Contemporary Models of Democracy

In the following article I profile three normative models of democracy at the center of current debates in democratic theory-communitarian, deliberative, and agonistic. I then critique their limitations. Calling for greater sociological and political realism, I turn to Danilo Zolo's thesis of "complexity and democracy" and his view that today democracy is a supplemental feature of techno-oligarchic regimes. Drawing upon the work of Zolo, Michel Foucault, and Sheldon Wolin, I relocate the idea and practice of democracy. I contend that today democracy exists in its most vital and novel form as an ethos and set of strategies operating at the local and micro levels of adaptation and resistance to complex power and policy networks.