Postdemocracy

What is Post-Democracy?

We don’t know yet… but this site developed out of the frustration of seeing the neo-conservative movement appropriate the language of ‘democracy’ to justify wars of aggression. Meanwhile, we’ve seen the ‘left’ unable to articulate a political position that doesn’t augment the neo-conservative’s own: the furthering of so-called democracy globally. Pick up any contemporary political theory book, regardless of the political position of the author it will inevitably conclude in support of spreading democracy. The only disagreement seems to be how to spread this democracy. But what’s wrong with that, you may ask.

The problem is that we suspect democracy has become an empty word whose meaning is assumed to be understood but in actuality differs widely among speakers. Hence the need for a post-democracy theory - a theory that clearly distances the left from the neo-con wars of aggression while taking democratic theory in a new, radical direction that supports the rights of local self-determination against this oppressive, corporate, military world we find ourselves in.

This site will work towards sketching the outlines of what this new post-democratic political position may look like in the hopes that we can convince others of the need to distance the movement from the call for democracy. Instead we offer the hope of a new, radical, democratic movement: a post-democratic movement.