Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy: Post-Foundationalism and Political Liberalism [1 ed.] 140940353X, 9781409403531

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Post-Foundationalism and Agonistic Democratic Theory
1 Post-Foundational Politics and Democracy
2 Agonism and Democracy
3 A Typology of Agonistic Democracy
4 Agonistic Democracy and the Question of Institutions
Part II: Evaluating the Institutional Possibilities for Agonistic Democracy
5 Agonistic Democracy and the Limits of Popular Participation
6 Populism, Representation, and the Popular Will
7 Political Liberalism, Contingency, and Agonistic Pluralism
8 Liberalism, Agonism, and Democracy
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy

Rethinking Political and International Theory Series Editors: Keith Breen, Dan Bulley and Susan McManus, all at Queens University Belfast, UK Committed to a critical and creative exploration of the ways that canonical approaches in political and international theory may be applied to 21st century politics, this series presents pioneering theoretical work on contemporary political issues that both furthers our understanding and shapes exciting new agendas for research. The works featured will advance our appreciation of the relevance of seminal thinkers to the current socio-political context, as well as problematize, and offer new insights into, key political concepts and phenomena within the arena of politics and international relations. Also in the series Power, Judgment and Political Evil In Conversation with Hannah Arendt Edited by Andrew Schaap, Danielle Celermajer and Vrasidas Karalis ISBN 978 1 4094 0350 0

Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy Post-Foundationalism and Political Liberalism

Ed Wingenbach University of Redlands, USA

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Ed Wingenbach Ed Wingenbach has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Wingenbach, Edward C. Institutionalizing agonistic democracy : post-foundationalism and political liberalism. -(Rethinking political and international theory) 1. Deliberative democracy. 2. Political participation. 3. Administrative agencies. I. Title II. Series 321.8--dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wingenbach, Edward C. Institutionalizing agonistic democracy : post-foundationalism and political liberalism / by Ed Wingenbach. p. cm. -- (Rethinking political and international theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-0353-1 (hbk) 1. Democracy--Philosophy. 2. Political science--Philosophy. I. Title. JC423.W479 2011 321.8--dc22 ISBN 9781409403531 (hbk) ISBN

2011011832

Contents Preface    Introduction   

vii xi

PART I Post-Foundationalism and Agonistic Democratic Theory 1

Post-Foundational Politics and Democracy  

3

2

Agonism and Democracy  

21

3

A Typology of Agonistic Democracy  

41

4

Agonistic Democracy and the Question of Institutions  

79

PART II Evaluating the Institutional Possibilities for Agonistic Democracy 5

Agonistic Democracy and the Limits of Popular Participation  

105

6

Populism, Representation, and the Popular Will  

131

7

Political Liberalism, Contingency, and Agonistic Pluralism  

157

8

Liberalism, Agonism, and Democracy  

181

Bibliography    Index   

199 211

For my children, Maximilian Thomas, Aletheia Byron, and Thelan Ulysses

Preface I did not intend to defend political liberalism when I started working on this project. I found the agonistic approach to democratic theory compelling, in part because the critiques of liberal and deliberative democracy advanced by these theorists captured my concerns so clearly. I believed agonistic thinkers offered a dynamic alternative vision of the justifications and purposes of democracy and hoped to make this promise more accessible. It seemed to me that articulating a theory of institutions appropriate to agonistic insights would make agonism both more accessible and more relevant to the literature of democratic theory. I quickly realized that any attempt to build a theory of agonistic institutions would require clarification of the various strands of agonism before they might be pushed in a more applied direction. The project thus became bifurcated: I would first survey the literature to develop a comprehensive overview of the varieties of agonism, and then use this typology to evaluate the prospects for an institutionalized agonism. It became increasingly clear as I worked through the variety of democratic practices available to implement an agonistic vision that a modified version of liberalism offers the most promising account. Thus despite my reservations about liberal theory, and despite the consistent (but on closer reading ambiguous) agonistic critique of liberalism, I conclude that a version of political liberalism best fits the democratic aspirations of agonistic democracy. While this conclusion is surprising, it is not, I think, disappointing. I do not argue that agonism is simply a radicalized version of liberalism or deliberation, as some have claimed. I do not argue that conventional liberalism already expresses democratic principles. I do not argue that agonism simply highlights incremental reforms of liberal politics. An agonistic liberalism would demand substantial transformation of the culture, practices, and hierarchy of contemporary democracy, especially in its capitalist mode. But I do argue that the most promising path to a more agonistic and thus more deeply and vibrantly democratic politics most productively travels through the realm of liberal theory. This book has benefitted tremendously from the generous comments of many colleagues. An early version of Chapter 5 was presented at the Western Political Science Association. Drafts of Chapters 3, 5, and 6 were presented at successive meeting of the Association of Political Theory. The idea for the book emerged in large part through conversations at this same conference over the last decade. It is no exaggeration to claim that this book would not exist without the supportive environment provided by the APT; I owe an enormous debt to Dennis McEnnerney and Emily Hauptmann, whose vision and labor are responsible for the APT’s existence. I am particularly grateful to Leonard Feldman, Anna Stilz, Andrew

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Rehfeld, and Dan Sabia for their detailed commentary on the draft chapters presented at these conferences; their work as discussants was unusually thorough and extremely helpful to the development of the arguments. I am doubly grateful to Dan, whose decision to hire me as visiting professor at the University of South Carolina provided my first academic job and allowed me to stay in the profession. Others who offered helpful commentary at various meetings include Karen Zivi, William Sokoloff, Melissa Schwartzberg, Peter Stone, Catherine Zuckert, Dennis McEnnerney, Mariah Zeisberg, Nancy Schwartz, Joel Olson, Johnny Goldfinger, Lisa Disch, Rob Martin, Randy LeBlanc, and Philip Michelbach. The support of my colleagues at University of Redlands was essential to the success of this work. Dean Barbara Morris provided the funds to attend conferences where this work was first presented and the sabbatical support essential to laying the groundwork for the book. The faculty members of the Government Department provided an excellent environment for scholarly work and a model for intellectual engagement across diverse areas of expertise, exemplified by Art Svenson’s eager curiosity about the project and Steve Wuhs’s willingness to guide me through the empirical literature on institutions. Fred Dallmayr’s influence, though rarely explicit in the text, should be discernable throughout the book as his spirit of generous interpretation and gentle but unrelenting critique provides the model of scholarship to which I aspire. Ben Radcliff’s friendship and interest in co-authorship across our very different specialties was a necessary condition for this project to emerge; his guidance was essential in navigating the empirical political science literature that lurks in the background of this book. Finally, Anne Caldwell’s friendship is the enduring constant across the last two decades of my intellectual work. Her sharp criticism, wise judgment, and intellectual playfulness provided a necessary anchor in the sometimes turbulent and isolating realm of scholarly writing. If I could write as eloquently as she, I could express my gratitude adequately. A number of students at the University of Redlands contributed to the successful completion of this project. The students in my 2006 and 2008 democratic theory seminars helped me work through some of the primary and secondary literature upon which the argument is based. The students in my 2004 seminar on Heidegger helped me come to grips with the post-foundational account of politics; Amanda Killingsworth, Orion Steele, Lawrence Stierhoff, Whitney Williams, and Melissa McLaughlin provided especially valuable comments. Working with Amy Kniss on her honors thesis and then co-authoring a paper on subjectivity and freedom served as an early incubator for the ideas of this project. The paper on representation, interests, and presence that Chas Phillips and I wrote while he was an undergraduate helped prepare me to write Chapter 5 for this book. Chairing Eric Guzman’s honors thesis on hegemony, identity, and radical politics helped clarify the relationship between radical, agonistic, and anti-foundational visions of democracy. Working with students in the classroom has sustained the energy and excitement necessary to motivate the more solitary engagement in writing;

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their perpetual enthusiasm for politics and recurrent surprise about the perpetual questions of political theory inspires my effort. I thank them all. My family deserves my deepest gratitude, as they provided significant emotional, material, and temporal support to the completion of this project. Susan Rice has been unreasonably understanding of my need to create periods of uninterrupted time to work. Her willingness to take three children on vacation while I stayed home to write and her forbearance of my absence during a week of writing in the desert, both suggested by her, made it possible to complete the manuscript. Her daily companionship and love, even in the face of adversity and conflict, are immensely meaningful to me. Our children, Maximilian Thomas Riley, Aletheia Byron Riley, and Thelan Ulysses Riley, provide an endless source of inspiration, creativity, and motivation. Finally, Natalja Mortensen made this book possible. She urged me to submit the proposal for this book to Ashgate, she encouraged me to complete it, she supported my request for extra time to address the reviewer’s wonderful comments, and she expressed enthusiastic engagement with the ideas of the text at every stage. I cannot thank her enough. Ed Wingenbach Redlands, CA 2011

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Introduction A consensus has emerged amongst post-foundational theorists that democracy must emphasize contestation of basic principles, conflict between citizens, respect for difference, and attention to the informal operations of power. Agonistic democracy describes this constellation of commitments. Yet the move from critique to models has proved consistently unsatisfying. Mouffe’s work is representative of this problem. She argues that while agonistic democracy “cannot be agnostic on political values,” it can propose little more than a “framework of common practices to guide political conduct,” where these practices lead to some sort of emancipation (Mouffe 1996: 12). Connolly, similarly, describes agonistic democracy as an ethos in which politics involves a “cultivation of a critical responsiveness that can never be automatic, deducible, guaranteed, or commanded by some unquestionable authority” (1995: 27). Keenan suggests we develop democratic practices that “speak to others as sites of possibility” (2003: 186). Honig insists the governing institutions must “be responsive to the plural, conflicting agents who together are said to authorize or benefit from them: the ever-changing and infinitely sequential people, the multitude, and their remnants” (2007: 15). All seem to agree that agonistic democracy must be highly participatory and reflectively self-critical in ways that highlight the contingency of social order and maximize the possibilities for inclusion of multiple identities. Yet even allies and advocates of post-foundationalist democratic theory admit that such prescriptions offer little in the way of institutional guidance. Howarth recognizes that the while the “theoretical perspective provides an exemplary diagnosis and critique of contemporary forms of capitalist democracy,” there is nonetheless an “institutional deficit in their respective theories, both in terms of their critiques of existing arrangements and in terms of their more positive alternatives” (2008: 189-90). Schaap suggests that “agonistic democrats tend to presuppose the existence of institutions whose closure a democratic ethos resists” (2006: 270). Mouffe insists that democracy requires institutions in order to limit domination and violence (2000: 22), but does not describe what these might be. Critics offer stronger objections. Knops (2007) dismisses agonism as little more than a muddled version of deliberative democracy ultimately dependent upon rational consensus. Vázquez-Arroyo (2004) indicts agonism as merely an aesthetically radicalized, but substantively conservative version of liberal pluralism. Lilla argues that “postmodernism is long on attitude and short on argument,” held together by nothing better than a “shared emancipatory political end, which remains conveniently ill-defined” (2003: 163). Wolin goes further: “The postmodern left risks depriving democracy of valuable normative resources

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at an hour of extreme historical need” (2004: xiv). While the latter claims may be overstated and only indirectly applicable to agonistic democrats, it is undeniable that agonistic theories do not offer an explicit account of the sort of institutions needed to generate collective decisions. Dryzek describes this problem concisely when he writes that Mouffe’s interpretation of the main task of democracy has no obvious place for collective decision making and resolution of social problems. She scorns consensus as a cover for power, but at least consensus implies that decisions can get made. When agonistic pluralism does attend to collective decisions, it is only to point to the need for them to be open to further contestation (2006: 50).

