employ the insights of anti-authoritarian social movements and political thinkers who are 
among the most vociferous critics of actually-existing democratic regimes. In doing so, however, 
I do not abandon democracy, but seek to reinvigorate it. 
This is, of course, not the first time the viability of the democratic ideal has been called 
into question, nor is it the first time a radical reinvention of the concept has been attempted. As 
Hardt and Negri (2004, 237-38) beautifully explain: 
Advocates of democracy in early modern Europe and North America were 
confronted by skeptics who told them that democracy must have been possible in 
the confines of the Athenian polis but was unimaginable in the extended 
territories of the modern nation-states. Today, advocates of democracy in the age 
of globalization are met by skeptics who claim that democracy may have been 
possible within the confines of the national territory but is unimaginable on a 
global scale. 

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21 
The eighteenth-century democratic revolutionaries, of course, did not simply 
repropose democracy in its ancient form. Instead their task, aimed in part at 
addressing the question of scale, was to reinvent the concept and create new 
institutional forms and practices…[L]ike the revolutionaries of the early modern 
period, we will once again have to reinvent the concept of democracy and create 
new institutional forms and practices appropriate to our global age. 
Those of us who still believe in radical democracy do so not because we think that the same old 
mechanisms and procedures – the directly democratic assembly, for example – are apt or novel 
solutions for our contemporary situation. Rather, we are optimistic because we believe that 
democracy can, again, be reinvented, with different practices, taking on new forms. To return to 
the epigraph – “our dreams do not fit in their ballot boxes” – our ideals of democracy are not 
fulfilled by existing democratic institutions. However, instead of relinquishing democracy, we 
challenge it and hope to reinvigorate it.