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

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BEYOND THE DEMOCRATIC STATE: 
ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN INTERVENTIONS IN DEMOCRATIC THEORY 
by 
BRIAN CARL BERNHARDT 
B.A., James Madison University, 2005 
M.A., University of Colorado at Boulder, 2010 
A thesis submitted to
the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Colorado in partial fulfillment
of the requirement for the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy 
Department of Political Science 
2014 

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This thesis entitled: 
Beyond the Democratic State: Anti-Authoritarian Interventions in Democratic Theory
 
written by Brian Carl Bernhardt 
has been approved for the Department of Political Science
Steven Vanderheiden, Chair 
Michaele Ferguson 
David Mapel 
James Martel 
Alison Jaggar 
Date
The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we 
Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards 
Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. 

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Bernhardt, Brian Carl (Ph.D., Political Science) 
Beyond the Democratic State: 
Anti-Authoritarian Interventions in Democratic Theory
Thesis directed by Associate Professor Steven Vanderheiden 
Though democracy has achieved widespread global popularity, its meaning has become 
increasingly vacuous and citizen confidence in democratic governments continues to erode. I 
respond to this tension by articulating a vision of democracy inspired by anti-authoritarian theory 
and social movement practice. By anti-authoritarian, I mean a commitment to individual liberty, 
a skepticism toward centralized power, and a belief in the capacity of self-organization. This 
dissertation fosters a conversation between an anti-authoritarian perspective and democratic 
theory: What would an account of democracy that begins from these three commitments look 
like? In the first two chapters, I develop an anti-authoritarian account of freedom and power. In 
Chapter I, mobilizing insights from libertarians and republicans, I offer an account of freedom 
that is divorced from self-sovereignty and committed to non-domination. In Chapter II, utilizing 
work in anarchist anthropology, I show why freedom as non-domination is incompatible with the 
state, and that an alternative to the statist organization of power is possible. While a centripetal 
logic unifies society’s power in a Leviathan, a centrifugal logic disperses power across many 
non-sovereign nodes. In the second half of the dissertation, in order to elaborate what centrifugal 
power may look like in our contemporary context, I focus on two core anti-authoritarian social 
movement practices: direct action and networked organization. In Chapter III, I argue that direct 
action, a practice that enacts collective power, is democratic to the extent that it upsets power 
inequalities and domination, and creates spaces for others to exercise political power. In Chapter 
IV, I argue that networks enable two ends that are often thought to be in tension: coordination, 
and self-governance, on the one hand, and diversity and pluralism, on the other. In contrast to 
representative elections and directly democratic assemblies, however, networks do not require a 
well-defined people, a centralized decision-making body, or even a single, unifying decision.
Throughout the dissertation, I argue against the platitude of the “democratic state” in favor of a 
democracy against the state. I conclude by re-imagining democracy as the dispersion of power. 

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