This is not to imply agonistic theorists have been wholly inattentive to the implications of their theoretical approach. Schaap (2006) shows that an agonistic ethos may be a more practical way to approach reconciliation in divided societies. Newman (2008) uses an agonistic approach to detail the limits pluralism poses to traditional conceptions of state sovereignty. Kioupkiolis (2008) analyzes how agonistic understandings of freedom may better facilitate autonomy under modern circumstances. Connolly and Mouffe offer various partial suggestions about the potential of parliamentary procedures, pluralist assemblages, social movements, and hegemonic practices. Tully situates his agonism explicitly within the framework of constitutionalism. But these scattered reflections on the political implementation of an agonistic vision surface primarily within far more detailed accounts of the problems of liberalism, representative democracy, and capitalism. It is difficult to find a careful articulation of the institutions and practices that might constitute agonistic democracy in action. Are agonistic theories of democracy compatible with any realistic form of democratic institution? If so, what political institutions might best foster and sustain the form of society necessary for agonistic practices to flourish? Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy addresses directly the question of agonistic institutions. After first mapping the contours of post-foundational political thought and the emergence of agonistic democracy as the leading expression of this approach, the book evaluates a range of potential institutional alternatives appropriate to an agonistic politics. Drawing from empirical work in political science, democratic theory broadly conceived, and agonistic arguments appropriate to institutional design, I evaluate the prospects of participatory democracy, representation, populism, and political liberalism as institutional forms appropriate to agonism. I do not argue that the institutions of agonistic democracy must embody contestation and adversarial politics; institutions need to provide some modicum of order and at least provisional stability if democratic citizens are to engage in agonistic politics. Absent any such structure, as theorists like Mouffe, Connolly, Tully, and White all recognize, the conflict endemic to a post-foundational political will disrupt the possibility of channeling antagonistic confrontation into adversarial respect. Instead, democracy requires institutions

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that will create and sustain a social regime within which agonistic confrontation can occur. Some institutional structures are congenial to such contestation and others militate against it. The appropriate institutions for agonism are those that best foster an ethos of agonistic respect and a political culture open to deep conflict over the meaning of common principles, the range of legitimate identities, and the conditions of recognition as a participant in the demos. These institutions must also minimize the likelihood that any social actors can dominate the exercise of coercion by identifying themselves or their values with those of the sovereign. Agonistic institutions must, as Lefort puts it, keep the place of power empty. While this framing of the institutional question might seem unduly chastened, especially given the radical rhetorical positions with which many agonistic theorists are associated, it reflects the commitments of post-foundational political thought. For agonistic democrats politics takes place within a situated and historical horizon. While our inherited foundations are not transcendent and should be accessible to transformation by engaged politics, the range of possibilities open to any social order is not unlimited and fundamental values are not infinitely malleable. Politics takes place within and against the range of understandings which constitute a polity. Unlike anti-foundational theorists, who often posit that the erosion of narratives liberates subjects, post-foundational theorists cannot simply oppose the social order. Their focus must be transforming and reconstructing the resources available within society. A focus on culture and ethos follows from these premises. By shifting cultural meanings, reinterpreting political values, extending and complicating relationships of identification, and proposing new hegemonic understandings of the social, democratic possibilities can be extended. As the expression of human grammars, norms, and rules, institutions respond to these factors, although the response can be more or less democratic. To propose incremental transformations of political institutions based upon the existing resources of a situated social order is not a retreat from the agonistic ambition. It is an expression of these aspirations in a manner consistent with the ontological assertions upon which agonism depends. As a practical question of democratic politics, then, an agonistic account of institutions must draw on the extant institutional resources and principles available in the social realm in which it operates. These resources must be deployed to create conditions under which citizens may engage each other as, to use Mouffe’s term, “friendly enemies.” An agonistic politics requires some sort of shared values within which adversarial conflict might take place without succumbing to the antagonism of warfare, and in the most optimistic case nurtures the sort of “presumptive generosity” suggested by Connolly. The adversary of agonistic politics is one “with whom we have some common ground because we have a shared adhesion to ethico-political principles” (Mouffe 2000: 102). This insight articulates the necessity that agonistic practices rely upon common political premises and commitments to compatible principles. Adherence to shared principles permits the conflict between adversaries to be expressed with passion while minimizing the potential for the destructive combat that antagonism

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provokes. It may even permit citizens to react to pluralism and disagreement with responsiveness and reciprocity. I argue, ultimately, that the account of institutional structure most likely to both support agonistic engagement and preserve the conditions for agonism to flourish while nevertheless generating collectively binding decisions is a modified version of Rawls’s political liberalism. Political liberalism is well-suited to provide the common symbolic space within which democratic agonism takes place, including disputes about the meaning and organization of the symbolic space of political liberalism itself. In order for friendly enemies to engage in democratic conflict they must recognize their camaraderie; shorn of its telos of consensus, the premises and principles of political liberalism are sufficiently capacious to foster such allegiance without presuming exclusions beyond those necessary to maintain the inevitable boundaries of the symbolic. It may seem odd that a theoretical literature unified in part by its opposition to liberalism should find resources to advance its goals in a version of this same doctrine. The critique of liberalism is, by and large, a critique of its invocation of universalistic metaphysical claims and its orientation toward establishing order by removing contentious issues from public debate, often by invoking either the ideal of consensus or metaphysical doctrine. I assert that while the problem of metaphysics is insuperable for agonism, the orientation toward order is not. Fortunately only the latter poses a dilemma for developing an agonistic liberalism. Both Rawls and Habermas, for example, offer explicitly post-metaphysical versions of liberal democracy, taking pains to situate their theoretical claims within the shared values, principles, and assumptions that characterize contemporary democratic practice in the west. Political liberalism, in particular, offers an account entirely grounded within the diverse and conflicting comprehensive metaphysical doctrines that characterize democratic pluralism, insisting that no particular metaphysical account may be taken to ground political claims. Rawls argues that the mutual acceptance of a common “political conception of justice” derives not from shared metaphysical beliefs but from the experience of living within a democratic society characterized by conflicting and incompatible doctrines; over time the benefits of social order shapes deeply held and conflicting moral doctrines so that they come to support the political conception of justice, though not to share justifications or interpretations of this governing ideal. Thus, to repeat the quote from Mouffe, political liberalism envisions citizens “with whom we have some common ground because we have a shared adhesion to ethico-political principles” (2000: 102), principles not themselves independently grounded in any sort of foundational or universal ontology. Rawls works very hard to suppress the entry into the public realm of the comprehensive doctrines and political passions that produce this shared adhesion, as he fears such conflict over metaphysical claims might destabilize the social order. Since his sociological account of the development of consensus on the political conception depends upon maintaining this stability, his vision of political liberalism must make stability a priority. But if the architecture of political liberalism, rooted

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as it is in the situated practices of contemporary liberal democracy, could be severed from the commitment to consensus and order, then an agonistic version of liberalism might emerge. I argue that such a severing is entirely possible. If Rawls’s assertion that the commitment to common liberal values represent an “overlapping consensus” is relaxed, and if the account of convergence on these principles explained in ways not dependent upon the advantages of living in a well-ordered society, then political liberalism offers a model of shared principles that need not eschew adversarial conflict nor exclude passions and identities from public life. I show how an agonistic vision of political contestation and a postfoundationalist account of the constitution of the political support both revisions to political liberalism and thus permit the emergence of political liberalism as an institutional model for agonistic democracy. This conclusion is not, I emphasize, simply an argument that agonism is already consistent with or captured by political liberalism. On its own terms the Rawlsian approach is as hostile to agonism as his critics claim. But I also insist that the framework of political liberalism, reworked and rearticulated, can become the starting point for thinking about agonistic institutions. Of course some positions commonly associated with the label “agonistic democracy” would resist either the association with liberalism or even the effort to sketch plausible institutional parameters for agonistic practices. Agonistic democracy is itself a contested concept, as should be expected, and its proponents offer widely divergent views, both of the contours of agonism and the appropriate aspirations for democracy. Given the focus of this book on the institutional possibilities of an agonistic theory of democracy, these distinctions need to be clarified. I propose that the range of theories loosely referenced by the label “agonistic democracy” fall into three separate categories: pluralist agonism, agonism of resistance, and radical democracy. Of these three, only pluralist agonism can generate institutional recommendations, as the other two adopt a position of antagonism or indifference toward institutionalized politics. Briefly put, pluralist agonism (associated primarily with the work of Tully, Mouffe, and Connolly) understand agonism to involve the process through which deeply divergent positions and identities manage to negotiate some sort of engagement that produces policy outcomes, without either extinguishing, excluding, or silencing any particular position or identity, at least not permanently. Thus the emphasis of pluralist agonism is to make hegemonic articulations visible and contestable, and enable such exclusions to be addressed without a collapse into violence. Moreover, they recognize that the conditions for such reciprocity demand the construction of meaningful boundaries to the political, as the basis for such exchange is some sort of shared values. The agonism of resistance, by comparison, views agonism as a strategy of self-creation and opposition to any and all forms of power. These thinkers tend to view institutional frameworks as the repositories of power, expressing and maintaining sedimented relations of domination. Democratic energy erupts as the momentary or fragmented disruption of the governing impulse, or in the expression of self-creation and celebration of difference made

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possible by the cultivation of an agonistic subjectivity. Rancière and Badiou are the most prominent examples of the former impulse of resistance, and Honig and Owen exponents of the latter. Those agonistic approaches emphasizing resistance tend to view democracy as ephemeral or exceptional, and in almost all cases as a product of opposition to dominant norms. Thus unlike the pluralists, they view democracy as the contestation of any and all hegemonies rather than the product of a contingent and contestable hegemony itself. I distinguish both types of agonism from theories of radical democracy. I suggest that radical democrats are generally animated by substantive commitments to political equality, overcoming domination, mass participation, and anti-capitalist economics. These animating values are not held as contingent to a particular historical moment or derived from the public culture of existing democracies. They are instead posited as the ultimate ideals of democracy itself, ideals which can never be fully realized but against which all institutions should be judged and toward which all political action should be oriented. Radical democracy positions itself beyond the contemporary horizon of meaning, looking toward a radically new and different future. Instead of working to expand and deepen the democratic possibilities embedded in contemporary politics, radical democrats work to disrupt the political in order to provoke insurgency and transformative change. Agonistic democracy, at least in its pluralist variant, emphasizes incremental change, situated possibilities, and improving the prospects for collective agency through a multiplicity of institutional forms. Radical democracy emphasizes transformational change, future possibilities, and the cultivation of an insurgent sensibility. Any institutional forms pluralist agonism would support would be open to a radically democratic sensibility and radically democratic action, but radical democracy is not able to embrace the more chastened and contingent aspirations of agonism. The argument proceeds in two parts. The first four chapters provide the theoretical foundations for an exploration of agonistic institutions. The first chapter examines the status of foundational thinking in political theory in order to defend the assertion that a post-foundational account of politics best provides the justification for an agonistic theory of democracy. This chapter distinguishes post-foundationalism from the anti-foundational and post-modern approaches with which it is often associated. Post-foundationalism describes the position that human beings require meaning in order to make sense of the world, and that the constructions of meaning that dominate a particular time or culture serve as foundational narratives for social life. These narratives are constructions, but they are not arbitrary. As beings enmeshed within history and whose identity and subjectivity are inextricably shaped by the constellations of meaning within which they live, human beings cannot simply reject foundational claims. They can, however, work to expose the contingent and historical character of these claims in order to transform them. Anti-foundationalists, by contrast, aspire to expose the contingency of foundational claims in order to render them arbitrary. Anti-foundationalism generally posits a type of “emancipatory apriorism,” in

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which the exposure of contingency and destruction of foundational narrative is thought to yield emancipation. I argue that agonistic politics cannot accept any such convictions, instead working within the situated historical possibilities presented by the contingent but nevertheless necessary foundations that define the social world. While post-foundationalism accepts the necessity of grounding claims, it also asserts that their contestability is built into their ontological status. That we create and sustain foundational narratives is an ontological description: as Heidegger shows, making meaning of the world is fundamental to our being. But what that meaning might be is a product of the social, and thus an expression of the political. Following Connolly, I call this the ontopolitical, understood as the collective enactment and interpretation of the foundational premises shaping social life. Normal politics takes place within the framing of the ontopolitical, and the presuppositions of the latter come in practice to seem transcendentally or obviously true. To the extent democratic politics aspires to assert influence over the conditions of social life, the contingent character of the ontopolitical can never be lost. While the adoption of a post-foundational ontology does not dictate agonistic politics, agonistic democracy does emphasize contestation of prevailing norms, dominant hegemony, and universalistic assertions, and thus offers a powerful account of the democratic response to the recognition of contingency. Chapter 2 situates agonistic democracy as the clearest expression of democratic principles emerging from post-foundational insights. While no particular normative conclusions follow from post-foundationalism, some implications generate favorable conditions for an agonistic account. The ontology proposed by postfoundationalism produces conditions of pluralism since no particular articulation of meaning captures all possibilities. The ontopolitical framework within which politics operates will always be characterized by the potential for pluralism, and any nominally democratic order will exhibit pluralism of an incommensurable sort. Uncertainty is thus built into democratic politics. Subjectivity is similarly inflected, as identities will tend to exhibit internal plurality consistent with the contingency of identity and its constitution within the political. The operations of influence and constitution of meaning and subjectivity reveal the structure of power. Agonism tends to describe power as hegemony, in which a particular set of practices, identifications, and exclusions defines the terrain of the political. Hegemony cannot be overcome, but it can be rendered visible and contestable. Agonistic theorists takes these conditions as the basis for understanding democratic politics, asserting that managing the antagonism between incommensurable identities and worldviews forms the core task of democracy and structures the potential for popular sovereignty. These conditions yield an understanding of emancipation that does not involve autonomy from influence or liberation from power. Instead, emancipation must involve an ongoing engagement with the hegemonic articulations shaping social life. Agonistic democracy proposes strategies to constitute hegemony in ways more conducive to inclusion, less likely to obscure its oppressions, and more

