Monitory democracy and media-saturated societies

Abstract

There is a need for a fundamental revision of the way we think about democracy in our times. An epochal transformation has been taking place in the contours and dynamics of representative democracy. From roughly the mid-twentieth century representative democracy began to morph into a new historical form of 'post-representative' democracy. The fundamental implications of this change for democracy in the coming years need to be explored. The 'end of history' perspectives and maritime metaphors are too limited to grasp the epochal change - too bound to the surface of things, too preoccupied with continuities and aggregate data to notice that political tides have begun to run in entirely new directions.