Contemporary Democratic Theory Research Articles

‘An Old Carriage with New Horses’: Nietzsche’s Critique of Democracy

SUMMARYDebates about Nietzsche's political thought today revolve around his role in contemporary democratic theory: is he a thinker to be mined for stimulating resources in view of refounding democratic legitimacy on a radicalised, postmodern and agonistic footing, or is he the modern arch-critic of democracy budding democrats must hone their arguments against? Moving away from this dichotomy, this article asks first and foremost what democracy meant for Nietzsche in late nineteenth-century Germany, and on that basis what we might learn from him now. To do so, it will pay particular attention to the political, intellectual and cultural contexts within which Nietzsche's thought evolved, namely Bismarck's relationship to the new German Reichstag, the philological discovery of an original Aryan race, and Nietzsche's encounter with Gobineau's racist thought through his frequentation of the Wagner circle. It argues that Nietzsche's most lasting contribution to democratic thinking is not to be found in the different ways he may or may not be used to buttress certain contemporary ideological positions, but rather how his notions of ‘herd morality’, ‘misarchism’ and the genealogical method still provides us with the conceptual tools to better understand the political world we inhabit.

Between Charisma and Domination: On Max Weber’s Critique of Democracy

Prominent strands of contemporary democratic theory, by figuring genuine democratic agency as fundamentally disruptive, present conventional social and political institutions merely as sites of calculation and normalization. This article challenges such a view by tracing its origins in Max Weber’s theory of domination. Even as many democratic theorists repudiate the political consequences of Weber’s thought, they fail to fully confront the sociotheoretic categories underpinning his vision, such that these categories continue to structure conceptions of democratic agency and horizons of practical possibility in democratic theory. Here, I argue that Weber’s democratic skepticism arises not, as is commonly thought, from a philosophical repudiation of the concept of legitimacy, but rather from his analysis of the origins of value systems in extraordinary ruptures with everyday experience. To move beyond Weber, democratic theorists must challenge both his distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary ...

Karl Mannheim on democratic interaction: Revisiting mass society theory

Abstract This essay re-considers Karl Mannheim’s notion of democratic behaviour in the context of mass society. Although the term ‘mass society’ seems archaic, it is still the precondition of democracy today. Mannheim conceptualized mass society as irrational, disintegrating Great Society and presented the remedy of Planning for Freedom to counter the crisis of mass democracy. In his remedy Mannheim advocated social education that fosters citizens’ democratic interaction, and the keywords of his education were ‘integrative behaviour’ and ‘creative tolerance’. The similar orientation of his remedy can be found in much more contemporary critiques of deliberative democracy. Iris Marion Young’s ‘communicative democracy’ was a version of her democratic interaction in a complex, large-scale mass society. Young’s notion of ‘reasonableness’ has substantial affinity with Mannheim’s integrative behaviour, both of which require the democratic attitude of hearing the other side and the readiness to self-transform. Mass society theory has relevance for contemporary democratic theory.

You Can’t Take It with You

Contemporary democratic theory, in its focus on the distinction between a private and a public sphere, tends to exclude emotions from political life. Arendt, Habermas, and Angus present critical theories of politi­cal action and deliberation that demand that emotions be left behind in favour of a narrower rationality. On the basis of a first step toward incorporating emotions into political life as accomplished by Martha Nussbaum – despite its limitations – and of a second step taken by Sara Ahmed, an outline of a theory of emotions becomes possible, and brings into question the distinction between private and public life. Emotions act as motivations that accompany every instance of participation or for non-participation, be it because of apathy or of disengagement.

“A Black Sister to Massachusetts”: Latin America and the Fugitive Democratic Ethos of Frederick Douglass

The aim of this article is to read Frederick Douglass as a theorist of democracy. It explores the hemispheric dimensions of Douglass' political thought, especially in relation to multiracial democracy. Douglass is generally viewed as an African-American thinker primarily concerned with U.S. politics, and the transnational scope of his ideas is rarely acknowledged. Instead, this article traces the connections between Douglass’ Caribbean interventions and his arguments about racial politics in the United States. It argues that Douglass not only found exemplars of black self-government and multiracial democracy in the Caribbean and Central America, he also sought to incorporate black and mixed-race Latin Americans in order to reshape the contours of the U.S. polity and challenge white supremacy. Viewed though a hemispheric lens Douglass is revealed as a radically democratic thinker whose ideas can be utilized to sketch a fugitive democratic ethos that contains important resources for contemporary democratic theory and comparative political theory.