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accommodating to a plurality of interpretations of the cardinal democratic values of liberty and equality. This understanding of democratic goals puts agonism at odds with radical democracy, despite the popular association of the two positions. Radical democrats work to resist power in all its forms in order to foster a politics of full inclusion and widespread equality. They are unwilling to countenance the sort of institutional accommodations and pragmatic strategies that follow from the agonistic recognition of the permanence of hegemony. Insofar as the radical position associates democracy with moments of disruption and mobilization rather than the creation of structures to incorporate these moments of conflict into the institutions of democracy, it offers a substantially divergent account of democratic politics from agonism. In Chapter 2, I explain this distinction in detail, concluding that developing a theory of agonistic institutions requires maintaining a sharp distinction between agonistic and radical theories of democracy. Chapter 3 offers a comprehensive overview of agonism as a mature theory of politics. Agonism has been developed by a wide range of thinkers proposing a diversity of visions of democracy, but all share some common assumptions. All recognize that politics involves the contingency of foundations, the inevitable presence of hegemonic power, the unavoidable production of exclusions, and latent danger that democratic mobilization might be harnessed toward authoritarian or oppressive ends. They differ widely on the implications of these factors for the prospects and parameters of democracy. I propose five distinct types of agonistic theory: oppositional, expressive, constitutional, adversarial, and responsive, and explain each in detail. This typology provides a comprehensive conceptual map of the terrain of agonistic democracy and allows comparisons between distinct approaches. In the second part of the chapter I use this typology to explore the differences between agonistic approaches. Focusing on differences in the theoretical dispositions toward pluralism, collective identity, political boundaries, and reciprocity, I both clarify how and why the approaches differ and show that they exhibit some broad similarities. The five types of agonism fall into two basic categories. Oppositional and expressive agonism emphasize resistance to power, the depth of differences, skepticism toward boundaries, and competition. I characterize these as the “agonism of resistance.” Constitutional, adversarial, and responsive agonisms all emphasize the connections across differences, the importance of boundaries to democratic politics, and the possibility of some sort of reciprocity amongst citizens. Given their focus on strategies to address and protect democratic pluralism I characterize these as “pluralist agonism.” I argue that only the latter, pluralist agonism, can support a theory of institutions, and in the remainder of the text employ these theories as the primary interpretation of agonism. The fourth chapter turns to the idea of institutions. Having established that institutions are not prima facie incompatible with agonism, at least in its pluralist variant, it becomes necessary to determine what type of institutions might be appropriate. After first offering a positive defense of the project of agonistic

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institutions, I examine the theoretical and empirical literature on the topic in order to explore the contours of a theory of institutions appropriate to post-foundational democracy and propose some guidelines by which to evaluate the agonistic capacity of common institutional resources found in democratic states. The chapter argues that any account of agonistic institutions must recognize the historical and contextual limitations imposed by existing institutions and norms. As a post-foundational political theory, agonism accepts that the possibilities for reform are constrained by the “stickiness” of the institutional forms already in place in any society. This means agonistic institutions must focus on opportunities to transform the “soft” elements of institutions, understood as culture, norms, social expectations, and so on, as well as the “hard” elements of institutions, understood as the constitutional, legal, and distributive policies defended by social power. Thus the task of institutional design must begin within the situated possibilities available in contemporary democratic societies and aspire to highlight and strengthen opportunities found within it to cultivate and foster agonistic practices. Importantly, I argue that institutions themselves cannot express agonistic principles, but only create more and less favorable conditions for agonistic politics. The second part of the book examines specific manifestations of democratic institutions to determine which forms are most likely to foster an agonistic ethos amongst citizens and create space for public and private contestation over values, principles, interests, and constitutional essentials. Chapter 5 evaluates the theory of participatory democracy, which would appear to have the most in common with agonistic aspirations; it concludes that the participatory model is unlikely to produce agonistic outcomes. I examine the arguments and assumptions of participatory democracy in order to compare them with those of agonism, and determine that the foundational commitments of participatory theory make this a poor model for agonism. The institutional recommendations and analysis of the participatory democrats are inextricable from their substantive views of human well-being, agency, and power. Moreover, an agonistic version of participatory politics would be unable to respond adequately to the powerful objections to direct democracy articulated in response to the participatory democrats. While participatory theory cannot provide the basis for agonistic institutions, I do argue that participation should play a central role in any agonistic theory of democracy. In the second half of the chapter I develop an account of participation appropriate to agonism. On this account, participation should be viewed not as a mechanism to achieve individual autonomy or dignity but a strategy to resist power and engage norms. Wherever power is exercised, democratic citizens need to be able to identify it and respond. Thus agonistic participation is envisioned not as a formal mechanism of politics but a social practice embedded within the grammar of political life. This understanding of participation can also provide resources to generate constraints on institutional power. The process of contestation and empowerment can generate contingent sensibilities of the “popular will” likely to guide and restrain the operation of legislative power. While this account of

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participation is not one that privileges direct democracy, it does highlight a mechanism through which an agonistic politics might begin to express collective decision-making. Chapter 6 turns to the concept of representation. Given the central role representation plays in mass democracy, any post-foundational theory of democracy must evaluate the prospects and perils of this institution. Representative democracy is problematic for agonism. As a process to collect and transmit some version of the popular will, it sits uneasily with agonistic accounts of subjectivity and hegemony. Representation is prone to either exclude identities that do not reflect the dominant narrative or to impose that narrative upon the population via the “educational” processes through which politicians form their electorates. One possible solution to these challenges would be to adopt a politics of presence, which might insure that the clash of identities and world-views that constitute a pluralistic society would have an institutional outlet within which agonistic encounters could take place. Unfortunately this solution is undermined by the hegemonic character of social power, which relies for stability upon the creation of an identity between the empty signifier and the particular identities it represents. An agonistic representation must maintain the element of undecideability between hegemonic claims and the identities upon which it operates; institutionalizing representation by identities collapses this terrain and restricts the possibilities for agonistic engagement. The danger of hegemony does not, however, make representation impossible; it simply reconfigures the possible articulations. After a detailed examination of the relationship between hegemony, populism, and representation, I argue that an understanding of representation as a dynamic process, not limited to the generation/ aggregation of preferences nor directed toward the articulation of a populist movement counter to hegemony, can offer an agonistic version of representation. Urbinati’s work on “representivity” provides a model for this vision, proposing that representation be understood as the process by which citizens constitute the context of judgment within which policy decisions are made. This understanding of representation as serial and contingent articulations of the context of popular judgment fits well with Connolly’s description of “majority assemblages” through which agonistic politics might take place. Such a model provides a vision of representation both appropriate to the situated context of liberal democracy and likely to encourage an agonistic public sphere. The chapter concludes with an examination of two types of empirically observed representation that support the agonistic interpretation: self-authorizing representation and claim-based representation. The seventh chapter draws upon Rawls to develop an account of liberalism able to incorporate agonistic ideals. As a post-foundational theory of politics, agonism must draw upon the situated possibilities available to it. Given the emphasis on the values of liberty and equality, the commitment to expanding plurality, and the aspiration to permit conflict without lapsing into violence, pluralist agonism already shares much common ground with liberalism. On the other hand, a sustained critique of liberalism, especially in its Rawlsian variant, animates the

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texts of agonistic thinkers. In this chapter, I first develop the agonistic critique of liberalism, identifying the central challenges to an agonistic version of liberal theory. These objections center not on the principles of liberalism but the urge to make a particular interpretation of these principles sacrosanct in order to guarantee public order. As liberalism adopts post-metaphysical foundations, however, these principles become evident as the product of a particular culture and history, thus making apparent both the contingent nature of these claims, and their hegemonic character. If it were possible to contest the particular hegemonic interpretation of liberal principles constraining the range of political engagement, then an agonistic liberalism might emerge. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to a reconstruction of Political Liberalism intended to illustrate the plausibility of an agonistic liberalism. I demonstrate that the structure of the political conception of justice is compatible with a liberalism contingently grounded in the historical traditions of a situated community; Rawls obscured this contingency by positing stability and order as fundamental conditions for liberal society. By making the constitutive and contested character of fundamental values an explicit object of political contestation, the model of liberalism developed by Rawls becomes surprisingly suitable to the generation of agonistic citizenship. Absent the insistence that the political conception of justice express an “overlapping consensus,” political liberalism offers a useful institutional framework within which counter-hegemonic interpretations can flourish, within which representivity can produce policy guidance, and for which the challenge of negotiating an ongoing modus vivendi provides vigor to the public sphere. Moreover, an agonistic reinterpretation strengthens the account of political liberalism by harmonizing its contextualization with the reality that such grounding in a living polity must be amenable to democratic change. The final chapter brings together the argument of the second part of the book to propose an integrated theory of agonistic institutions. I argue that a modified political liberalism as described in chapter seven offers the most plausible interpretation of agonism for institutionalization. I show that this version of liberalism fulfills the expectations for agonistic institutions developed in Chapter 4 and is compatible, to varying degrees, with all five types of agonistic democracy. In the concluding section of the book I demonstrate that a modified political liberalism is not merely compatible with agonism but advantageous. The liberal framework strengthens the agonistic response to the common criticism, namely, that agonism either cannot constrain violence or only does so by smuggling foundational claims into the theory. Agonistic liberalism can appeal to the shared and situated principles of liberty and equality to circumscribe the boundaries within which contestation occurs, without imputing to these principles any transcendental status. Moreover, agonistic liberalism offers a plausible institutional framework for its own overcoming; to the extent radical democrats are correct to assert that real democracy requires revolutionary transformation, agonistic liberalism opens itself institutionally to exactly this possibility. Thus agonistic liberalism is theoretically, institutionally, and politically sound.

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PART I Post-Foundationalism and Agonistic Democratic Theory

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Chapter 1

Post-Foundational Politics and Democracy The kilogram is losing mass. Or perhaps gaining mass. It is hard to tell. Le Grand K, a platinum-iridium cylinder housed in a suburb of Paris, has defined the standard measure of weight in the metric system since 1883. The precision with which contemporary scientists describe the mass of tiny particles, the confidence with which engineers calculate the load capacity of a bridge, or the care with which a child’s growth is recorded all depend upon this one small piece of metal forged by human beings over a century ago. The International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) is the foundation for the measurement of mass everywhere the metric system is used. And nobody knows how much it weighs. Copies of Le Grand K housed around the world norm national systems of weights and measures. The copies appear to have gained mass relative to the IPK. Or the copies remain constant and the IPK has lost mass relative to them. The direction of change cannot be resolved since a comparison of the relative weights of the kilogram and its copies is impossible; without an external reference against which to measure them all, the comparison has no meaning. If anyone knew how much “a kilogram” weighed, we could use that standard to assess the kilogram, and resolve the problem. But nobody knows this, and nobody can, since the weight of Le Grand K is, by definition, the weight of a kilogram, even if that mass has shifted. The arbitrary mass of the kilogram reflects human practices. A system of measurement was defined and anchored to this artifact, and the artifact guarantees the system’s stability. It does so even if its own status fluctuates, since the system fluctuates with it. These fluctuations cause problems, however. If the mass of the standard shifts, even slightly, then the descriptions of reality anchored to this standard shift as well, introducing error where accuracy is assumed. At a fundamental level our measurement of the mass of the natural world is indeterminate. It is indeterminate because the foundation of the system used to generate meaning is indeterminate; literally so, as no standard exists to norm the IPK apart from the IPK itself. The indeterminacy of the mass of the kilogram could be resolved by naturalizing the standard. If the mass of the IPK were translated into a quantified, independently verifiable description, then the IPK could be abandoned and the new determinate definition used to anchor the metric system. Scientists eager to purge ambiguity from the measurement of mass are pursuing a variety of options. Some have proposed defining the gram using a multiple of Avogadro’s constant.

