DEMOCRACY IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION.

Since democracy is a social construction, historical periods, such as Fordism and globalization, shape the ways in which democracy is conceptualized and practiced. While High Fordism engendered a form of democracy based on sophisticated social control, it also contemplated the enhancement of subordinate groups' substantive participation in decision making processes and the economic life. This form of democracy was changed by the end of Fordism and the emergence of globalization. Under globalization, the practice of democracy encounters the crisis of the social state and political representation, the emergence of transnational state forms largely free from direct control from their constituencies and hypermobility. These new conditions have been heralded as ideal for the growth of democracy by neo-liberal theories. Reflexive Modernization and Critical Theory accounts sharply reject this optimistic view. For them, the end of the Fordist era ushered in a crisis of democracy. For Reflexive Modernization the path to substantive forms of democracy goes through the reaffirmation of individuality over class in a society centered on increasingly deregulated markets.