Compared to What? Judicial Review and Other Veto Points in Contemporary Democratic Theory

Many democratic and jurisprudential theorists have too often uncritically accepted Alexander Bickel's notion of “the countermajoritarian difficulty” when considering the relationship between judicial review and democracy; this is the case for arguments both for and against judicial review. This framework is both theoretically and empirically unsustainable. Democracy is not wholly synonymous with majoritarianism, and judicial review is not inherently countermajoritarian in the first place. In modern democratic political systems, judicial review is one of many potential veto points. Since all modern democratic political systems contain veto points, the relevant and unexplored question is what qualities might make a veto point relatively democratic.Proceeding on the assumption that democracy's primary normative value is found in its opposition to domination by both state and private actors, we make a preliminary effort to delineate what qualities a democratic veto point might have, identifying five criteria, and evaluate judicial review using these criteria. We conclude that judicial review's performance against these criteria is decidedly mixed, but in the final balance is likely to be a modest net positive for democracy, particularly when compared to other veto points commonly found in contemporary democratic political systems.

The Cambridge companion to Aristotle's Politics

One of the most influential works in the history of political theory, Aristotle's 'Politics' is a treatise in practical philosophy, intended to inform legislators and to create the conditions for virtuous and self-sufficient lives for the citizens of a state. In this 'Companion', distinguished scholars offer new perspectives on the work and its themes. After an opening exploration of the relation between Aristotle's ethics and his politics, the central chapters follow the sequence of the eight books of the 'Politics', taking up questions such as the role of reason in legitimizing rule, the common good, justice, slavery, private property, citizenship, democracy and deliberation, unity, conflict, law and authority, and education. The closing chapters discuss the interaction between Aristotle's political thought and contemporary democratic theory. The volume will provide a valuable resource for those studying ancient philosophy, classics, and the history of political thought.

What if performance accountability mechanisms engender distrust?

An axiomatic assumption in contemporary democratic theory is that accountability mechanisms generate trust and legitimacy in and for democratic systems: in relation to decision-makers (elected officials), facilitators (the public bureaucracy) and outcomes of public policy (scope and quality). However, how wise is it to take this assumption for granted? What if accountability mechanisms applied in democracies with high levels of trust promote distrust rather than trust? This article will elaborate on and analyse the inherent theoretical logic of performance scrutiny as a basis for performance accountability in political-administrative systems inspired by new public management reforms. Performance scrutiny practices derived from Sweden, a high-trust society, are used as empirical illustrations and as a basis to generate hypotheses on how and why practices to analysis performance accountability have the potential to counteract trust.

Agonism in Dark Times: Assessing Contemporary Agonistic Democratic Theory

Agonism in Dark Times: Assessing Contemporary Agonistic Democratic Theory

A legitimação do aborto à luz dos pressupostos do estado democrático de direito

From the perspective of the theory of the constitutionality of abortion rights, we will attempt to present a critical study on the validity of the assumptions of modern and contemporary democratic theories. Casting a critical eye on the model of the deliberative process, centered on the major criterion, we will expose the conflicting positions about the distinction between the level of individual morality and political morality, with the intention to propose the definition of a quadrant for the reasonable exercise of the right of autonomy and self-determination. Finally, we will indicate as central foundation of the demand for control of women’s reproductive process without the interference of the state, the model of moral and political pluralism and its requirement for admitting multiple persons beliefs and convictions in the context of public space.

Democracia maquiaveliana: controlando as elites com um populismo feroz

Este ensaio demonstra que o pensamento político de Maquiavel lida com as deficiências de dois polos opostos da teoria democrática contemporânea. Assim como fazem as abordagens formais ou minimalistas, ele especifica mecanismos eleitorais para o controle das elites; e de modo similar às abordagens da cultura substantiva ou cívica, encoraja modos mais diretos e robustos de participação popular. Com base nisso, seleciono aspectos dos Discursos de Maquiavel que proporcionam uma teoria da democracia na qual a população escolhe as elites que assumirão o poder, mas também as patrulha constantemente por meio de instituições e práticas extraeleitorais, como os tribunos do povo, as denúncias públicas e as petições populares. Maquiavel acrescenta a essas características do governo popular uma dimensão cultural importante: o povo deve desdenhar as elites, desconfiar delas e enfrentar ativamente a injustiça inevitavelmente acarretada pela elite governante. Finalmente, exploro as ramificações dessa teoria para os debates sobre a responsabilidade das elites na teoria democrática contemporânea.

