These two academics are explicating the unique nature of what they refer to as the "Real Democracy Movement" whose activities are reflected in various sub-movements throughout the world and identified by the authors. It is essentially a political treatise in that the authors clearly support this new form of political orientation, organization, and actions.
The years since 2011 have witnessed the (re-)birth of a global cycle of struggles around the issue of democracy. With the representative institutions of liberal democracy in crisis, social movements appear to be increasingly moving away from claims-based and state-oriented contention towards a global project of autonomy. In this article, we focus on those movements that have articulated a critique of representation and expressed a desire to radically transform democratic processes from below.