What happens when the precepts and principles of democracy are remade by this order of reason and governance? When the commitment to individual and collective self-rule and the institutions supporting it are overwhelmed and then displaced by the encomium to enhance capital value, competitive positioning, and credit ratings? What happens when the practices and principles of speech, deliberation, law, popular sovereignty, participation, education, public goods, and shared power entailed in rule by the people are submitted to economization? These are the questions animating this book.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 15