Feminism as Agonistic Sorority

In this interview, political theorist Bonnie Honig discusses her career and her influential writings on contemporary democratic theory, the politics of immigration, the figure of the foreigner, the figure of Antigone, and the tensions between sovereignty and law in times of emergency. Her interdisciplinary work draws on references as diverse as Friedrich Nietzsche, Hannah Arendt, Franz Rosenzweig, Jacques Derrida, Sophocles’s Antigone, and the Bible. She offers a poststructuralist and Nietzschean reading of Arendt. Other topics on which she has written include the figure of the lawgiver in political theory and popular culture and the politics and culture of emergency. Honig defines politics in terms of agonism, or struggle; she argues against a politics of convergence and consensus. However, agonism does not only name conflict but also names cooperation and mutuality that are always already ridden by strife; so never the consensual, but also never only conflictual. After discussing the place of political theory and feminism within the discipline of political science, Honig briefly discusses her new book project on public things. Her previous monographs include Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics; Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt; Democracy and the Foreigner; Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy; and, most recently, Antigone, Interrupted.

Spinoza and the Theory of Active Tolerance

This paper considers the politics of tolerance through the lens of Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence. The contention is that Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence provides us with a better conceptualization of the relationship between tolerance and power, and that it in so doing reinvigorates a theory of active tolerance that, for the most part, has been lost in contemporary democratic theory. Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence does so because it animates a sensorial orientation to politics, one that heightens our attention to the affective components of political life, enabling us to better theorize how all modes of existence, including the so-called passive ones, harbor a degree of power that can be mobilized for purposes that go beyond the “non-practice” highlighted by advocates and critics of tolerance in contemporary democratic theory. The paper develops this argument with ongoing reference to Marcuse’s critique of tolerance.

Political theory in the square: Protest, representation and subjectification

What, if anything, do the square protests and occupy movements of 2011 bring to contemporary democratic theory? And how can we, as political theorists, analyse their discourse and do justice to it? We address these questions through an analysis of the Greek and Spanish protest movements of the spring and summer of 2011, the so-called aganaktismenoi and indignados. We trace the centrality of the critique of representation and politics as usual as well as the ideas about horizontality and autonomy in the protesters’ discourse. These ideas are not only important to their critique of the contemporary liberal democratic regimes in the two countries, but also important to the way in which the protesters organize themselves. Nonetheless, as we shall argue, the protesters are caught within a tension between horizontality and verticality, between autonomy and hegemony, or between moving beyond representation and accepting representational structures. Given this tension, we examine how the protesters negotiate it in three key areas: politics, representation and organisation. Drawing on Jacques Ranciere, we further argue that the protesters can be seen as making a claim to equal voice. This is what Ranciere refers to as politics proper, and the question is then whether such a politics is possible without falling back into traditional forms of politics.

Play and Democracy

In this essay I argue that the work of the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga is an important resource for contemporary democratic theory because his employment of the concept of play illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of agonistic thought. I employ a reading of Huizinga to explore three central problems of contemporary agonism: the distinction between antagonism and agonism; the representative or expressive character of the agon; and the shaping and limiting of the space of the agon by the materials with which we play democratic games. Reading Huizinga reveals the importance of a consideration of the social relations and material conditions that shape the playful features of democratic contestation. But it also warns against the idealization of democratic contestation and the contesting subject that occurs in contemporary agonistic thought as a result of privileging the autonomy and priority of play and extruding it from the wider economy of agonism.

