JOHN KEANE - Monitory Democracy? - "In terms of its contours and dynamics, monitory democracy is the most institutionally complex form of democracy yet. It is the tertium quid, the undefined and not fully formed successor of the earlier historical experiments with assembly-based and representative forms of democracy (these are examined in depth in The Life and Death of Democracy). In the name of ‘people’, ‘the public’, ‘public accountability’, ‘the people’ or ‘citizens’ - the terms are normally used interchangeably in our times - power-monitoring institutions spring up all over the place. Political parties and legislatures lose their grip on politics. Democracy is no longer simply a way of handling the power of elected governments by electoral and parliamentary means, and no longer a matter confined to territorial states. Gone are the days when democracy could be described (and in the next breath attacked) as ‘government by the unrestricted will of the majority’.

http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/emergentpublics/seminar1/keane_monitory_democracy.pdf