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I don't disagree. But their concept of society is built on this biblical OT model and that's the way they were socialized. Dad runs everything. If Dad gets killed, the place falls apart.
Juan Cole did a thoughtful essay on forming a `traditional' goverance system for Afghanistan but I can't find it now. Roughtly, it was a national assembly of tribal leaders or elders who met in conferences to settle the disputes. These national assemblies could be called by some leader-elders majoritarian process when needed but didn't remain as a seated governance body.
Anyway, getting back to my example (experience), and I am pretty sure it was similar to Wolff and probably Chomsky experiences. We, you Wojtek(hopefully), me, Wolff, Chomsky are socialized (raised, learned) habituated and experienced in a different system, which pretty closely models what I mean by participatory democracy. You've been to meetings were proposals came out of committees. You looked them over, decided which were good, which were not. If you were smart, you'd have your list, present alterantives then vote on them.
For a brief period, there was a department Special Services in OE (HEW) that ran their field projects this way. That's what I was doing in DC on my first visit. That's probably what made me angry. Spend all day trying to hash out real democratic reforms and then go outside and meet a segregated city.
The key component in this brief experience at what amounted to self-goverance was all the staff in our project had just graduated as students within a one or two year period. We knew exactly what students wanted and needed. One of the issues was direct access to governance of the university. That particular project was tailor made for that purpose. What we tried was continuing our own student union with elected representatives who cycled through the program as `internship' paid by some NDEA money as grants.
Anyway this isn't Somilia or Afghanistan.
`Somebody' wondered how this works when apathy sets in. I think the answer is to figure out how to institutionalize a much more equitable system so it reproduces itself. That was the point to the student interns selected by the student union mentioned above. They worked on staff and met with the rest of us and hammered out this or that issue. I think some similar process is going on in Nicaraqua, Venezula, etc.
Anyway, Wolff's book just arrived. So, I'll read it and see.
CG