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The problem with this solution is that Avogadro’s constant is itself indeterminate. For this reference to work, two levels of consensus would have to be forged: first the scientific community must agree to define the constant to a specified value and then agree to ratify the relationship between the newly defined constant and the newly defined gram. A second proposal involves constructing the kilogram from a stipulated number of atoms placed in a particular configuration. The mass of these atoms in this arrangement would provide a replicable standard. Unfortunately, moving from the theoretical to physical world introduces problems of measurement similar to those posed by the IPK, as small differences between isotopes of the same atoms introduce variance of a magnitude similar to that found between the IPK and its copies. A third attempt to naturalize the kilogram involves weighing Le Grand K itself in order to generate a specific energy equivalence for the kilogram, called the watt balance. An accurate determination of the watt balance of the IPK would provide an unambiguous anchor for the measurement of mass. Problematically, to weigh Le Grand K to the degree of precision required demands an instrument so sensitive that it can be disrupted by even the tiniest vibrations. It also demands a fixed measure for the earth’s gravity, and the earth’s gravity is itself subject to variation based on location and season. At least two groups have measured the watt balance of the kilogram using these techniques, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States and the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom; their measurements are not the same (Fildes 2007). This contingency does not render the standard capricious: a kilogram is a kilogram everywhere, even given the minor indeterminacy of the current standard, and one cannot simply assert one’s own definition and expect to be understood. Recognition of the historically conditioned emergence of the particular definition of the mass of the kilogram removes none of its power, importance, or centrality to the way contemporary humans make sense of reality. The kilogram is necessary, whether in its current form as a human artifact or a future form as a numeric standard anchored in natural constants. It is, to use Butler’s (1992) term, a “contingent foundation.” That the kilogram is arbitrary does not make it false. Without the kilogram the metric system would be inexplicable. A standardized kilogram permits us to understand the natural world and communicate that understanding to one another. The habits and practices of billions of people testify to its reality. The foundational character of the kilogram dominates its contingent status, to the point that its contingency seems irrelevant to anyone not engaged in the problem of its measurement. To ask if its value is “true” is to ask a nonsensical question. To argue that the absence of a transcendent anchor for the kilogram would produce a chaos of relativism in global measurement is to assert an absurdity. Post-foundationalism and Politics Much debate in contemporary political theory engages arguments analogous to the attempt to measure the kilogram, absent the awareness of the necessary

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contingency of the principles debated. Political theories in the dominant mode postulate, stipulate, investigate, and deduce first principles upon which to erect justifications for political institutions and practices. Or they articulate the telos toward which human beings tend, toward which societies are directed, and under which human flourishing might be increased. Political theorists argue about whether or not these principles or claims are true, where true does not merely reference wide-spread social agreement but access to normative reality. Often these arguments recognize explicitly the pragmatic character of political behavior and institutions while implicitly introducing a quasi-transcendent standard to buttress the conclusions reached; variously, these implicit foundations include concepts like reason, human nature, the popular will, the categorical imperative, the market, human capacities, religious scripture, neurological discoveries, and so on. The post-foundational approach to political theory asserts that any normative justification for a set of coherent political claims will have at its core a kilogram. At some point a theory of politics must assert the centrality of a claim that cannot be further defended, a claim that when queried from outside the system in which it makes sense and to which it provides coherence is exposed as a contingent assertion of social will. From the post-foundational perspective all political systems are similarly dependent upon contingent foundations, whether theorized or not. To understand the development of agonistic democratic theory it is important to distinguish post-foundationalism from anti-foundationalism. Both share a range of philosophical assumptions and draw from overlapping intellectual lineages reaching back at least to Rorty (1979), who identified “antifoundationalism as a slogan for a complex cluster of ideas previously lacking resonant expression” (Simpson 1987: 1-2, quoted in Seery 1999: 467). These shared presumptions are described by Fish: Anti-foundationalism teaches that questions of fact, truth, correctness, validity, and clarity can neither be posed nor answered in reference to some extracontextual, ahistorical, nonsituational reality, or rule, or law, or value; rather, anti-foundationalism asserts, all of these matters are intelligible and debatable only within the precincts of the contexts or situations or paradigms or communities that give them their local and changeable shape (1989, 344).

As anti-foundational work in political theory became more sophisticated, a divergence emerged between thinkers focused on exposing the limits of foundationalism as the key step in making emancipation possible and those emphasizing that recognition of the inevitability of founding narratives is a condition of further work to reform them (For a detailed discussion, see Marchart 2007). The two dispositions differ significantly in how they understand the status of contingent foundations and their political implications. With the caveat that all such classifications are overbroad and reductive for specific thinkers, I suggest the central distinctions between post- and anti- foundationalism lie in their disparate

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analyses of the necessity of foundations and their different aspirations for human emancipation. These two distinctions are rooted in a third: their understanding of the status of “truth.” Both positions recognize that the contingent foundations upon which political systems depend produce and sustain relations of power. The “givens” that ground any social order delineate the terms of social identity, determine the characteristics that will be systematically rewarded or define the terms of universality against which deviance will emerge, provide the range of acceptable values against which action will be conceptualized, and establish the appropriate domain of political questions. All of these outcomes, which shift across cultures and time as social foundations differ, shape the allocation of resources, privilege, and cultural advantages that translate into political power. Both post- and anti-foundational theorists recognize that the distribution of power emerging from a particular set of foundations also tends to render these foundations invisible, as the anchor to any system of meaning will, from within, appear inevitable. Anti-foundationalism describes a constellation of approaches found in philosophy, literary theory, anthropology, sociology, legal theory, cultural studies, and political theory.1 Anti-foundationalist political theories suggest the narratives that impose and sustain social relations are inherently oppressive because of the necessary exclusions of difference required to maintain the illusion of totality and coherence. Foundational narratives are, on this account, always a threat to otherness, always a danger to particularity and individuality, and always reflect hegemonic power. They further assert that all such narratives must be resisted in order to open up the possibility of human emancipation. Otherness and difference can only emerge in the space created by critical resistance to hegemony and meta-narrative. Bevir describes this tendency quite well: Anti-foundationalists stress the ineluctability of differences and hence the failings of any notion of totality or unity. Differences generate meaning in language; it prevents any meta-theory from covering the diversity of what we know; and it disrupts the romantic dream of harmony in nature and society. A 1  Among others, Fish lists the following as notable practitioners of anti-foundational theorizing: Hilary Putnam, W.V. Quine, Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, Hayden White, Thomas Kuhn, Michael Fried, Sanford Levinson, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Jonathan Culler, Frank Lentricchia, Jane Tompkins, Stanley Fish, Martin Heidegger, Hans Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and the “entire tradition of the sociology of knowledge” (1989, 345). While this list includes thinkers that would be described as post- rather than anti-foundational in my analysis, it does illuminate the wide and deep influence of this intellectual disposition. Within the more narrowly circumscribed realm of political theory with which this argument is concerned, the most prominent purveyors of anti-foundationalism as I understand it are Rorty, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and (some interpretations of) Foucault, all of whom can be read to encourage an unceasing resistance to naturalism, meta-narrative, and power as the route to emancipatory politics.

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related concern to defend the otherness of the individual against an invidious social power dominates post-modern political theories (2007: 48).

While the diagnosis of the danger varies amongst different thinkers, all assert some version of the claim that emancipation can only occur in resistance to foundational claims, even if such claims will always reassert themselves in some way. Identifying the failings of narratives creates space for freedom and individual creativity to emerge. By contrast, foundational claims are always hostile to difference and thus always incompatible with emancipation. The anti-foundationalist “hostility to all unities or totalities – what I would call a sort of positive aesthetic dandyism – leads them to denounce community as inimical to difference” (Bevir 2007: 48). For the anti-foundationalist, then, the role of political theory is to expose the artifice of narratives in order to permit the emergence of resistance and creativity. All foundations are problematic, because all foundations produce relations of power and meaning that undermine the emancipatory potential of human creativity, while simultaneously producing excluded and oppressed subjectivities. This description would be true even for radically democratic foundations. Little (2008: 176), drawing upon Žižek and others, argues that the “issue, then, is partly about the extent to which democracy is inclusive or exclusive but, more fundamentally, it is also about the way in which all democracies are exclusive and antagonistic to their Others, to some extent, in order to regulate the behaviour of and conduct between those who are included.” For an anti-foundationalist emancipation demands neither the improvement of narratives nor the creation of more inclusive, still imperfect, foundations, as all foundations are oppressive. The post-foundational position shares the diagnosis of the exclusive and oppressive character of foundational narratives but rejects the conclusion that emancipation primarily demands resistance. This rejection arises not from an embrace of totality or dismissal of the emancipatory ideal but the recognition that social foundations are unavoidable. While it is accurate to assert that meaning, identity, power, and other core aspects of political life emerge contingently within the play of language and the developments of history, it is not accurate to assert that these foundations can be escaped or weakened so dramatically as to lose their hold on subjects. As social creatures without access to transcendent truths or unmediated ontological knowledge, meaning will always depend upon some constellation of assumptions shared by the community within which politics takes place. In practice, human beings rely upon foundations, regardless of their ultimate status. It is simply not possible to escape them completely, or even to relativize them so utterly that their impact is of minor consequence. We require some sort of ontology, even if only shallowly held, to render social order possible. White’s (2000) concept of weak ontology provides a useful framework to understand post-foundational claims. We experience our own histories as both contingent and fundamental. We find ourselves inhabiting a set of “ontological figures” that emerge from our situatedness in a particular history, culture, and language. We can recognize that these figures shape our subjectivity in ways that

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are both not optional to our identity and not fully accessible to choice or reason, while also understanding that these fundamental elements of our personal and communal identities are not “true” in any sense that exceeds our own practices and history. White’s summary of weak ontology expresses the commitment of post-foundationalism (though he uses the term non-foundationalism) succinctly: “first, it holds that one’s most basic commitments regarding self, other, and the beyond human are taken to be both fundamental and contestable; and, second, it holds that this contestability extends as well to one’s assessments of the strong ontologies of others” (2009: 815). The necessary condition of social life is some sort of shared horizon of meaning, some sort of ground upon which politics takes place. It is important to post-foundational politics that the contingent status of this ground be made visible. It is important that pretension to universality be exposed. But it is not desirable to liberate subjects from the foundational narratives within which they unavoidably live. Moreover, the post-foundationalist assertion of the necessity of contingently held ground allows it to evaluate the normative status of various foundational claims. For anti-foundationalism all foundations are obstacles to emancipatory politics, and all should be resisted. Post-foundationalism, by contrast, can offer judgments about the relative virtues and dangers of various ontologies and work to move any particular ontology closer to a more contingent understanding. Marchart articulates this difference when he asserts: what came to be called post-foundationalism should not be confused with antifoundationalism. What distinguishes the former from the latter is that it does not assume the absence of any ground; what it assumes is the absence of an ultimate ground, since it is only on the basis of such absence that grounds, in the plural, are possible. The problem is therefore posed not in terms of no foundations (the logic of all-or-nothing), but in terms of contingent foundations. Hence post-foundationalism does not stop after having assumed the absence of final ground and so it does not turn into anti-foundationalist nihilism, existentialism or pluralism, all of which would assume the absence of any ground and would result in complete meaninglessness, absolute freedom or total autonomy. Nor does it turn into a sort of post-modern pluralism for which all meta-narratives have equally melted into air, for what is still accepted by post-foundationalism in the necessity for some ground (2007: 14).

Marchart’s passage articulates the distinction between the aspiration to escape or destroy foundations, which he rightfully asserts would lead to incoherent politics and individualist anomie, and the aspiration to actively embrace the contingent necessity of already existing foundations in order to foster in those grounds a greater opportunity for democratic politics. Some foundations are better, some are worse, and all are necessary; the task of post-foundational political thought is to highlight the weakness of our social grounds, the costs they impose on otherness, and the resources available within them to develop an emancipatory politics.

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Why, if they generally agree about the deleterious impact of universalized or insufficiently decentered foundations, do the two approaches differ so dramatically in their prescriptions for political action? I assert that anti-foundationalism presumes a liberatory narrative of resistance to certainty and rule. An implicit assumption of an anti-foundational politics is that once the non-universal status of foundations becomes apparent and foundations are deprived of universal pretensions, subjects will be able to free themselves of violence, oppression, inequality, etc. The most common version of this supposition is found in post-modernist visions of politics (often derived from the work of Lyotard or Baudrillard), in which the erosion of foundations permits the free play of difference and recognition of the local and particular status of all political claims. Absent competition for central status in the system of signs, there is no need for conflict and violence. Such a politics involves practices of repetition, creative re-appropriation, linguistic inventiveness, and constant negotiations of difference without the need to resort to violence. Ermarth describes the outcome thusly: “The shift of emphasis engages us in the play of systems in which all definition is differential and internal to a system, and thus no basis for truth claims beyond local negotiations and outcomes. That shift of emphasis forecloses on the endless wars over possession of Truth that modern rationalism sponsors” (2007: 15). Sometimes this optimism is linked explicitly to a progressive account of history in which the overcoming of metaphysics leads to a higher stage of truth. White (2009) identifies this tendency in the work of Vattimo (2004), rejecting his confidence that because foundations are violent in their essence, overcoming of foundations will lead to a “higher stage of truth” and the dissolution of violence. Marchart (2007: 159) aptly names this tendency “emancipatory apriorism.” Theorists who posit emancipatory apriorism presume that once politics is adequately theorized emancipatory and/or egalitarian results will follow. Rancière’s account of democratic politics as “a rupture in the logic of arche” (2001: 14) perhaps best illustrates this ethos of anti-foundationalism: an emancipatory politics only emerges in the contestation of the grounding principles that shape the dominant order. Politics does not occur within foundational orders but instead “exists as a deviation from this normal order of things” (2001: 18). Politics thus names a resistance to or disturbance of the “symbolic constitution of the social,” understood in Rancière’s thought as “the police” (2001: 20); any foundation that establishes itself as uncontested (even if recognizably contingent) imperils the possibility of democratic politics. In the case of anti-foundational emancipatory apriorism, the most common claim is that once difference is liberated from the artificial tyranny of universality, only democratic politics can follow, as only democratic politics can accommodate the absence of common ground envisioned. Alternatively, some accounts imply a “natural” tendency toward emancipatory politics, a tendency that is currently obscured by the totalizing and exclusivist narratives that dominate politics. Neither position is compelling. Why must an emancipatory or democratic politics follow from the destruction of foundations? Neither theory nor empirical

