Thanks for the post. The future of representative democracy and in particular the role of political parties is part of an important debate. My hunch is that the answer is two-fold: first of all, we need a lot more autonomy-in-cooperation in society, and this is what peer governance is offering us. But society, as a field of competing interest, will probably have to stick with some form of representative democracy, augmented by new forms of multi-stakeholder governace. Parties however, are no longer what they once were. They are, pretty much like corporations, marketing machines; a vague brand with a general positioning, which constantly surveys opinion trends to play with; the power lies with those experts, not with party members. I’m pretty much convinced that this situation is already beyond reform. They’ll continue to exist, we can tamper with them to make them a little better, but we really need new vehicles. But which ones? Internet-enabled cyber collectives which can mobilize in physical space through ad hoc coalitions?
More importantly, I think we now have a time where the construction of the new is much more important than the contestation of the old.