In the current discussion about the deconsolidation of democracy, political science is gaining public relevance. In this context, the sub-discipline of democratic theory claims to be able to explain threats to democratic regimes, provide normative orientation, and point out practical solutions. This claim, however, is not convincing. First, I will show that the interpretive schemes of "regression" and "crisis" in democratic theory are bound to an anachronistic conception of democracy. As a result, they fail to recognize the gravity of the ongoing transformation toward a post-democratic epoch. Second, I will introduce a new theoretical approach and show that our political regimes are subject to a process of socio-evolutionary change that erodes the institutional and practical preconditions of democracy. To the extent that this process of de-evolution becomes more conscious, it renders conceptions of democracy implausible. By way of a critical examination of the three central approaches to democratic theory (deliberation theory, agonism, liberal pluralism) I will demonstrate that this also obliterates paradigmatic assumptions of democratic theory. With the end of the democratic age, democratic theory also comes to its historical end. In conclusion, I will indicate that a search movement for alternatives to our conceptions of democracy can already be discerned in the discourse of political theory. This discourse formulates innovative post-democratic conceptions of politics and embodies an understanding of political science that moves away from the democratic tradition of the discipline.
