Agonism is a political theory that places contestation at the heart of politics. Agonistic theorists charge liberal theory with a depoliticization of pluralism through an excessive focus on consensus. This paper examines the agonistic critiques of liberalism from a normative perspective. I argue that by itself the argument from pluralism is not sufficient to support an agonistic account of politics, but points to further normative commitments. Analyzing the work of Mouffe, Honig, Connolly, and Owen, I identify two normative currents of (...) agonistic theory: emancipatory agonism, aimed at challenging violence and exclusion, and perfectionist agonism, aimed at the cultivation of nobility. From a normative perspective the former presents an internal challenge to liberalism, while the latter constitutes an external challenge to liberalism by providing a competing account of the ends of politics. Recognition of the distinction between emancipatory and perfectionist agonism is crucial in assessing the purchase of agonistic critiques of liberalism. Furthermore, this analysis draws us beyond the simple opposition between contestation and consensus. It is not simply a question of valuing genuine pluralism and therefore criticizing consensus; rather the question comes to be: what are the ends of politics? (shrink)

The present paper puts forward a first outline of a possible agonistic theory of adjudication, conceived of as an extension of Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory of democracy onto the domain of the juridical, and specifically, judicial decision-making. Mouffe’s concept of the political as the dimension of inherent and unalienable conflicts (antagonisms) which, nonetheless, need to be tamed for a pluralist democracy to function, creates an excellent vantage point for a critical theory of adjudication. The paper argues for perceiving all judicial (...) decisions as having a double nature—juridical and political. Cloaked in legal form, judgments nonetheless decide on individual instances of on-going collective conflicts, opposing workers to employers, consumers to traders, tenants to landlords, moral progressives to traditionalists, minorities to majorities and so forth. Judges, when handing down judgments, enjoy a ‘relative sovereignty’, being always already inscribed into the institutional imperatives of the juridical, on one hand, and ideological influences, on the other, but at the same time called upon to decide in the terrain of the undecidable and contingent (after all, law does not ‘apply itself’ on its own). Indeed the determinacy of legal decisions is only relative: in many cases judges can, by performing a sufficient amount of legal interpretive work, reach a conclusion which will be different from theprima facieinterpretation. The collective conflicts of a various nature (economic, ideological, socio-political), once they are juridified, become the object of judicial decisions which, in light of Mouffe’s theory, can be seen as temporary hegemonic fixations. The goal of critical legal scholarship is to destabilise such hegemonies in the name of justice. This can be done not only through an external critique of the law, but also through an internal one. The methodological approach advanced in the latter part of the paper emphasises the need for a critique of judicial decisions based on the consideration of all possible alternative decisions a court could have reached, and their evaluation in the light of conflicting interests and ideologies. (shrink)

This paper argues that the critique of depoliticization in Mouffe’s agonistic political theory needs to be revised. This is because her account of the political does not succeed in filtering out undesirable forms of politicization such as science denialism and other types of post-truth politics. Mouffe's conception of the common symbolic space does not accomplish the task of limiting extreme pluralism in the absence of certain standards about how to correctly apply the fundamental notions of this space. By drawing on (...) a quasi-Wittgensteinian reading of linguistic normativity, I develop principled but non-universalist limits on politicization that are needed for a healthy, well-functioning democracy. (shrink)

Populism is widely thought to be in tension with liberal democracy. This article clarifies what exactly is problematic about populism from a liberal–democratic point of view and goes on to develop normative standards that allow us to distinguish between more and less legitimate forms of populism. The point of this exercise is not to dismiss populism in toto; the article strives for a more subtle result, namely, to show that liberal democracy can accommodate populism provided that the latter conforms to (...) particular discursive norms. What the article calls a ‘liberal ethics of populism’ turns out to be closely bound up with a broader ethics of peoplehood, understood as a way of articulating who ‘the people’ are in a way that is compatible with liberal–democratic principles of political justification. Such an ethics, concludes the article, inevitably has a much wider audience than populist political actors: its addressees are all those who seek legitimately to exercise power in the name of the people. (shrink)

Agonistic democrats have enriched debates on the political challenge of pluralism by raising awareness for the depth of disagreements and the political potentials of conflict. However, they have so far failed to explore the shape of institutional settings that are conducive to agonism and show how the agonistic stance may, in a very practical sense, strengthen democracies’ capacity to deal with pluralism and conflict. This article argues that this ‘institutional deficit’ of agonistic democracy can be overcome. It develops an approach (...) that reads theories of agonistic democracy as accounts of conflict regulation and uses principles of agonistic politics as measures for a critical assessment of institutional design. A discussion of a test case that is prominent in the recent literature on democratic innovations for pluralist societies—mini-publics—demonstrates that the principles of agonistic conflict regulation as developed by Mouffe, Connolly and Tully provide the basis for both a critique of certain institutions and a development of alternative designs. (shrink)

