Radical or deliberative democracy? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Radical Democracy with what Demos? Mouffe and Laclau after the Rise of the Right
Radical Philosophy Review, 2018
This paper considers the radical democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau with reference to the recent rise of Right-wing populism. I argue that even as Mouffe and Laclau develop a critical political ontology that regards democracy as an end in itself, they surreptitiously delimit the proper composition of the demos to coincide with particular political aims. In other words, they appeal to formal categories but decide the political content in advance, disqualifying Right-wing movements and discourses without justification. This ambivalence between form and content reveals the limits of Mouffe and Laclau's brand of radical democracy for understanding and critiquing the present political conjuncture.
Radical democracy redux. Politics and Subjectivity Beyond Habermas and Mouffe
This thesis investigates two contemporary theories of radical democracy, Jürgen Habermas’s deliberative and Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democracy. By bringing the two scholars together and constructing a debate between them, their respective strengths and weaknesses are highlighted and the similarities and differences are pointed out. Habermas and Mouffe are seldom dealt with simultaneously as they represent different theoretical traditions, critical theory and post-structuralism respectively. This thesis argues that we can learn from both of them. The aim of the thesis is to clarify and critically assess Chantal Mouffe’s and Jürgen Habermas’s versions of radical democracy, their disparate visions of democratic politics and subjectivity, in order to clear the ground for a third position that draws inspiration from both of them. The methodological inspiration comes from the deconstructive approach to interpretation, and thus the study aspires to a ‘just reading’ while being conscious of the elements of violence inherent to any instances of reading. The main bulk of the thesis is dedicated to an analysis of the two authors’ theories of democracy and subjectivity, which leads on to the third position situated beyond the two. From Habermas I take the stress on political communication and intersubjectivity, while both these concepts are extensively reformulated. The elements I reject from his position are the orientation to consensus and the strong requirements of coherence and transparency of the subject. From Mouffe I take the accent on the agonistic spirit of democracy, while setting aside the ontological status of antagonism. Her conception of split subjectivity is included, but supplemented with a more explicit theorization of the unity of the subject in the element of intersubjective meetings. The third position on radical democracy embraces the fundamental status of undecidability, which calls for an ethos of questioning.
BRIDGING THE GAPS BETWEEN ANARCHISM AND RADICAL DEMOCRACY
I would like to engage and interrogate the relations, resonances, dissonance and points of conflict between two important modes of critical political analysis, Anarchism and Radical Democracy. These two converge at the point of relation with the institutionalization of non-hierarchical and egalitarian politics. I will attempt to address how do these work two lenses theorize their ideal political forms, and how they relate to constituent and destituent politics. Radical Democracy is a contemporary theoretical device that has its origins in the theoretical work of Ernest Laclau and Chantelle Mouffe, as a post-Marxist reading of a need for a direct and counter-hegemonic institution of politics. However, RD has its genealogy of thinkers who processed Laclau and Mouffe, including the council democrat Hannah Arendt. Arendt in On Revolution offers important groundwork for the interpretation of the most positive revolutionary, which values can be found in the Paris Commune's radical democratic council system that incorporated the people themselves directly into the institution of politics; her reading is in direct contradiction to the Marxist reading, which asserts that the socioeconomic improvements are the important revolutionary factors that was brought under the authoritarian rule of Jacobins. Radical Democracy thinkers tend to idealize direct democracy, and see radical and prefigurative democratic practices happening everywhere: democratic and student-run schools, cooperative living arrangements, workplace councils, and of course radically deliberative political institutions wherein the state, if there is one, is acutely aware of, and responds to the peoples' voice.
Political Studies, 2010
In recent years radical democracy has become a prominent perspective in contemporary political theory. However, radical democracy involves numerous theoretical arguments and interpretations of democracy as can be witnessed in the work of some theorists who have been influential on radical democratic politics such as William Connolly, Judith Butler and Wendy Brown. Although all of these theorists agree that there are serious problems in the dominant liberal conceptions of democracy, some of them seem reluctant to criticise the workings of democracy in favour of analysis of the limitations of liberalism.While radical democrats need to recognise these limitations, the article contends that the main elements of modern democracy such as popular sovereignty, voting, representation and the rule of law also need to be subjected to critical scrutiny. Otherwise the work of theorists such as Connolly, Butler and Brown tends to produce a melancholic lament for democracy lost which draws attention away from the idea of the 'constitutive failure' of democracy that animates some of the radical democratic canon of contemporary European theorists. In short, the article contends that radical democratic theorists need to recognise that democracy is not sacrosanct.