“Writing a Name in the Sky”: Rancière, Cavell, and the Possibility of Egalitarian Inscription

Democratic theory is often portrayed as torn between two moments: that of disruption of rule, and the ordinary, ongoing institutionalization of politics. This dualism also marks contemporary democratic theory. In Jacques Rancière's theory of politics it takes the form of an emphasis on the ruptural qualities of the staging of novel democratic demands and the reconfiguration of the space of political argument. The reconfiguration of existing political imaginaries depends upon a moment of inscription, which remains underdeveloped in Rancière's work. Arguing that the possibility of inscription is indeed thematized in Rancière's more historical writings, but is often ignored by commentators, this article seeks to draw out the implications of a focus on inscription for democratic theory and practice. To flesh out this account, the article draws on Cavell's writings on exemplarity and the role of exemplars in fostering both critical reflection and the imagination of alternatives. The focus on such exemplars and an aversive, nonconformist ethos together facilitate a better understanding of what is required for such novel demands to be acknowledged and inscribed into democratic life.

G.W.F. Hegel on Self‐Determination and Democratic Theory

This article claims that the major alternative models of contemporary democratic theory—the aggregative, deliberative, and agonistic models—are grounded on a norm of self‐determination, but each conceptualizes this self‐determination in a different, and one‐sidedly narrow, way. G.W.F. Hegel provides a conceptual scheme in which to understand the development and synthesize the insights of these three articulations of self‐determination. He also argues that the political embodiment of a complete self‐determination must be founded on economic self‐interest, though a self‐interest expanded to a concern for the common good through the experience of self‐government in one's economic and political associations. Thus, rather than separating economic and political spheres, as contemporary democratic theorists do, Hegel makes a case that modern self‐determination requires a structural harmony between these spheres.

Democratic Legitimacy: The Limits of Instrumentalist Accounts

Political legitimacy is an important concept for democracies. Since the fundamental characteristic of any democracy is that through their collective decision-making, citizens are effectively the source of the political authority of the polity, it makes sense to ask when it can be said that a democratic polity is morally justified in exercising coercive political power over citizens. Understood in this way, legitimacy is linked to authority, the right to issue commands and enforce them through the use of coercive power. Questions about legitimacy apply at many different levels within any given democratic polity. If a question about legitimacy is asked of a particular government, the answer would, presumably, contain information about how the government or persons in question came to be or be in a position of power. Such a question can also be asked of the order or structure of a specific polity, of particular institutions within the structure, of specific laws or policies, and of an entire democratic polity. To raise a question of legitimacy with regard to an entire democratic polity is really nothing less than to ask why citizens should follow the laws of their society or affirm its order and actions as justifiable. Posing the question in this way reflects the nature of democracy as a political system which is rooted in the collective action of individuals aimed at establishing the terms according to which each person will be allowed to live freely. Democratic legitimacy therefore requires that the structure and actions of a democratic polity reflect this collective aim. Understood in this way, a question of legitimacy is open to a number of competing responses. This is reflected in the variety of conceptions of democratic legitimacy in contemporary democratic theory, which vary not just in how the question of legitimacy should be

Conferências de políticas públicas: um sistema integrado de participação e deliberação?

A teoria democrática contemporânea abriga pelo menos duas abordagens que vinculam a presença de espaços participativos à qualidade da democracia. Ambas, a abordagem participativa e a deliberativa, apostam na centralidade destes espaços para conferir legitimidade às decisões políticas que vinculam uma coletividade. Ao apostarem na centralidade da participação e da discussão para a legitimidade do processo decisório, tais abordagens tornam-se ferramentas analíticas úteis para analisarmos mais uma inovação democrática no Brasil contemporâneo: as Conferências de Políticas Públicas. O objetivo deste artigo é avaliar a estrutura institucional destas conferências para aferir como estes espaços integram diferentes tipos de ação e se eles conseguem formar um sistema integrado de participação e deliberação, entre os diferentes níveis da federação.

‘Europe of the Regions’ and the problem of boundaries in liberal democratic theory

The article explores the concept of culture as a criterion for political boundaries, and finds both prominent positions on the cultural criterion in contemporary liberal democratic theory—liberal nationalism and its cosmopolitan opposition—inadequate. To this end, the article compares two opposing visions of culture-based regionalism in Europe, developed by Green parties and by parties of the new far-right, respectively. The comparison indicates that the exclusionary meanings of culture as a criterion for political boundaries, typical for the new far-right, dominate the notion of culture in this context in general—despite the ecologists' efforts to appropriate the cultural criterion and reinvent it. The ensuing difficulty for the theoretical positions is: (1) an inclusive and pluralist notion of culture as a criterion for political boundaries is currently unavailable, and (2) particularities are conceptually indispensible in a theory of political borders—replacing cultural particularism by no particularism is implausible.