The Evolutionary Risks Of Democracy
The Evolutionary Risks Of Democracy

Summary/Abstract: The need for a 'reconstruction' of democratic theory derives from the astonishing social transformations which, on the threshold of the third millennium, come with the introduction of new technologies (electronic, cybernetic, robotic, and multimedia! ones) into the primary sub-systems of post-industrial society, namely into the political, economic and military sub-systems, as well as into those of knowledge, information, private life and leisure. Those transformations are apparently bound to accelerate in a dramatic measure the evolutionary process of differentiation and functional specialization, and to bring about accordingly a quick growth of the social environment's complexity (i.e., contingency, abstractedness, mobility, reflexivity), as well as of the complexity of its structures and functions. 1 And I think that such a process is ongoing not only in Europe, the United States and, at least partially, in the most developed socialist countries, but also in the great demographic areas of the Pacific (neo-capitalist China included which, according to China-watchers, appears on its way to becoming the 'new Japan').

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