ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to meet the need for carefully built conciliatory ontologies from works within the corpuses of Gramscian and Foucauldian thought. It explores how Gramsci and Foucault thought of democracy. The chapter contributes to the literature that uses Gramsci and Foucault to make theoretical inroads for the study of democracy. There are few if any works that are solely devoted to seeing what democratic theory might emerge through an in-depth study of Gramscian and Foucauldian primary documents. In comparison to Gramsci, Foucault's writing is much more nuanced regarding democracy. It may even be argued that democracy was not really part of Foucault's intellectual mandate. The focus on the complexity of the individual and its societies in his historical as well as contemporaneous works can be established as an emancipation of the self. The Gramsci-Foucault axis of democracy is based on the need for each individual to have expertise in politics.
