In a Post-Democracy Trap

I am going to show why the concept of post-democracy has already become contestable even though it was only introduced recently. The concept of post-democracy has been used as a theoretical model to interpret the crises of democracy in last twenty years or so. Collin Crouch outlines this attitude in his book Post-democracy. Sheldon Wolin also occupies a similar position. He speaks about post-democracy as a democracy functioning in the postmodern era. Regardless of their differences both authors believe that today’s crises of democracy is specific. Slavoj Zizek follows the similar line of thought since he is of the opinion that the growing distrust towards democracy is no longer merely a concern of the Third world or the Eastern European countries more than in the developed Western countries. However, it seems that today’s crises of democracy is not particularly new, especially for the continental European democracies. Even in the 1950s Hans Kelsen was writing about such authors who tried to redefine democracy because of its crises between the two world wars. They used a similar discourse on democracy as that which is been used by some theoreticians of post-democracy. We can also find the same discourse on ‘the crises of democracy’ and the same cure (greater democracy in the economic sphere) much before the 2nd World War. Moreover, there are a lot of examples in which people, in the name of democracy, try to find a new balance with representative democracy in last 200 years. I find that Jacques Rancière offers a better explanation of this problem. He doesn’t find post-democracy only er in the postmodern era, or in an order that comes after representative democracy but every time when there is ‘legitimization of a democracy after demos’.