billig will Ich: Post-demokratische Wende und Simulative Demokratie

The term postdemocracy is useful only if it is stripped of the lamento about the unfulfilled promises of democracy. The concept of a postdemocratic turn is suggested to describe a process of transformation in which democratic needs and expectations in late-modern societies evolve beyond the understanding of democracy that had been popularised by the emancipatory and participatory new social movements. Specifically late-modern strategies of identity formation and dilemmas are interpreted as triggers for the development of a new variety of democracy, simulative democracy. The article analyses the conditions for the emergence of this late-modern variety and explores what exactly simulative democracy delivers in contrast to the models of direct-participatory and parliamentary-representative democracy.