Abstract
Major debates on democratic renewal suggest two ways of eliciting social change: either by strengthening vertical practices of representation or by expanding horizontal forms of participation. The article develops an argument for why there is a need to rethink democratic resistance beyond the vertical–horizontal divide. If contemporary forms of resistance encompass a strategic interplay between vertical and horizontal practices, then an alternative framework is required to capture this logic. Filling this gap, the article introduces the concept of ‘horizontal experimentalism’. Such an idea comprehends an understanding of political means and ends as a continuum and as adjusting each other in an ongoing process of experimental inquiry.
Highlights
Major debates on democratic renewal suggest two ways of eliciting social change: either by strengthening vertical practices of representation or by expanding horizontal forms of participation
The main theoretical contribution of this article is to develop the idea of ‘horizontal experimentalism’ as an alternative to binary or hybrid concepts. Such experimentalism is defined as a practice of democratic resistance that aims at expanding horizontal relations through experimental action
Given the limits of hybrid concepts of democratic resistance, our attention is drawn towards a decisive question: How can we move from a binary to a non-binary conception of resistance? To find a way out of this predicament, I show that we need to restore the experiment at the centre of the vocabulary of democratic resistance, something that contemporary concepts fail to do
Summary
Whereas the literature has paid substantial attention to the vertical–horizontal opposition, its critics have continued to climb in number more recently.[18]. Taking sides with either the vertical, undesirable leadership or the horizontal, short-lasting movement without leaders is, according to Hardt and Negri, not satisfactory Their alternative proposes instead replacing the idea of leaderless structures with the concept of multiplicity. The strategic multitude instead orchestrates the political direction, organizing the movement, balancing different interests and ensuring long-term planning and ongoing activity.[31] such revisioning of resistance allows Hardt and Negri to grasp the multiplicity of doing politics and the egalitarian relationship to vertical structures. Whereas the vertical and horizontal argument play representative and self-organizing practices off against each other, their critiques seek to reconcile these logics As a result, they share, to different degrees, a reoccurring theme: a reliance on the means-and-ends distinction.
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