Introduction: Tracing Radical Democracy and the Internet

Abstract

‘Democracy’ has become a universal signifier of political legitimacy. No major political programme or regime wants to be labelled undemocratic. However, the success of this signifier has far exceeded the success of actual democratic practice. Political systems throughout the world, including really existing democratic systems, are plagued by corruption, non-transparent decision-making processes, hierarchical power distribution, corporate influence over government and information flows, cynical public relations and consultation exercises, capitalist globalization, neo-imperialist coercion, and reactionary fundamentalisms. Moreover, the signifier ‘democracy’ has been used to legitimate all manner of antidemocratic actions, including state and private surveillance, harassment and silencing of critical voices, detentions without trial, neo-liberal policies, global corporate expansion, and outright neo-imperialist invasions and war. When these political conditions are combined with an ever-expanding consumer culture that promises private solutions to social problems, it is not surprising that many of the global middle classes, including those in so-called advanced democratic nations, are more interested in consumption than in politics. Meanwhile, for those trapped in grinding poverty, precarious labour, and existential uncertainty, the lack of time, energy, and resources clearly explains an absence of participation in democratic processes and a turn to otherworldly fundamentalist religions (Davis, 2004).