Marx, in his “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right”, says that, to be radical is “to grasp the root of the matter”.¹  The term “Radical” is derived from the Latin word “radix” meaning root. Thus, by 'radical democracy' we can infer 'to grasp or draw out the root meaning or reach to the core of the democracy'.

Radical democracy has emerged as a crucial intellectual and political movement, spurred by concerns about the limitations of representative form of governance and skepticism regarding the regulatory capacities of national governments. While acknowledging that any mass democracy must incorporate competitive representation, radical democrats aim for a fuller realization of democratic values than conventional systems can achieve i.e. grassroot democratization in all spheres of life. By "conventional democracies," we mean systems of competitive representation, in which citizens are endowed with political rights, including the rights of speech, association, and suffrage; citizens advance their interests by exercising their political rights, in particular by voting for representatives in regular elections; elections are organized by competing political parties; and electoral victory means control of government, which gives winning candidates the authority to shape public policy through legislation and control over administration. ²

Radical democracy advocates for expanding, deepening civic participation and engagement in the political sphere, every person is empowered to be a part of decision making i.e. democratization of the democracy. The most popular Western account of radical democracy was given by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, whose work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985) ³  characterizes radical democracy as radicalization, democratization, and intensification of the form of political regime already typical of the modern West, in short, radical liberal democracy.

One of the main criticisms of this tradition is that it remains silent on the very deep-rooted colonial underside of the democratic revolution. It is essentially placed in a history of Western modernity, in which its subjects are frequently universal. Moreover, the framework of Mouffe and Laclau, in its turn, reinstates a unitary ontology of the political that is concerned with the imperative of consolidating various struggles into a shared symbolic system so as to avert the 'implosion of the social'. Critics argue that the Mouffean approach is the process of building a hegemony, the system of shared meaning which is to cover the whole political community. This need of unification is denied by the other tradition that is apparent in such movements as the Zapatistas ⁴ and the World Social Forum 2001 (WSF). Rather, these movements share the principle of convergence without hegemony, this alternative rejects the need for a singular unified political project, instead promoting the convergence of diversity among movements through a common rejection ("one NO") of oppression, while affirming multiple distinct life visions ("many YESes").

The subaltern tradition, by contrast, emerging from the Global South's decolonial perspective finds solutions to the modern/colonial world system in the political praxis of the subaltern groups, those oppressed by modernity. This form of democracy is a highly local or community-based, grass-root, bottom-up democracy based on the long-standing traditions of indigenous communities.

Theorists such as Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash propose a model grounded in the colonial difference - the lived experience of people colonized, marginalized or excluded by the Modern Western system. ⁵  Instead of seeing colonized peoples only as victims, this tradition sees their difference as a source of insight and political creativity that becomes a position of "epistemic privilege" of the oppressed. It is based upon the struggles of communities to protect and reassert their own political traditions based on their own lifeworlds, which have been overridden by the incursions of the Western capitalist modernity. For instance- Movements like the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) in Mexico questioning and trying to find a collective answer, rather than merely relying on pre-established political programs for guidance. ⁶

Arturo Escobar refers to the current economic-military-ideological order as a 'new US-based form of imperial globality' . One facet of this imperial globality ⁷ is the US-led drive to export Western-style liberal democracy as the only legitimate mode of governance globally.  All over the world the US has, for example, been involved in the oftentimes violent removal of democratically elected governments, replacing these governments with a ruling body more amenable to private investment, capitalist production, exports, and ultimately profit.⁸   Over the last two decades, the US has spent over $2 billion on imperial intervention and supporting authoritarian regimes under the guise of "democracy aid". ⁹  Israel is similarly hailed for its parliamentary democracy despite continuing to occupy Palestinian land, receiving enormous military aid from the US to do so. ¹⁰
 
Critical theories of 'global democracy' often unwittingly participate in this imperial globality when they fail to recognize the Western capitalist modernist underpinnings of their proposals. For subaltern movements, the shared struggle is for a world in which many worlds fit (Pluriverse), reflecting a desire for more radical democracy and a critique of all forms of pensamientos unicos (singular thoughts). This view suggests a vision of diversality, the existence of several ontologies or worlds, in contrast to the universalist discourses of Eurocentric narratives and imperialist epistemologies that assume the world is one. In fact, to restore the radical possibilities of democracy, the modernity/coloniality paradigm recommends that one should move outside the Western tradition and into the subaltern realm of colonial difference to find alternative forms of political imaginations.
According to Cohen and Fung, radical-democratic criticisms of systems of modern representative democracy  focus on three political values: responsibility, equality, and autonomy. ¹¹

Responsibility
Political judgment becomes a task outsourced to representatives with citizens feeling lack of ownership. As citizens retreat from substantive political engagement, their democratic capacities weaken leading to political apathy and this can leave the representatives unchecked. Rousseau warned that a society where citizens no longer treat public affairs as their own is inching toward civic decay-a sentiment central to the radical-democratic critique.

Equality
Under competitive representation, there is an existence of formal political equality i.e. equal suffrage but social, economic inequalities can greatly shape political influences. Competitive representation tends to amplify the voices of concentrated interests while marginalizing disadvantaged groups who have limited access to state power. Radical democrats respond by turning toward participatory and deliberative forms of politics to challenge the inequalities stemming from economic and social hierarchies.

Political Autonomy
A key related concept of the radical form of democracy is Autonomy. Radical democrats seek a form of self-government which allows people to control decisions over their own destinies, educates them in participatory decision-making instead of relying on self-serving politicians and produces highly legitimate decisions.¹²   This leads to the formation of the critical mass and the proliferation of directly-deliberative institutions (in areas like health services, education, and community development) fosters political responsibility and sense of ownership by creating opportunities for ordinary citizens to directly articulate their perspectives, needs, and judgments in important public issues.  In representative systems dominated by bargaining, interest aggregation,  money and power, this aspiration is not fulfilled.

Critics of radical democracy argue that, despite its appealing vision of deeper citizen involvement, it faces the problems of feasibility, scale, and equality.  Modern societies confront complex policy challenges that only a small subset of citizens have the time, knowledge, or interest to engage with, raising doubts about whether ordinary citizens can meaningfully deliberate across numerous issues. Participatory institutions may further reproduce inequalities: those with greater resources, skills, or motivation often dominate discussions, even when reforms aim to empower marginalized communities at grassroot level. Moreover, it is easier for the state to act as a mechanism to coordinate and mobilize resources in larger spheres.

Despite these criticisms, radical democracy based on a subaltern, decolonial perspective highlights the need to rethink and expand how citizens shape accountable, collective decisions promoting critical reflective consciousness from bottom-up approach backed by self-reliance and grassroot governance . Its greatest contribution may lie in forming a critical mass of people and bringing closer or directly to the power that governs their lives with the essence of decentralization and pluriverse at its core.