In this article, I develop a critique of Chantal Mouffe’s leftist populism and its construction of ‘the people’ against an opposed ‘them’, from a perspective informed by the thought of Didier Eribon. I draw on both his public interventions and his theoretical work, employing his concepts of return, society as verdict, and his two principles of critical thinking to question the desirability of crafting ‘the people’ in the first place. I contend that Eribon’s critique renders Mouffe’s proposal problematic on three (...) accounts. First, her approach is too politically volatile; its instability leaves it devoid of a critical analysis of the differences between concrete social positions, struggles, and subjectivities within ‘the people’. Consequently, the political becomes merely a function of the social. Yet, the social and its determining power remain mostly unaddressed by her framework. Second, its simplistic opposition of an overly generalised ‘the people’ against ‘the oligarchy’ is susceptible to right-wing populist appropriations. Third, for a shot at hegemony and a general appeal, it eclipses plurality and dissensus within ‘the people’. In contrast, Eribon encourages a connection between the social and the political by suggesting that a self-critical analysis be mutually intertwined with social analysis. Instead of merely mobilising affects, they must be critically interrogated. Instead of summoning ‘the people’, a return to their respective genesis must be attempted. Unless both principles of critical thinking, the insights of return, and societal verdicts are deployed to come to terms with the social determinisms at hand, the ‘people’s’ mobilisation against an opposed ‘them’ risks sacrificing pluralism and equality alike and neglecting the criteria of the desirability of specific changes in favour of a “whatever it costs” attempt at hegemony. (shrink)

This article offers a novel interpretation of Karl Popper’s influential yet controversial book, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). Popper, it argues, sheds light on a pivotal social and political question: How can we value genuine human plurality without succumbing to the illusion that enmity can be removed from the socio-political realm? What we find in Popper, I argue, is an “anti-utopian agonism,” that is, his conception of an open society harbors significant agonistic elements—a commitment to human plurality, an (...) endorsement of (some) social and political struggles, and an acute awareness of the tragic dimensions of political life. Simultaneously, Popper’s distinctive anti-utopianism makes an important contribution to agonistic theory on two fronts. First, his concept of “the strain of civilization” reveals a deeper notion of tragedy, which gives him the edge over the rather shallow notion of tragedy we find in the agonistic tradition. Secondly, he develops a tripartite notion of enmity, which is theoretically interesting and practically relevant. The aim of this article is not only to contribute to the scholarship on Popper and agonism but, first and foremost, to demonstrate how The Open Society still matters as an inspiring work that illuminates the practically relevant question of how to value diversity without illusions. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 992-1013, September 2022. This article examines the connection between populism and post-foundationalism in the context of contemporary debates about populism as a strategy for the Left. I argue that there is something “populist” about every constitutional order, including liberal democratic ones. I argue so drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theories of hegemony, agonistic democracy, and left populism. Populism is the quintessential form of post-foundational politics because, rightly understood, populism constructs the object it (...) claims to represent, namely the people. As such, it expresses the fact that, because there is no ultimate foundation, politics consists in the construction of contingent foundations. I develop this argument through readings of Jan-Werner Müller and Chantal Mouffe, showing the differences between their respective post-foundational approaches. I show that Müller cannot uphold the distinction between populism and democracy in the way he seeks to do, but I also argue that this does not mean that we must jettison all normativity, only that it requires that we rethink normativity in hegemonic terms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Many companies engage in dialogue with nongovernmental organizations about societal issues. The question is what a regulative ideal for such dialogues should be. In the literature on corporate social responsibility, the Habermasian notion of communicative action is often presented as a regulative ideal for stakeholder dialogue, implying that actors should aim at consensus and set strategic considerations aside. In this article, we argue that in many cases, communicative action is not a suitable regulative ideal for dialogue between companies and NGOs. (...) We contend that there is often an adversarial element in the relation between companies and NGOs, and that an orientation towards consensus can be in tension with this adversarial relation. We develop an alternative approach to stakeholder dialogue called ‘agonistic deliberation.’ In this approach, conflict and strategic considerations play a legitimate and, up to a certain point, desirable role. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’s theory of ‘discourse ethics’ has been an important source of inspiration for theories of deliberative democracy and is typically contrasted with agonistic conceptions of democracy represented by theorists such as Chantal Mouffe. In this article I show that this contrast is overstated. By focusing on the different philosophical traditions that underpin Mouffe’s and Habermas’s respective approaches, commentators have generally overlooked the political similarities between these thinkers. I examine Habermas’s and Mouffe’s respective conceptions of democratic politics and argue that (...) they cannot be so neatly distinguished from each other. I show that much of Mouffe’s criticism of Habermas’s theory does not hold up to careful scrutiny, and discourse ethics shares important points of similarity with her own democratic theory. By using critical republican theory to show the similarities in their work, I push beyond the agonistic versus deliberative debate, and show that at the heart of both of these approaches is a critical republican emphasis on the need for civic solidarity, on the constructive role of conflict in democratic politics and on the vital importance of self-government. These are crucial ingredients for the regeneration of democracy in contemporary pluralistic societies. (shrink)

