№ 4 - 2006
V. N. Rudenko.
New Athens, or Electronic Republic (On Prospects of Direct Democracy Development in Modern Society)

Qualitative changes that democracy is undergoing in the modern world, have for still another time imparted topicality to the question of transition to the people's direct sovereignty of the ancient pattern. How much grounded are hopes for transforming the representative system into the one that existed in ancient Athens or in early-medieval communal republics of Italy? On analyzing in detail the argumentation by modern theorists of direct democracy, the author demonstrates that the models they propose, for all their attractiveness, are nothing more than futurology projects idealizing certain characteristics of the social development tendencies as they have just manifested themselves. According to his conclusion, these tendencies are indicative not so much of the formation of direct democracy institutions, as of representative democracy mechanisms being perfected, of the level of involvement of citizens, social organizations, interest groups and other agents of civil society into the process of elaboration and adoption of public-authority decisions being extended.