ABSTRACT
The chapter define radical democracy as an ethos which embraces the political and messy nature of a pluralistic society and aspires to reconstituting its own parameters and frontiers in response to the changing needs, conditions and challenges that such collective life presents. It suggest that certain 'social pathologies' which are believed to undermine capabilities for practising radical democracy the 'fear of freedom' in particular are not pathological at all. 'Radical democracy' became the name for a 'new political philosophy' which suggested that social justice is achieved only when groups of people with common interests first articulate and then organize themselves into counter-hegemonic blocs and work through them collectively to pursue their political demands. Critics of prefigurative democracy have argued that in practice the approach is strategically ineffective and insufficiently radical. Radical democracy is always a fragile promise, and there are certain things that make it particularly challenging in neoliberal capitalist societies today.