This paper examines Honig’s use of Rancière in her book ‘Democracy and the Foreigner’. In seeking to clarify the benefits of ‘foreignness’ for democratic politics it raises the concern that Honig does not acknowledge the ways in which her own democratic cosmopolitanism may be more akin to Rancière’s police than politics. By challenging Honig’s assertion that democracy is usually read as a romance with the suggestion that it is more commonly read as a horror, I unpick the interstices of Honig’s (...) and Rancière’s work to separate foreignness from democratic cosmopolitanism. Instead, although I posit democratic cosmopolitanism’s potential as a police more conducive to politics I also suggest that the particular salience of Honig’s ‘foreigner’ figure is that it supplements Rancièrian politics, demonstrating a praxis of ‘looking anew’ at our ordinary social practices. By making these seem strange to us, we can discover a new critical perspective from which to question and subvert, thereby furthering the potential of Rancièrian democratic politics. (shrink)

Agonist theorists have argued against deliberative democrats that democratic institutions should not seek to establish a rational consensus, but rather allow political disagreements to be expressed in an adversarial form. But democratic agonism is not antagonism: some restriction of the plurality of admissible expressions is not incompatible with a legitimate public sphere. However, is it generally possible to grant this distinction between antagonism and agonism without accepting normative standards in public discourse that saliently resemble those advocated by (some) deliberative democrats? (...) In this paper we provide an analysis of one important aspect of political communication, the use of slippery slope arguments, and show that the fact of pluralism weakens the agonists’ case for contestation as a sufficient ingredient for appropriately democratic public discourse. We illustrate that contention by identifying two specific kinds of what we call pluralism slippery slopes, i.e. mechanisms whereby pluralism reinforces the efficacy of slippery slope arguments. (shrink)

Issues relating to diversity and pluralism continue to permeate both social and political discourse. Of particular contemporary importance and relevance are those issues raised when the demands associated with forms of pluralism clash with those of the liberal state. These forms of pluralism can be divided into two subcategories: thin and thick pluralism. Thin pluralism refers to forms of pluralism that can be accommodated by the existing liberal framework, whereas thick pluralism challenges this liberal framework. -/- This thesis is an (...) examination of four forms of political association that may be able to accommodate and support the demands of pluralism. These four models are Rawls’ political liberalism, Crowder’s value pluralism, Rorty’s post-foundational liberalism, and Mouffe’s radical democratic project. What unites these four forms of political association is their capacity to avoid the exclusionary effects of a form of liberalism that I, following Gaus, refer to as Enlightenment liberalism. As the name suggests, this conception of liberalism is anchored in the Enlightenment, and in particular with what may be considered as the Enlightenment view of reason. As such, therefore, Enlightenment liberalism is both universal and perfectionist. In this context, I argue that Enlightenment liberalism is a species of what Berlin refers to as ‘moral monism’. -/- These four forms of political association are ordered in such a way as to chart an intellectual trajectory. Rawls and Crowder are both situated firmly within the liberal tradition, whereas Rorty and Mouffe move beyond this, and embrace a form of post-foundational politics. It is in this trajectory that the second theme of this thesis emerges. This is centred on a paradox: in order to avoid the exclusionary effect of Enlightenment liberalism and embrace a form of political association that meets the demands of pluralism and diversity, the models examined still promote autonomy as the dominant virtue. (shrink)

By assuming the permanence of conflict, agonistic theories of politics are apparently incompatible with cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, this paper aims to reveal the potential for a theory of cosmopolitanism in Chantal Mouffe's agonistic theory. In the first section, I present Mouffe's own critique of cosmopolitanism, pointing to its inconsistencies. The second section examines four aspects of Mouffe's agonism and explores their cosmopolitan potential. First, I argue that Mouffe's account of pluralism reveals the interconnectedness of political practices at different levels. Second, Mouffe's (...) sense of the transformation from “enemy” into “adversary” through “conversion” can be extended to cosmopolitanism. Third, the “conflictual consensus” which Mouffe attributes to adversaries is adequate for a cosmopolitanism that lacks a global consensus, but nonetheless is based on a minimal commonality of all human beings. Fourth, contestation, as conflict in the “tamed” mode, has a cosmopolitan potential to contest an.. (shrink)

