It just seems to me that elections cannot deliver auto-nomy (self-government), because the “constitutional subject”, the people, is nothing more than an abstraction. When the nation-state started taking form, this centralisation meant that everything would be decided by a handful of people in the country’s capital: even in an ideal parliamentarian system we are still talking about a tiny minority who has disproportionate power over the rest of society. Elections are an excellent tool in a system where the members have equal opportunities to speak their mind; a system of true pluralism and genuine participation.