In contemporary democracies, the ‘conflictual equilibrium’ associated with
popular sovereignity si being undermined. The oligarchic system is being combined with a ‘consensual vision’ on the claim that contemporary reality, the global economy and the prospect of endless ‘growth’ which it promises, do not leave us with a choice. Government is the business of ‘managing the local effects of global necessity’, which requires consensus and an end to the ‘archaic’ indulgence of political division. Oligarchies are tempted by the vision of governing without the people, i.e. without the division of the people, which means effectively without politics, rendering popular sovereignty problematic. But the suppressed division inevitably returns, both in the form of mobilization outside the political system (e.g. against the negative effects of neo-liberal globalization or the Iraq war) and in the dangerous form of extreme – right nationalism and xenophobia.