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observation dictates such an outcome. To assert a tendency toward freedom in the absence of totalizing narratives is to assert another universal narrative; to claim that particular political structures will emerge in response to an ontological revelation requires one to ignore the gap between politics and the political, ontic and ontological, practice and theoretical understanding. Regardless of its source, emancipatory apriorism is incompatible with any political theory that takes seriously the insights of post-structuralism, post-modernism, or postfoundationalism. Which is not to say an emancipatory outcome cannot follow from the destabilization of foundations, but rather that such results are merely one possibility among many. Which is also to say that emancipatory outcomes require further work on foundations. A post-foundational approach to politics avoids emancipatory apriorism. Recognizing the persistence of foundations reveals that any progress toward any type of emancipatory ideal will require the generation of grounds to support practices consistent with the goal. The practices of politics are shaped by and occur within the context of meaning provided by the political. This distinction, broadly accepted in contemporary political thought, identifies the difference between the everyday practices of politics, generally directed instrumentally toward practical ends, and the theoretical, cultural, and apparently self-evident conceptions of the world within which daily politics takes place. The political describes the grounds upon which politics takes place, and it demarcates the possibilities and limits of everyday practice. The political, for the most part, constitutes politics. Shifts in the political shift the parameters of thinkable politics and define the bounds of what can be recognized as specifically political interventions. It is not implausible to describe politics as the ontic expression of a political ontology. This conceptualization of politics leads contemporary thinkers to focus on the constitutive elements of political life over the practical: changing the political leads to enduring changes in politics, while shifts in politics are likely to either reinscribe the basis of the political or revert to the mean of the foundational order. The political should be understood as a foundation for politics, though a foundation always susceptible to transformation. Foundational theorists hope to get the political “right,” by bringing culture, institutions, mores, and values into alignment with the truth of reason or human nature or whichever other absolute they champion. Anti-foundationalist thinkers wish to liberate subjects from the imposition of the political, which is viewed as a font of power to be resisted. In fact, for some post-modernists the emphasis on play, negotiation, and re-appropriation seems to emphasize a politics liberated as much as possible from the political. Ermarth asserts the post-modern political rests entirely on the specific practices enacted by all persons who, combining their languages half aware, using inadvertent repetitions, half-baked memories, conscious choice and trained instinct, all make more creative or less creative use of the various languages and grammars

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available to them, always positioned and conditioned by the particular grammar but always specifying them in ways potentially new (2007: 14).

On this account the danger of politics would be that subjects accept the pretension to universality or consensus that the political potentially privileges. Since the post-modern political emphasizes the unfettered play of grammars and discourses, the proper object of political theory is the displacement or destruction of the political as foundation in order to make space for the political as merely politics. Post-foundationalism accepts neither alternative, instead recognizing the essential necessity of foundational claims while working to highlight the contingency of these grounds. Marchart explains this position well: What occurs within the moment of the political, and what can be excavated out of the work of many post-foundational political theorists as an “underlying logic,” is the following double-folded movement. On the one hand, the political, as the instituting moment of society, functions as a supplementary ground to the groundless stature of society, yet on the other hand this supplementary ground withdraws in the very “moment” in which it institutes the social. As a result, society will always be in search for an ultimate ground, while the maximum that can be achieved will be a fleeting and contingent grounding by way of politics – a plurality of partial grounds (2007: 8).

Marchart describes the constitutive gap between grounds and action that permits the institution of political society while also always undermining the stability of the social. The ontic experience of politics takes place against a background experienced as stable and real; politics cannot take place without the social and society cannot persist without a foundation of meaning. At the same time this foundation, the political, is itself unstable and contingent. Thus post-foundational theorists recognize both the necessity of foundations and the inadequacy of those foundations as a justificatory (rather than authorizing) ground for political actions. Politics becomes dangerous when it insists on treating contingent grounds as either transcendental or arbitrary. The former turns the inevitable but essentially malleable exclusions of a particular foundation into naturalized oppressions that may be unrecognized and uncontested. The latter offers the false hope that once arbitrary traditions are overturned an emancipated agent will emerge within the freedom of unmoored and fragmentary narratives. The post-foundational position embraces the necessity of foundations while committing to continuous interrogation and contestation of these contingently-formed grounds. For the post-foundationalist, then, the route to an emancipatory politics requires an engagement with existing foundations in order to highlight their contestability. Ideally, a grounding narrative that incorporates into its assumptions the contingency of its status would produce a politics attuned to the incompleteness and possibilities inherent in any social order. Like the gap between ideal and

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real, principle and practice, the gap between the political and politics means that foundations always fail to fully ground the social upon which they depend. If this failure can be made visible without demanding an escape from incompleteness, it becomes possible to envision a politics that both accepts and interrogates its authorizing narratives, a politics that creates the conditions for human beings to begin to exert intentional influence upon the ground of the social without lapsing into totalitarian or atomistic practices. White’s notion of weak ontology provides one model of this sort of politics, in which subjects recognize their situated and constitutive relationship to a particular ontology while also accepting that their ontological commitments are not themselves attached to any transcendent or natural anchor. Such subjects accept that their ontological commitments are not optional, while also accepting that the contingent status of their commitments renders them particular, local, and non-universalizable. Butler offers a similar analysis in her account of the manner in which all theory posits foundations “constituted through exclusions which, taken into account, expose the foundational premise as a contingent and contestable presumption” (1992: 7). Any attempt to elucidate coherently the operations of politics will begin to expose the inadequacy of all attempts to provide a full and final grounding for social life. It is thus the task of theory “to interrogate what the theoretical move that establishes foundations authorizes, and what precisely it excludes or forecloses” (Butler 1992: 7). The task of post-foundational political theory is not to destroy foundations but to make their contingency visible so that politics can incorporate into its regular practice the ongoing interrogation, contestation, and re-formation of the necessary but always necessarily incomplete and inadequate grounds of social and political life. If foundations are contingent artifacts of history and power, should they be accepted as necessary at all? After all, the anti-foundationalist might argue, what warrants the claim that all politics, all manifestations of the social, demand some type of ground? If anti-foundationalism surreptitiously introduces a teleological claim in its emancipatory apriorism, is it not equally clear that postfoundationalism asserts a non-contingent ontological claim: that the social always and everywhere demands a contingent foundation? Moreover, does the postfoundational description of politics posit an even more robust ontological claim that conflict and antagonism over the constitution of meaning is fundamental to human life? Why not simply abandon the implicit ontologies, recognize the uncertainty of the emancipatory telos, and simply hasten the deconstruction of all meta-narratives in order to maximize the possibility for human creativity? It is in this objection that the distinction between post- and anti-foundationalism becomes most clear. Anti-foundationalism, primarily in its post-modern register, asserts not only that meaning and truth are social constructs, but that they are constructs with no meaningful connection to any reality beyond the play of language within which history and politics take place. Post-foundationalism does not go quite this far. For the post-foundationalist, following the Heideggerian account, reality does exist in a knowable way, separate from a purely linguistic game. The meaning of this knowable reality is a product of human practice and the significance of

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reality varies as the horizons of culture and history diverge, but certain aspects of existence can be disclosed accurately. When, for example, we discuss gravity as a natural force of attraction between objects with mass we are not merely engaging in a pragmatic narrative that corresponds to our contingently held interpretation of the world; rather, we are describing an actual phenomenon of existence and using the conceptual apparatus of modern science to make this phenomenon explicable to ourselves. If we instead described how the various natures of objects cause them to bend toward or away from the earth, the same phenomenon is being given meaning within a very different understanding of the world. If we describe gravity as a product of the curvature of space-time, as indicated by general relativity, the same phenomenon is given yet a different social meaning. Yet in each case there is a real phenomenon to be explained, even if the explanations themselves will attenuate over time. Heidegger writes that: Before Newton’s laws were discovered, they were not “true.” From this it does not follow that they were false or even that they would become false if ontically no discoveredness were possible any longer … The fact that before Newton his laws were neither true nor false cannot mean that the things which they point out in a discovering way did not previously exist. The laws became true through Newton, through them beings in themselves became accessible for Dasein (1996: 208).

Heidegger’s assertion is not that all truths are perspectival or relative, as the anti-foundational approach asserts. Something like gravity exists entirely apart from human beings, and we can disclose this aspect of reality in more and less complete or useful ways. That gravity exists, however, does not mean that the truth about gravity exists—truth is a characteristic of meaning, and since only human beings impose meaning through the disclosure of language, the truth of gravity is a temporal artifact of human practices. Heidegger’s claim that truth is a characteristic of human disclosure rather than a characteristic discovered in reality does not mean that all truth is subjective. That all truths are disclosed and perpetuated by subjects does not mean that truth is an arbitrary construct of subjectivity. Heidegger simply points out that “truth” is a quality of human existence which only emerges and only has meaning as a product of human investigation. Thus, truth “is ontically possible only in the ‘subject,’ and stands or falls with the being of that ‘subject’” (1996: 209). There can be no truth without the subject, but that does not mean that the entities which we come to understand within our horizon of meaning would cease to be if we ceased to disclose them; their existence does not depend on our comprehension, but neither does their existence have any meaning or truth absent the engagement of human beings. Moreover, we cannot help but assert truths for ourselves, as we always already find ourselves within a constellation of meaning that makes our world explicable. Making meaning is simply what humans do, even if through inauthentic repetition of the idle chat of others. This is a foundational claim for

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Heidegger, one that animates post-foundational political thought. Heidegger asserts that “We must presuppose truth, it must be as the disclosedness of Da-sein just as Da-sein itself must always be as my own and this particular Da-sein. This belongs to the essential thrownness of Da-sein into the world” (1996: 209-10). Two implications of Heidegger’s position are relevant to the discussion of postfoundationalism. First, he shows that human beings must posit foundations. What is characteristic of our existence is that we make meaning of the world. Since this meaning making always takes place within an already constituted horizon, our subjective experience is already implicated inextricably with the meaning that has previously been disclosed and through which the subject comes to know the world. We cannot simply extricate ourselves from the grounds that make our being meaningful. We presuppose foundations and always find ourselves already shaped by and shaping them. Second, the claim that truth is a social construct does not mean that no truths are accurate and no descriptions fundamental. Ontology cannot reveal the correct meaning of existence, the proper values for politics, or the true path to emancipation; such things are the products of social life. But fundamental ontology can reveal descriptive truths about human experience, and one such truth is the inevitability of foundational narratives. A second such truth is that these narratives will be multiple, they will be in conflict, and they cannot be reconciled. Since all truths are disclosures of Da-sein, and Da-sein is situated within the contingencies of history, culture, and language, there will never be a common ground of appeal to reconcile the various, contradictory, and truthful foundations found in the world of the political. Connolly describes this position as the ontopolitical. Ontology, on his account, implies too strongly that the orders and structures disclosed by such investigation reflect a deeper logic or intention that has been discovered within being. Heidegger shows, however, that no such fundamental design may be found outside of the production of meaning, and that any such design reflects the interpretive work of Da-sein rather than the unearthing of an independent truth. What Heidegger calls ontology is more accurately described as an interpretation of the ontos, an uncovering of the meaning of the things of the world as that meaning has been produced within the social. To the extent this horizon of meaning dictates the range of explicable knowledge guiding human identity and action, its generation and its uncovering are fundamentally political. Hence Connolly prefers to describe ontology as ontopolitical interpretation: Onto, because every political interpretation invokes a set of fundaments about necessities and possibilities of human being, about, for instance, the forms into which human beings may be composed and the possible relations humans can establish with nature. An ontopolitical stance, for instance, might strive to articulate a law or design set into the very order of things. Or it might deny the existence of a law or natural design while still identifying a profound stability of human interests that persists across time. Or it might deflate this theme of stable human interests while striving to draw us closer to a protean abundance

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that enables and exceeds every socially constructed order. To say either that something is fundamental or nothing is fundamental, then, is to engage in ontopolitical interpretation. Hence, every interpretation of political events, no matter how deeply it is sunk in a specific historical context or how high the pile of data upon which it sits, contains an ontopolitical dimension (1995: 1).