Recent work in the strategic-relational approach to explaining the relationship between structure and agency emphasises the significance of ideas, discourses, and the semiotic realm of symbols. However, this work does not yet offer an explanation of how discourses relate to symbols – how texts take on meaning. This article shows why this is needed. It then provides such an account of language use and learning in explicitly strategic-relational terms. That account both grounds strategic-relational concepts of discourse, and helps define them (...) more clearly. While complementing and strengthening such notions, it also provides an insight into the way particular discourses interrelate. In particular, the model presented here suggests the importance of the constructive and critical potential of reason, in enlarging the scope for critical syntheses across discourses, and guarding against hegemony. (shrink)

Populism is widely thought to be in tension with liberal democracy. This article clarifies what exactly is problematic about populism from a liberal–democratic point of view and goes on to develop...

The phenomenon of “Muslim Democracy” has been analyzed by scholars for a number of years, at least since the mid-1990s. The standard view about Muslim Democracy is that (perhaps like its European counterpart Christian Democracy) it represents a nonideological, or postideological, pragmatic approach to electoral politics. The purpose of this article is to advance two primary arguments. The first is that the turn to Muslim Democracy as an ideology and practice should first be understood as a way of thinking about (...) politics that breaks with the sovereigntist imaginary that dominated modern Islamic political thought. Second, Muslim Democrats do not forswear the use of democratic means to advance goals derived from religious commitment as part of their recognition of pluralism and constitutional democracy. Their attitude toward politics should thus be seen as a form of agonistic pluralism. This article thus proposes an interpretation of Muslim Democracy as post-sovereigntist agonistic political Islam. (shrink)

In recent years, the public sphere, which represents a realm in civil society where people can debate and discuss a range of issues and common concerns important to them, has become a key area for research in the humanities and social sciences. Arguably, however, Marxist theory has yet to advance a theoretical account of the most abstract and simple ideological properties of the capitalist public sphere as these appear under universal commodity relationships. The paper therefore tentatively seeks to develop such (...) an account. Specifically, the paper theoretically derives a peculiar public sphere under capitalism, which is mediated between at least two commodity owners who also possess distinctive personalities driven by desires to own commodities. The paper then explains in more detail how the social form of this public sphere develops through other elements of commodity relations and their contradictions. (shrink)

The article examines the compatibility of agonistic democracy and populism as well as their relationship to the idea of constitutionalism. The first part shows that Chantal Mouffe’s recent attempts to reconcile her normative approach of an agonistic pluralism with a populist style of politics are not fully convincing. Although there are undeniable commonalities between an agonistic and a populist understanding of politics – the appreciation of conflict, the rejection of moralistic and juridical modes of conflict resolution etc. – the populist (...) mode of the construction of the people (and the denunciation of political opponents as enemies of the people) risks impeding the transformation of antagonistic into agonistic modes of political contest. The tensions between agonism and populism are especially evident in matters of constitutionalism. This topic is examined in the second part of the article, which provides some ideas for reducing the normative and institutional blind spots of contemporary theories of agonistic democracy. It focuses on elementary principles for an agonistic concept of democratic constitutionalism that differs from the populist view of the relationship between politics and law, especially in respect of its interpretation of the concept of ‘resistibility’ of legal norms. (shrink)

Chantal Mouffe ha criticado con vehemencia la propuesta deliberativa de Jürgen Habermas por lo que interpreta como una negación del conflicto político. El objetivo de este trabajo es reconsiderar esta objeción. Para ello se reconstruye la crítica mouffeana a partir de cuatro diferentes planos analíticos en lo que refiere a las posibilidades de comprensión y aceptación del antagonismo. En contra de lo sostenido por Mouffe, afirmamos que a pesar de que el modelo deliberativo coloca un énfasis prioritario en la dimensión (...) consensual de la práctica comunicativa, el conflicto constituye un supuesto necesario e irreductible que está presente en la base del edificio teórico de la propuesta habermasiana. Chantal Mouffe has strongly criticized the Jürgen Habermas' deliberative proposal for what she asserts is the negation of political conflict. In this paper we reconsider this objection by rebuilding this critique through four different dimensions which consider the possibilities of comprehension and acceptation of antagonism. Thus, in opposition to what Mouffe supports, we assert that even though his deliberative model emphasizes the consensual dimension of the communicative practice, conflict lays on the basis of the Habermas' theoretical structure as a necessary and unavoidable concept. (shrink)