See how far you follow my line of thinking here:
(1) Democracy (institutional and not just majoritarian/representational) is better than the alternatives. Let’s live with it (and defend it).
(2) Democracy as practiced in the U.S. today is partial, compromised, and somewhat muzzled, but still better than the alternatives. Let’s fix it up.
(3) Democracy, no matter how partial or complete, is not sufficient when it is leading us all off a cliff. At that point direct action becomes necessary. So are we heading off a cliff yet?
(4) How close is the cliff edge? What’s the most effective way of stopping this train from going over it?
(5) What’s our plan for afterwards? Will it be any better than… the cliff?
“Democracy” institutional or otherwise doesn’t exist, so what we need is more pragmatism/ethnography; more focus on who is doing what to whom with what and see what the results are, but of course this raises all the usual questions of how to attend to such diverse and complex matters, how to monitor/frame/share what is happening, why it is happening (how much context,what theories of the case,etc), how should experts and lay-folks/publics interact and so on. Bruno Latour is an interesting case study here in that when STS (broadly speaking) sticks to the actual located happenings such research has been employable for re-engineering/managing changes in those assemblies/locations and other like settings, when in his later career he has shifted to waxing theological/speculative the possibilities have been either merely academic or theater/galleries/etc and no changes to even how those related institutions (galleries, universities, etc) have been run.
http://heterogeneities.net/