Paradoxes of Polarization: Democracy’s Inherent Division and the (Anti-) Populist Challenge

Abstract

This article carries out a theoretical analysis of the relationship between democracy and polarization. It utilizes examples from a variety of premodern and modern societies to argue that difference and division are inherent to a vibrant democratic life and to representation itself. At the same time, a stable and pluralist democratic culture presupposes the establishment of a common ground required for reflexive democratic decision making. To take into account both requirements, this must be a special type of common ground: an agonistic common ground. Agonism, as opposed to both the politics of raw antagonism and the postpolitics of consensus, values the existence of real alternatives and even ideological distance but aims at sublimating their pernicious effects. However, an agonistic outcome is always the result of a delicate balancing act between oligarchic and populist tendencies. In modernity, it predominantly took the form of a paradoxical blend of the democratic and the liberal tradition. The current crisis of liberal democracy and its postdemocratic mutation obliges one to ask whether democratic crisis may cause polarization, rather than the other way around, and puts in doubt the ability of the “moderate center” to deal with it in ways consolidating democracy. The article illustrates its theoretical rationale with examples from populism/antipopulism polarization in contemporary Greece, where elite-driven antipopulist discourse has consistently employed dehumanizing repertoires enhancing pernicious polarization.