Democratic theory today needs to address a number of concerns relating to the question of ‘voice’. This, I have suggested, has been treated in two distinctive ways in contemporary democratic theory. For deliberative democrats, it is a matter of equality in the process of deliberation, though, as critics like Sanders have argued, this approach largely ignores the issue of epistemic authority, of who may be heard within the constraints of rational argumentation. In contrast, for post-structuralists, ‘voice’ is thematized precisely from the perspective of those excluded from the polity. The latter approach constitutes an advance over the former. However, its reach is hampered by the sharp division it introduces between ‘the declared political community and the community that defines itself as excluded from this community’. Hence, even as the possibility of the existence of a ‘common stage’ and ‘the existence and status of those present on it’ is at stake here, theoretical effort has gone almost exclusively into thinking about this problem from the point of view of those barred from the domain of the visible. This leaves the terrain of what is called variously ‘the police’, ‘the situation’ and ‘politics’ virtually untouched by the analysis.

An explosion onto the scene of new claims and demands mark contemporary politics. Sometimes they become sedimented into a specific or wider programme of action. At other times, the demands remain isolated, unable to appeal to a wider audience or even to sustain themselves in their particularity. The reasons for the seeming frequency of emergence of new demands are multiple, ranging from the speed of contemporary life, and the dislocations and disruptions associated with it, to the ability of issues to transcend borders at a pace previously unknown. A key task of democratic theory today is to address, account for and analyse the formation and character of these demands. This involves giving attention to a number of different issues. We need to be able to understand the structure of such demands, including the varied elements – verbal and non-verbal, rational, emotional and imaginative – that go into their formation. In addition, consideration has to be given to how demands become universalized and to the nature of such universalization. A plethora of further questions arise in this respect.

The democratic elections in South Africa and the subsequent experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, both of which exemplify the so-called Third Wave of democratization, raise vital questions for democratic theory. For example, how do democratic practices become embedded in a society; and what is the relationship between these processes and the assumption of democratic subjectivity? How do we account for the articulation of political demands and its relation to the constitution of political identity and community? While these issues appear rather stark in the context of societies undergoing democratic transitions, they are not irrelevant to the workings of more established democracies. Even in societies with long traditions of democracy, the question of political community, the forging and expression of political demands, and the fostering of democratic forms of citizenship, remain extremely important. In the latter contexts, these issues arise in a slightly different form. They are not principally concerned with the initial establishment of democratic forms of subjectivity and community, but with their maintenance and reactivation. However, it would be mistaken to regard these two sorts of questions as they arise in the different contexts as entirely different in character, for this would assume too large a gap between processes of innovation and the reactivation of tradition.