ABSTRACT
This chapter resumes in a systematic and extended manner the idea and concept of democracy. It starts by re-stating the specificity and non-absolute character of liberal democracy, with its virtues and limitations. Liberal democracy is representative but the reverse may not be the case. After establishing some of its main features, it considers the council experiences of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, finally taking up the connection between radical democracy and the immanent critique of political modernity (as well as of authoritarian collectivism). After discussing the features of radical democracy, the chapter moves to establish its connection to plebeianism considered from a political perspective and its emancipatory potential.