In the articulation of the meaning of the world, whether passive or active, authentic or inauthentic, we engage in a political activity that structures the possibilities of politics within our situated social order. We make, critique, accept, and contest the quasitranscendental presuppositions that constitute the meaning of our world, presuppositions which are nevertheless not optional for us. Though the world offers up no meaning, human beings cannot help but make meaning and always find themselves within an ongoing structure of ontopolitical interpretation. As Heidegger puts it, “We must presupposes truth, it must be as disclosedness of Da-sein, just as Da-sein itself must always be as my own and this particular Dasein. This belongs to the essential thrownness of Da-sein into the world” (1996: 209-10). Connolly, drawing on the insights of Heidegger and others, sharpens the political character of the presupposition of truth: we will always find ourselves acting within ontological assumptions about the possibilities of existence. We experience these assumptions as truths given to us from elsewhere, as we only come to understand ourselves within a situated context of already emergent meaning. It follows that all politics takes place upon an interpretive ground that shapes and constrains its parameters. To claim that such foundations are contingent or arbitrary does nothing to avoid their necessity, and to assert that no foundations are necessary would be itself an ontopolitical claim, though a misguided one. If we consider this claim in the context of the distinction between politics and the political, the implications for various attitudes toward foundations should be clear. Ontopolitical interpretation describes a process by which the political is rendered visible. As we make claims about the basis for politics, the justifications for human actions, the criteria for evaluation, the ethical norms of collective decisions, and so forth, we articulate a vision of social truth. Whether made explicit or not, these presuppositions are always in place as the ground of the social and always shape the possibilities of politics. If the ontopolitical interpretation dominant in a social order is deeply accepted as to be beyond contestation, the ontopolitical comes to be seen as the ontological. If the post-foundational account is accurate, these moments in which the ontopolitical become the ontological (or, similarly, where hegemony emerges) are always undermined by the incompleteness and inadequacy of any universalizing narrative. Thus the necessity of foundations carries within it the necessity of their contestation. Marchart argues that “The moment of the political, when society is confronted with its own absent ground and with the necessity to institute contingent grounds, has always already come and does not stop coming. We do not have to wait for the grand historical events of uprisings and revolutions, we always already enact, in the most diverse and shattered ways, the political within the realm of the social” (2007: 174). For the post-foundational

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theorist, ontopolitical interpretation is always occurring and always emerging in a process that is never finally stable and never finally secured, even when hegemony may appear complete. The political is a collective construction, an ongoing ontopolitical interpretation that must be sustained by the subjects it also shapes and constrains. Thus the political is always present as a necessary presupposition and also always susceptible to transformation and contestation. Three major consequences follow for political theory. First, a post-foundational political theory must highlight the contestability of foundations. Accepting the necessity of ontopolitical foundations does not mean accepting that any such manifestation should masquerade as an ontological truth. The danger of contingent foundations is that the experience of living in a social order shaped by such grounds leads to the loss of perspective on this very contingency. It is simpler to accept the universality of the grounding narrative of one’s own political. It is somewhat more difficult to maintain a constant and implacable opposition to all foundations. It is hardest of all to recognize the practical reality of ontopolitical foundations while at the same time maintaining a critical engagement with the very ground that structures the meaning of action. The danger, as Connolly suggests, is that “our own presuppositions acquire the status of quasitranscendentals. But we seek to problematize these too, acknowledging that our best efforts to state our own presuppositions perpetually fall short of the mark and insisting that the presumptions we do elaborate are also contestable responses to the persistent mysteries of existence” (1995: 28). Thus the critical role of post-foundational political theory is to make visible the ontological incompleteness of the political so that alternative interpretations and creative reappropriations might emerge. The alternative, as Connolly also points out, is a nihilistic acceptance of a transcendental account that is always exclusive and incomplete, or a fundamentalist repression of that which exposes the gaps between the quasi-transcendental foundation and the ever more diverse realm of human existence that such an account can never fully adequate. Second, no particular form of politics can be said to follow immediately from post-foundational insights; notably, a post-foundational political theory need not be a democratic one. Attempting to theorize the political implications of the absence of ultimate ground and the inevitability of contingent foundations yields no determinate normative outcome. One might just as easily adopt a cynically elitist post-foundational position as a democratic or liberatory one. We could envision a Schumpeterian post-foundationalism in which the competition for leadership takes place on the terrain of ontopolitical contestation, where elites attempt to both manipulate their constituencies and transform the quasi-transcendental presuppositions of the political in ways that generate more power and control for them. We could envision an explicitly nihilistic post-foundationalism that deploys the contingency of the political to strengthen the implicit assumptions of the dominant social ontology and obscure the gaps and exclusions that always exceed the logic of any particular grounds. More commonly post-foundational thinkers hope to deploy post-foundationalism to advance an explicitly radical or democratic vision. Butler asserts that a post-foundational politics should be

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one that contests and exposes the ontopolitical grounds authorizing the exercise of power, as it “is this movement of interrogating that ruse of authority that seeks to close itself off from contest that is, in my view, at the heart of any radical political project” (1992: 8). Yet while contestation “can be used as part of such a radical agenda…” such outcome is not assured: “Note that I have said, ‘it can be used’; I think there are no necessary political consequences for such a theory, only a possible political deployment” (Butler 1992: 8). Marchart makes a similar point: “We can conclude that from the absence of ground no necessary political consequence follows (for otherwise it would in fact be feasible to ground a particular political worldview – something that was excluded ex hypothesi)” (2007: 4). Thus the move from a post-foundational account of ontopolitical foundations to a normative justification of democratic theory reflects an assertion of will rather than a discovery of a mandate. This does not mean that post-foundationalism does not lend itself better to some political outcomes than others or that normative commitments are to be rejected. Nor does this claim obviate the fact that foundations are always situated within a cultural and historical context, and that this context does not lend itself to every possible outcome. Foundations may be contingent, but they are nevertheless real, and no theory accepting the situated character of the political can propose a normative vision unattainable from within the horizon of possibilities explicable from these grounds. Third, a politics of contestation that recognizes the inevitability of power while creating opportunities to transform that power can foster a democratic ethos. A post-foundational approach to politics provides more fruitful grounds for democratic outcomes than those that posit the necessity of foundations or encourage only resistance to them. While no consensus definition of the essentially contestable concept of democracy unifies political theory, most plausible accounts share a number of common themes, even as the disputed interpretations of these themes go unreconciled. A democratic ethos emphasizes the capacity of the people to control power, the fact of the pluralism of values, the importance of political equality, the centrality of liberty, and a commitment to widespread inclusion. Each dimension is contested within democratic theories, sometimes to the point of incommensurability. For example, deliberative democrats generally hope to render power democratic by forcing those who exercise it to submit to a rationally justified consensus, anti-foundationalists aspire to fracture the power that shapes and sustains social identity to open up opportunities to act in ways less constrained by it, liberals focus on the legitimacy of those who exercise power, and postfoundationalists emphasize the struggle to establish occupation of the empty seat of power created by the democratic destruction of unified sovereignty. In these different versions of democratic aspirations, power is seen as a tool to be used in more and less democratic ways, as an implacable barrier to democratic outcomes, as a social process through which democratic subjectivity can be nurtured or diminished, or as an expression of social relations in which we are all inevitably enmeshed. Similar catalogs could be constructed for other democratic themes:

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is pluralism a fact, a goal, a problem, a product? Is equality a practice, a status, a right, an expectation? Is inclusion legal, cultural, inevitably partial, ultimately impossible? Any democratic theory that proposes the possibility of getting these questions “right” ultimately undermines the democratic ethos by subordinating the contestability of democratic practice to an instrumental pursuit of an outcome for which democracy is simply the means. If the conceptual contestability of democracy is merely provisional rather than essential, and the concept might ultimately be resolved in favor of a final answer, then democracy is, on such accounts, an expression of other, more fundamental values. As a mode of political practice, then, democracy should foreground the ambiguity of the concept and encourage the competition over its definition. Post-foundationalism offers an account of politics most congruent with both the theoretical and practical vision of democracy as an ongoing contest of internal and external values and concepts. The ontological commitment of post-foundationalism to contingently formed but experientially fundamental grounds and the inherent contestability of all such foundational assertions provides a description of politics congruent with a potentially democratic understanding of the social, even if democratic outcomes are not mandated or even expected. A post-foundational theory of the political recognizes that politics always takes place within boundaries and under historical, cultural, and linguistic circumstances that are neither universal nor fully inclusive. Mouffe asserts that “every order is the temporary and precarious articulation of contingent practices. The frontier between the social and the political is essentially unstable and requires constant displacements and renegotiations between social agents” (2005a: 18). All politics emerges from a particular ontopolitical ground, and this ground will authorize certain concepts and not others, make visible some subject positions and not others, identify some as us and some as others. The aspiration for universal inclusion or, negatively, for the exposure and destruction of all modes of exclusion, both evoke a model of the social that ignores the contestation of foundations at the root of politics. Here we see the distinction between the radical and deconstructive vision of democracy as a messianic project that can never be actualized and the post-foundational vision of politics as always involving boundaries, closure, and necessary injustices. Little (2008) exemplifies this distinction in his accusation that agonistic theorists fail to adequately interrogate the idea of democracy itself, instead complacently accepting the dictates of contemporary democratic piety. Drawing on Žižek, Little criticizes agonism’s failure to “recognize that this agonism survives on the basis of the exclusion of those who do not subscribe to the rules of the democratic game.” He concludes that the agonistic approach is dangerous because all “democracies are exclusive and antagonistic to their Others, to some extent, in order to regulate the behaviour of and conduct between those who are included” (Little 2007: 176). The political ideal animating this position seems to be an aspiration to avoid all exclusion, an

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ideal which is impossible to attain. Hence the move toward critique and resistance that characterizes anti-foundational democratic thought. Post-foundationalism shares the concern that exclusion is inextricable from democracy, as it is from all politics, but rejects the aspiration to extinguish exclusion. The only way to escape exclusion and antagonism toward otherness would be to extinguish politics altogether, an aspiration that can only lead to even worse results. The danger of politics is not that some identity or group may be excluded. Exclusion is constitutive of politics. The danger is that this exclusion is constructed as permanent and invisible. The proper response is not to try and do away with exclusion but to put it in play. A potentially democratic politics would be one that highlights the constructed character of the ontopolitical grounds that generate exclusion and supports the resources needed to shift those grounds and thus the relations of oppression. Mouffe takes pains to distinguish her version of democracy: from the type of extreme pluralism that emphasizes heterogeneity and incommensurability and according to which pluralism – understood as the valorization of all differences – should have no limits. I consider that, despite its claim to be more democratic, such a perspective prevents us from recognizing how certain differences are constructed as relations of subordination and should therefore be challenged by radical democratic politics (2000: 20).

All politics inhabits contingent social practices. No order can extinguish exclusion or erode all traces of power. A democratic politics should highlight the inevitability of exclusion and the persistence of power while making the contingency of foundations visible to all. Thus the post-foundational conception of the political lends itself to a democratic aspiration for politics, though one that will always be chastened, incomplete, flawed, and contestable.

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Chapter 2

Agonism and Democracy The theory of agonistic democracy emerged as an alternative to the liberal, deliberative, and aggregative accounts of democracy that dominate contemporary political science and political philosophy. Drawing upon the scholarship of postmodernism, post-structuralism, and radical democracy, agonistic democracy articulates a powerful critique of the attempts to place economic reasoning, instrumental rationality, or impartial public reason at the center of democratic politics. Exposing the remainders and exclusions inevitably generated by the production of consensus and detailing the way in which “common sense” assumptions encapsulate and obscure the operation of power, agonistic theorists undermine all aspirations to impartiality and universal inclusion. The desire to eliminate conflict and forge a legitimate political order based on mutual understanding is revealed as potentially authoritarian at worst and inherently partial and unintentionally oppressive at best. The agonistic alternative envisions democracy as a continual contest amongst incompatible visions, identities, and projects, where no particular hegemonic position can maintain its status for long. This contestation should extend beyond interests and policy to encompass the grounding principles of the political order itself: nothing is fundamental and nothing can be taken off the table. Thus agonistic contestation is not limited to the substance of politics, as the norms of political behavior and the norms governing legitimate engagement are equally open to dispute. All of the elements constitutive of political order must be susceptible to contestation, whether as mundane as the laws of the state or as fundamental as the implicit conception of subjectivity. As Lefort writes, “There is no law that can be fixed, whose articles cannot be contested, whose foundations are not susceptible to being called into question” (1986: 303). While opposition to consensual or interest based models of democracy define the genealogy of agonistic democratic theory, it is not merely an oppositional account. This chapter explores the justification of an agonistic approach independently of its emergence as a critique of “liberalism,” emphasizing instead how agonistic democracy offers an account of democratic aspirations appropriate to postfoundational insights. The first section of the chapter examines how agonistic accounts of politics address post-foundational social implications, particularly pluralism, subjectivity, and power. The uncertainty endemic to openly contingent grounds generates pluralism, and thus conflict. Agonism takes this conflict as central to its democratic vision. Post-foundational political theory recognizes the incomplete, situated, and conflicted character of political agency, and agonistic democrats offer a theory of politics that uses this fractured account of the self to

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generate emancipatory opportunities. Agonistic democrats recognize the ubiquity of power to contingent politics and situated subjects, and offer mechanisms to render this power both visible and contestable. The second section of this chapter distinguishes agonistic democratic theory from radical democracy. While the two approaches share an intellectual lineage and are often discussed interchangeably in the literature, I argue that the objectives of radical democracy are ultimately in tension with those of agonistic thinkers. In particular, agonistic democrats embrace the need for a political order within which conflict can occur in a sustainable and contingently legitimated fashion, while radical democrats identify emancipation with resistance to all institutional structures. Moreover, radical democrats tend to associate emancipatory politics with the complete transformation of liberal social forms, while agonistic democrats are willing to consider reforming rather than overcoming liberalism. I conclude that a post-foundational theory of democracy should adopt the agonistic approach, and that agonistic democracy should be clearly distinguished from radical democracy. Post-Foundationalism and Elements of Agonistic Democracy Pluralism and Uncertainty An agonistic theory of politics asserts that no aspect of the political should be immune from contestation. Agonism precludes the assertion of any telos for political life and challenges all consensual answers to the institutional questions of politics. For democracy to function as a mediating institution, the contestability of the constitution of political formations may never be obfuscated to generate stability and order. Moreover, agonistic democrats approach the uncertainty of postfoundational politics as an opportunity rather than a problem. The impermanence of all stability and contingency of all ontopolitical articulations means that pluralism characterizes all social orders, whether visible or suppressed. According to Mouffe “pluralism is not merely a fact, something that we must bear grudgingly or try to reduce, but an axiological principle. It is taken to be constitutive at the conceptual level of the very nature of modern democracy…” (2000: 19). Pluralism cannot be understood as merely an empirical description of political interests competing within an established framework of rules and values. Pluralism goes deeper, and must grapple “with embedded differences of faith, ontology, and metaphysics that haunt the late-modern world” (Connolly 2008b: 324). The agonistic assertion is not that pluralism is fundamental but that pluralism is an unavoidable outcome of the human impulse to make meaning of a world that does not provide it. Thus pluralism is not itself an ontological fact, but it is an ontopolitical inevitability, insofar as the meaning making of human beings is never susceptible to closure. The possibility of new meanings always exists, and in any social order that is even remotely democratic this possibility will generate pluralistic conflict.