Radical Democracy Against Political Alienation
There are a number of traits common to many of the theories associated with the term “radical democracy”: an analysis that the so-called triumph of liberal democracy has given way to a post-democratic malaise if not to outright crisis, a post-Marxist skepticism of unitary ideologies and the threat of totalitarianism they pose, etc. But what justifies the shared moniker is their diagnosis of contemporary democracies as having somehow alienated the source, i.e. the root, of their own political vitality. Radical democratic theory is radical to the extent that it identifies that political vitality with the demos of the community and seeks to expand the sphere of political engagement by that demos to its utmost. This paper will argue that de-politicization and the supposition of privileged political subjects are the two primary engines of political alienation identified by radical democratic theorists, explore how both forces can ultimately lead to totalitarianism, and, finally, consider the normative content of the theories of Abensour, Castoriadis, and Laclau and Mouffe regarding how political alienation may be avoided and the realm of political engagement expanded.
Thinking Radical Democracy: The Return to Politics in Postwar France ed. Martin Breaugh, Paul Mazzocchi, Rachel Magnusson, and Devin Penner (University of Toronto Press), 2015
A Bridge to Nowhere: Connecting Representative and Radical Models of Democracy
“Democracy” can be defined in different ways, each of which offers a different way of looking at the relationship between democracy and governance. Mark Bevir’s (2010) Democratic Governance offers a genealogical account of the development of this relationship from the late 19th century, focusing on the role of particular theories of social science, and raising serious questions about the degree to which contemporary practices conflict with democratic ideals. Bevir suggests a more radical, participatory approach as a way of resolving this conflict. Here I extend his genealogical account to include two thinkers, Jeremy Bentham and William Thompson, who laid much of the groundwork for modern social science, but with very different ideas about democracy. Extending the genealogy to Bentham and Thompson opens the way for a consideration of some aspects of the relationship between democracy and governance not included in Bevir’s account, and raises questions as to whether the different models of democracy can be integrated in the way he suggests.
Radical democracy defines a perspective of democracy that seeks to maximize the political space, and the rights of antagonized groups, through a continuous hegemonic struggle. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe argue that this project is one that captures the unrest of the New Social Movements by hegemonic discourses that do not prioritize a priori a specific agent, as it was the case of the working class in classical Marxism. To do this, they argue for populist parties that could establish counter-hegemony. In this thesis, I will criticize their approach towards the role of horizontal movements, using the post-anarchist perspective of Saul Newman. First of all, I survey the main currents of ‘classical’ anarchism highlighting their main theoretical principles, in order to see the point of departure for their vision of equal liberty for social actors. Second of all, I present the post-anarchist critique to the more or less hidden essentialism found in ‘classical’ anarchism, and review the main arguments for why this characteristic hinders the fight for true equal liberty by allowing the Revolution and the destruction of the state to hide differents strands of power that pose problems for the the praxis of the movement and for the hypothetical post-revolutionary society. Third of all, I introduce the post-anarchist perspective on the organization and purpose of the anarchist movements in late stage capitalism. Newman argues that movements should become free from identity and concentrate on fighting specific situations of oppression, as a ‘nomadic group’. Fourth of all, while this may seem unrelated to the praxis of ‘classical’ anarchism, by using the Discourse Theory developed by the Essex School, I study three cases in the history of anarchist movements - The Haymarket Affair in Chicago during the 1880s, Anarchist Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, and the ‘Occupy’ Movement after the 2000s. This goes to show that the ‘Revolution’ stems further and further from the idea of overthrowing the state, while the ‘anarchist’, as a revolutionary identity, comes to include more and more social identities, concentrating on the fight for political rights. Fifth of all, after this analysis, I draw three main conclusions: a) after presenting the main criticism levelled against Newman’s politics, I argue that it is not only a viable vision of a movement, but that some NSMs are approaching his vision; b) I argue that this perspective on horizontal movements is necessary for the future of radical democracy, irrespective of other political formations, such as political parties; and finally c) from a post-anarchist perspective, I criticize the populist parties of Laclau and Mouffe for not being able to escape the downsides of parliamentary democracy, unless they are structured and kept in balance by some horizontal movement that is constantly adjusting and freeing itself from identity, because it is not constrained by the confined space of liberal democratic politics.
The Return of the Schmittian: Radical Democratic Theory at Its Limits
Over the past two decades the philosophy of Carl Schmitt has been the subject of growing interest in the field of political theory. One of the prominent engagements with Schmitt’s philosophy has been Chantal Mouffe’s attempt to mobilize Schmitt’s notion of the “political” for challenging the deliberative framework of Rawls and Habermas and reinvigorating radical democratic politics. This paper presents an exploration of Schmitt’s thought and the limits of its contemporary implications through an analysis of Mouffe’s call for thinking “with and against Schmitt.” I contend that Mouffe’s effort to accommodate the “political” within a “democratic paradox” involves a series of conceptual elisions of Schmitt’s thought, which render visible the constitutive limits of radical democratic theory. More specifically, I hold that the antagonistic distinction of friend and enemy that Mouffe tries to domesticate and displace returns with a vengeance on the borders of radical democratic pluralism and testifies to the continuing relevance of the problems posited by Schmitt. The paper concludes by pointing to a more insidious articulation of liberalism and democracy, not as a paradox but as a logic of indistinction pace Giorgio Agamben.