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Politics, and democracy in particular, should be seen as “the medium through which these ambiguities can be engaged and confronted, shifted and stretched” (Connolly 1991: 94). Foundational claims about justice, or political questions in general, are essentially ambiguous and susceptible to transformation and contestation. The most important questions, the kind which make democracy both necessary and desirable, speak directly to the way in which “the political” is constructed, that is, with the basic structures of society and culture. In other words, democracy presumes a constantly evolving rather than reified social context, and thus an understanding of democracy as a permanently provisional social phenomena rather than a particular form of government. This understanding of democracy is not a purely normative or theoretical one; agonistic theorists emphasize the historical horizon within which politics takes place and maintain that the emerging dominance of democratic values makes the latent incompleteness of the ontopolitical recurrently visible to all. The result is a pluralism with depth greater than that described in liberalism, since “modern democracy’s specificity lies in the recognition and legitimation of conflict and the refusal to suppress it by imposing an authoritarian order” (Mouffe 2005a: 30). Most traditional democratic theories attempt to discern a regulative principle to guide political life; agonistic democrats assert that the political can provide no such regulative ideal, since the absence of foundations makes such ideals themselves a target of political intervention. Thus incommensurable pluralism emerges autonomously within the uncertainty and incompleteness of the background conditions which make meaning explicable. Warren summarizes this view of democratic politics well when he writes, in a discussion of Lyotard, that democratic politics emerges as a response to the anxiety of the “groundlessness” of contemporary pluralist politics. In an environment in which all social rules, traditions, or habits are subject to contest, political pressure emerges to forge “collectively binding resolutions, whether the collective is a state, a firm, a church, or a family” (1996: 247). Democracy is one, perhaps the best possible solution to this pressure, if it is understood not as a set of institutions but as a regularized way to respond to uncertainty and conflict. Only democracy “admits that politics is intrinsically uncertain, without denying, in Lyotard’s terms, the “abysses that threaten the social bond.” Democracy “presupposes and registers a profound dislocation of the narrated world” (Warren 1996: 247, quoting Lyotard 1988: 150). Agonistic democracy cultivates and encourages this sort of conflict. Because appeals to an unambiguous and unchallengeable political foundation place truly political questions off limits and below the horizon of dominant discourses, agonistic democracy pursues a practice of conflict or resistance to closure that undermines any such appeal (Lefort 1988: 17). The institutionalization of conflict in democratic politics should not be seen as a valorization of difference for its own sake, a surrender to the inevitability of violence, or a perpetual co-optation of dissident elements. If pluralism under conditions of philosophical uncertainty means that no single account of the good can ever gain universal acceptance, then conflict over the ends and goals of politics is inevitable and desirable. Insofar as democratic political action represents

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communal decisions about the organization of social life, it will always involve serious and sometimes irreconcilable disagreement. The reason democracy should accept and institutionalize conflict is to transform as much as possible the violence engendered by either anarchy or exclusion into forces that productively inform democratic decision-making. Radical heterogeneity ignores the communal aspects of political life and thus leads to violence when agreement becomes impossible. The imposition of a false consensus inevitably leads to exclusion and oppression of a kind that cannot be articulated in the political arena. The result here is also violence. Only a politics that recognizes the impossibility of both absolute inclusion and ultimate, and then dispenses with these ideals as unrealistic teleological aspirations can truly accommodate pluralism, and possibly “convert an antagonism of identity into an agonism of difference” (Connolly 1991: 174). Agonistic Subjectivity The conception of the person that accompanies an agonistic theory of democracy envisions subjects as constituted within the political, cultural, and linguistic structures of their experiences. The agent or actor within a particular society is both created and circumscribed by power, discourse, politics, and tradition, but also represents the permanent possibility of a rearticulation of and resistance to that very articulation. Thus “agonistic politics insists on the internal plurality of the person, who is never quite identical with herself” (McManus 2008: 514). It is not the case that agonistic politics produces agonistic subjects; rather, all persons are constituted by the ontopolitical horizon within which their self-understanding emerges, and as all such ontologies are incomplete and rife with constitutive exclusions, it follows that agency would be similarly prone to incompleteness and contradiction. While it might be possible to construct a politics that effaces the impossibility of fully transparent and self-identical subjects, this internal plurality will always lurk, and can only be repressed or addressed. An agonistic politics accepts this indeterminacy of identity; agonistic democracy offers an account of politics that presumes a plural self and thus is not susceptible to the sort of internal destabilization that occurs individually and institutionally when the impossibility of self-unification emerges, as at always eventually will. For agonistic democrats, the self can no more “ground” politics than justice or rationality. The self, or at least its political and social identity, is constituted and negotiated by and through its encounters with others. Here the influence of Heidegger’s thought is particularly clear.1 For Heidegger, the subject emerges within a history and network of meaning. The individual subject, or Da-sein, has access to meaning and understanding only through its prior enmeshment in 1  Agonistic theorists draw significantly from a number of disparate thinkers to derive convergent arguments. Significant among these influences are Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, and Arendt. All of these theorists are deeply indebted to Heidegger’s insights, though often emphasizing different aspects of his work.

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Mit-Da-sein, or being-with. Since the meaning of social reality only emerges as a common and continuously co-constituted project of the community (Mit-Da-sein) in which a subject finds itself before knowing itself as a “self,” then the range of possibilities open to subjects are constrained by the situation in which they exist. The subject can no more separate itself from its community or history than it can separate itself from itself; self and community are, to a significant degree, co-extensive. Thus the agents of political action are also its products, at least insofar as the historical, social, and communal situations that structure identity are themselves contested and constructed. This view of agency has at least two important implications for the current argument. First, the most important questions of politics and democratic legitimacy emerge at a meta-theoretical level. Since the background conditions and assumptions of a social context serve to constrain and encourage certain types of action and perception, these background conditions emerge as the most important sites of political contestation and analysis. So before we discuss whether a society should adopt, for example, communicative or rational choice standards for democratic decision making, we must first engage critically with the background assumptions forming the context of the decision. This process is ongoing and reflects the core of democratic engagement. Put differently, questions of meaning are also questions of identity, and engagement in politics is equally an engagement in the construction of particular kinds of agency. Second, the conception of democratic citizenship needs to be reconceived. If the conditions of subjectivity are fluid and subject to contestation and revision, then the actors that arise within these conditions must also be.2 For example, the very idea of a monadic agent is itself but a contingent articulation of subjectivity under particular historical conditions. Thus Butler can argue that agency belongs to a way of thinking about persons as instrumental actors who confront an external political field. But if we agree that politics and power exist already at the level at which the subject and its agency are articulated and made possible, then agency can be presumed only at the cost of refusing to inquire into its construction (1993: 13).

Identity and citizenship are on this account politicized through and through. Only an active engagement in the social process through which the subject’s own agency comes into being will permit the emergence of a democratic style of social life. Indeed, agonistic democrats view agency as a decentered and fragile manifestation. In his analysis of political judgment, Feldman describes this phenomenon as “renegotiating the boundaries of the self, and interrogating the exclusions that secure one’s identity in ways that destabilize the self-understandings 2  Feminist theory offers the most sustained account of the post-foundational implications for subjectivity. See Irigaray 1985, Flax 1990, Fraser and Nicholson 1990, DiStefano 1990.

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of the judging ‘I’” (1999: 3). Here we see the outcome of post-foundational insights into identity translated to democratic politics. If democracy involves exerting some meaningful degree of collectively binding control over the circumstances that determine one’s life, and the circumstances of one’s life are already produced and reproduced through our ongoing actions within communities of meaning, such control demands an authentic awareness of the generative processes characterizing daily life. Thus “we are in fact always multiple and contradictory subjects, inhabitants of a diversity of communities (as many, really, as the social relations in which we participate and the subject-positions they define), constructed by a variety of discourses and precariously and temporarily sutured at the intersection of these subject positions” (Mouffe 1988: 44). Individual identity and social institutions are intertwined and inescapable determinates of any type of politics, emancipatory, democratic, or otherwise. Contingent foundations produce contingent identities. Just as every ontopolitical ground combines historical circumstances, human capacities, cultural expectations, and political imperatives in ways that are inevitably contradictory, incomplete, and nonetheless powerfully real, the identity of any particular subject emerges as a combination of similar influences and dispositions that also cannot be easily reconciled. The narrative of foundations imposes unity upon the existential mishmash of influences embedded in these grounds, and the narrative of the univocal self imposes similar unity upon internal plurality of the subject. Since these narratives only obscure but never resolve the conflicts inherent to contingency, both the social and the self are sites of conflict. These conflicts shift in intensity as the narratives of the political and the narratives of identity come in contact in different ways. Social context makes some elements of a subject’s identity relevant and others invisible; the status of relevant elements of identity are never fully under the control of a particular subject. A political theory that associates democratic legitimacy with the resolution of conflict fails to recognize that conflict resolved necessarily means conflict repressed. Democracy, if it is to take seriously the capacity of subjects to shape their own collective life, must take seriously the internal plurality of subjects and the inevitable antagonism such plurality evokes. Connolly suggests that the task of democracy is to “identify those patterns of insistence in a society to idealize its own formations and then project counter-strategies by which to expose multiple points of discrepancy between institutional idealizations and that which they contain or subjugate” (1991: 163). Agonistic democratic theory, in its myriad articulations, always emphasizes the importance of identity as a central feature of politics, and the primacy of identity as an issue of politics. Power, the “People,” and Sovereignty The construction of subjectivity obviously implies the presence of power. Agonistic democrats recognize the ineluctable operation of power in all

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elements of the social, from the direct exercise or threat of violence to the almost imperceptible fashioning of seemingly apolitical cultural norms. Consistent with its post-structural and post-foundational roots, agonism asserts an understanding of power that is systemic, dispersed, internalized, and constitutive; power pervades the social order. While it is true that some agents can exercise direct coercion over others, and this coercion is a manifestation of power, agonistic democrats are as interested in the social relations, historical meanings, and cultural expectations that legitimize this coercion. Moreover, agonists assert that to the extent democracy depends upon a vision of equality and liberty, an adequate understanding of power must take into account the ways in which external and internal forces operate to constrain or expand the instantiation of these values. Finally, agonistic democrats recognize that power can neither be overcome or legitimized. As an element of the social order providing meaning to the lived world, power has an ontological character; individual subjects can no more escape the influence of others than they could escape their own history. We come to our identities already enmeshed within influences we can never fully control. Nor can these relations of control and influence be made legitimate, in the sense of our obtaining autonomous control over them. Power, as Foucault describes it “is everywhere not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere … power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society” (1978: 93). Power describes an element of our situated character, the element of human existence that is beyond the control of any particular individual or group and can only be identified, articulated, and influenced, but not overcome. That power is unavoidable does not mean it is unidentifiable. Its operation is complex and often difficult to discern, but careful attention and thoughtful critique can produce a coherent account of the terrain within which power operates. For most agonistic democrats, this account describes hegemony. Every set of foundational claims sets in motion relations of force, establishes norms and practices, and defines the boundaries of the perceivable. Every political ground identifies some possibilities and obscures others, fosters some visions of human flourishing while diminishing others. Mouffe, drawing upon Gramsci, Foucault, and her own work with Laclau, asserts that hegemonic power is fundamental to all political order, and thus to all social life: Every order is political and based on some form of exclusion. There are always other possibilities that have been repressed and that can be reactivated. The articulatory practices through which a certain order is established and the meaning of social institutions is fixed are ‘hegemonic practices.’ Every hegemonic order is susceptible to being challenged by counter-hegemonic practices, i.e. practices which will attempt to disarticulate the existing order so as to install another form of hegemony (2005a: 18).

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Democratic theory aspires to identify and develop practices that will challenge the oppression endemic to the current hegemony while recognizing that any newly installed hegemonic order will itself produce new exclusions. The way to render power more democratic is to make its operations and costs more visible, and thus more susceptible to counter-hegemonic narratives. Here is a striking and central distinction between agonistic democrats and most other democratic theories. The objective of traditional democratic thought is to bring power under the control of citizens, ideally in such a way that coercion is rendered unnecessary or legitimate. Power is legitimate if it is only used to help citizens conform to laws they have (or would have) created for themselves, laws to which they submit consciously and to which they have plausible alternatives. Agonistic democrats view this ambition as misguided, if well-intentioned. There can be no politics that is beyond power, no politics that creates conditions for either individual autonomy or fully legitimate law. There can only be more visible and less visible structures of power, and practices that make those impacted by the cultural and political order more rather than less able to challenge hegemony. As Mouffe writes in her analysis of the danger of the attempt to transcend conflict, “Such an approach overlooks the fact that since power relations are constitutive of the social, every order is by necessity a hegemonic order” (2005a: 106). Democracy does not mean the escape from or domestication of power, but the implementation of contestation over power’s meaning, extent, source, and impact. For agonistic democrats power is not a problem to be solved or a tool to be deployed. It cannot be conceived separate from its operation and quarantined from the actions of the people. What Lefort calls the “political originality of democracy” consists in its recognition that power has no basis or source and thus can be neither circumscribed nor controlled, only contested (1988: 34). Democracy resists the impulse to locate power in a single source in order to end the conflict over its legitimacy. Instead: The division between legitimate and illegitimate is not materialized within the social space; it is simply removed from the realm of certainty, now that no one can take the place of the supreme judge, now that this empty place sustains the demand to know. In other words, modern democracy invites us to replace the notion of a regime governed by laws, of legitimate power, by the notion of a regime founded upon the legitimacy of a debate as to what is legitimate and what is illegitimate – a debate which is necessarily without any guarantor and without any end (Lefort 1988: 39).

Democracy provides no answer to the question, “how do we legitimize the exercise of power?” Once the certainty of transcendence dissolves in modernity, only two options follow: the contingency of the markers that define the boundaries of social life must be recognized, or this contingency must be concealed to fend off the internal conflict that uncertainty inaugurates. As Lefort points out, the latter strategy, which attempts to finally identify the source of power, to identify

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its essence and thus conceal the conflict at the heart of the social, defines the totalitarian disposition. The democratic response to the post-foundational condition must be to embrace the antagonism that is constitutive of the social order so that the conflict over the appropriate use of and resistance to power moves to the center of political life. The centrality of conflict to democratic politics can be seen in the agonistic analysis of the identity of the “people.” Democratic theory always presumes a people who are invoked to exercise democratic authority. In the simplest form, the people form themselves and then form a government to express their will. The social contract tradition provides the most direct model: individuals come together out of nature, choose to combine their wills or limit themselves by contract, and institute legitimate government. If the people constitute themselves first, then government can, if properly designed, express their will and avoid the problem of illegitimacy. But, as many have pointed out, this rhetorical position encapsulates a paradox: if the people already exist as a unity with a will that can be transferred or enacted, how did this unity come to be? Unless we assert a strong teleological account of the formation of society, this institution of the unity of the people is itself an enactment of power, which must also be interrogated if the legitimacy of the people’s institution of sovereignty is to be evaluated. Obviously this question becomes more complicated for agonistic democracy, since the subjects that might make up the people are always already constituted by a range of discourses and forces beyond their control. Any collective identity forged by such subjects will take place within the heritage of identities and historical possibilities available to them. Having abandoned the a priori of the self-constituting subject, the production of a collective identity for “the people” cannot be taken as a starting point for any story of political formation. Rather, the identity of the people is itself an ongoing contest. The thematization of collective identity dominant at any particular time provides the boundaries of meaning within which everyday politics operates. Politics requires some stabilization of contingency and conflict in order to operate, and this stabilization is described by the analysis of hegemony. The people emerge as the people only within hegemonic order, and are both constituted by and constitute through their practices this very order. Agonistic democrats thus understand the status of the people as another element of fundamental contestation rather than the postulate upon which democracy is founded or the product democratic institutions are to produce: In the paradox of politics by contrast, with its plural “once upon a time” and “in the beginning” temporalities, the problem is that the people are always also a multitude, the general will is inhabited by the will of all, the law(giver) is possibly a charlatan, and political theorists’ objectivity is also partisan. Here, we get neither deliberation nor decision as such; we get a politics, in which plural and contending parties make claims in the name of public goods, seek

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Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy support from various constituencies, and the legitimacy of outcomes is always contestable (Honig 2007: 14).

Foundations are contingent, identity is plural, and the “people” is contested. Conflict characterizes every element of political life, and the boundaries within which democratic institutions are authorized are themselves an object of contestation. The crystallization of foundation, identity, and boundaries express hegemony, which is the condition of possibility for social order. Agonistic democrats recognize that politics “concerns the construction of collective identities and the creation of a ‘we’ as opposed to a ‘them.’ Politics, as the attempt to domesticate the political, to keep at bay the forces of destruction and to establish order, always has to do with conflicts and antagonism” (Mouffe 1993: 141). The fact that hegemony is fundamental to the social is not inconsistent with the recognition that any particular hegemony is partial, exclusive, and contingent, nor is such recognition incompatible with calls to contest and refigure the boundaries so necessarily but contingently imposed by history, culture, and institutions. Distinguishing Agonistic and Radical Democracy: Emancipation and Order Traditionally the democratic ideal aspires to create conditions under which individuals can exert control over any power that impacts them, can come together to author legislation, and use collective power to shape the world. The emancipatory principle of democratic theory invokes liberation from arbitrary power and demands control over the conditions of one’s own life. For liberals emancipation involves some combination of protections against arbitrary coercion and a right to choose one’s own ultimate ends. For participatory democrats emancipation occurs when the demos exercises consistent control over the exercise of sovereign authority. For anarchists and libertarians, emancipation can only emerge once the state has withered away to leave self-determining, self-legislating individuals in its wake. For Marx emancipation occurs when human beings overcome their alienation from their own capacities for creation and autonomy.3 For deliberative democrats emancipation demands collective decisions be guided by public criteria of validity. Thus in democratic manifestations of emancipatory theories, creating circumstances conducive to self-realization and/or autonomy represents the condition under which collective sovereignty becomes possible, regardless of the model of collective sovereignty proposed. For example, Pateman (1970) is concerned with the authoritarian psychology citizens develop under capitalism and hopes to transform this cast of mind through increased participation in the workplace, while Dahl (1991) emphasizes the importance of recognizing the intrinsic equal moral worth of each citizen. In general, these ideals rest upon an 3  “Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to man himself” (Marx 1978: 46).

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assumption that, as Horkheimer puts it, emancipation must “liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (1982: 244). Post-foundational democrats cannot endorse a vision of emancipation intended to produce the autonomy of the subject. As beings situated within history, language, culture, and politics, our circumstances are inextricably bound up with our identity. Any democratic model built upon post-foundational insights must begin with recognition of the situated character of subjects who can never be the autonomous authors of their own agency. We are constituted within and against the hegemonic character of our existing social order, and any alternative must emerge from within that order; the alternatives so produced will not represent an escape from hegemony and power but the modification of the previous hegemony in the production of a new one. Human beings can never be liberated from their circumstances, exempted from the influences of power, freed from the psychological impact of their experiences, or restored to their true, unalienated self. All such visions of emancipation presume a foundational assertion about the reality of human existence betraying an aspiration to universalize a particular hegemonic vision of the world. If not liberation from circumstances, what might emancipation mean for agonistic democracy? Given the range of approaches no single unified theory of agonistic emancipation is likely. But two general themes are found in varying intensities in all agonistic theories: emancipation involves identifying the harms and exclusions endemic to the operation of power and creating conditions that permit active engagement in the ongoing constitution of the social order. The first theme expresses the critical impetus of agonism, while the second expresses its practical aims. It is important to note that both reflect a commitment to the democratic ideals of equality and liberty, and that such commitment cannot be grounded on any further justifications other than will and history. The decision to advocate democratic values does not follow from a recognition of postfoundational ontology, nor can these values be deduced from the absence of common grounds. Thus agonistic democracy does not claim to offer a more accurate articulation of democratic values or a more liberatory account of these beliefs; it simply asserts that the most effective means to pursue democratic ends demand acknowledgment of the situated and hegemonic character of politics, and that a democratic theory based upon a vision of equality and liberty consistent with post-foundational insights is likely to foster a political culture and political practices that express these ideals with fewer negative consequences and fewer unacknowledged undemocratic consequences. The critical theme of agonistic emancipation has its roots in the radical democratic approaches with which agonism shares an intellectual lineage. Radical democrats, drawing substantially upon post-structuralism and contemporary Marxism, offer a vision of democracy as resistance to power, privilege, and domination. Focusing on difference, identity, and power, radical democrats attempt to trace the operations of subordination in order to challenge the practices that produce domination. Since the discursive construction of social meaning

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always generates remainders and exclusions, radical democrats urge a relentless resistance to all moves to concretize boundaries or formulate stable identities. In its prevailing modality, radical democracy is a practice of resistance as much as a theory of democracy. Vázquez-Arroyo, in his critique of Connolly’s agonism, describes this disposition as follows: “democracy has traditionally been the means by which subordinated constituencies have sought to change their social lot–namely the means by which constituencies that have traditionally been dominated or displaced in liberal-democratic societies have put forward their claims” (2004: 12). The practice of radical democracy requires the “attempt to resist the terms of discussion and engagements that the status quo imposes” (2004: 15). Thus radical democrats respond to the absence of grounds by identifying democratic practice with resistance to any movement to establish foundations, however contingent, as these moves inevitably create relations of privilege, exclusion, and domination. Moreover, “a radical democratic approach to exclusions would have to put into question any attempt, successful or not, at the construction of antagonistic frontiers, as this would rely on a notion of identity as stable and clearly delimited” (Thomassen 2005: 109). The difference in emphasis between radical and agonistic democrats derives not from their common recognition of the absence of transcendent grounds but in their slightly different assertions about how this fact impacts democratic values. For radical theorists, democracy represents an absolute ideal of political equality, mass participation, and non-domination which can only be approached but never be obtained. Democracy, to use Derrida’s popular description, is a messianic aspiration rather than a state to be achieved, and is therefore always “democracy to come.” For radical democrats, democracy is both an eschatological principle and an instrumental practice. The impossible ideal of “democracy to come” provides the regulative ambition against which current conditions may be exposed in their partiality and injustice, while the practices of democratic activism are oriented toward establishing more egalitarian and inclusive social practices. Since democracy cannot be achieved, democratic action and critical engagement merge in an oppositional practice intended to continually create opportunities for the excluded, the dominated, and the oppressed to voice their identities and express some sort of partial agency. Agonistic democrats, while accepting the hopelessness of achieving a fully inclusive and egalitarian democracy, emphasize instead the possibilities present within current manifestations of “democracy” and “liberalism” that may offer resources for coming closer to that unattainable horizon. The purpose of critique is to make the constructed character of the social visible so that it can be further politicized and thus rendered susceptible to alteration. For agonists democratic critique is not merely instrumental and tactical but strategic and substantive. It is strategic in the sense that the re-signification of the social order opens up more possibilities for advancing some version of equality and liberty. It is substantive because political engagement always advances or transforms the dominant cultural hegemony; actively working to create a hegemony that is more inclusive, more

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egalitarian, more participatory, and more visibly accessible to re-signification is a core expression of agonistic politics. Thus for radical democrats the oppositional politics they propose is never itself democratic but always a tactic intended to resist operations power, while for agonistic democrats an oppositional politics that successfully alters the ontopolitical narratives structuring social life can, itself, be a form of democratic engagement. The positive articulation of this critical impulse emerges in the agonistic commitment to empower citizens. It is not sufficient to expose and contest the operations of power, as doing so will not necessarily result in democratic outcomes. Instead the agonistic project emphasizes the creation of a symbolic space or regime of cultural intelligibility enabling citizens to engage in contestation without destroying the conditions of association that make community possible. It is not sufficient to resist the depoliticization of pluralism endemic to contemporary liberalism, nor is it sufficient to enable oppositional sites within civil society. Absent the anti-foundational faith in the emancipatory a priori, a faith also implicit in radical democratic theory, agonistic democrats insist that critique be accompanied by an account of social order. Thus a democratic polity must propose terms of political association that permit antagonists to see themselves as part of the same community while fostering practices of critique and contestation in civil and political society. It is important to note that agonistic democrats, unlike radical democratic theorists, generally share a commitment to the idea of functioning pluralist democracy. While radical democrats take the position “that democracy is not a form of government or set of institutions but rather a moment marking the practice of politics itself” (Lloyd and Little 2009: 3), agonistic democrats are concerned precisely to articulate a theory of politics extending beyond episodic democratic eruptions to a model of democratic politics that combines contestation and stability. It shares with radical democracy the impulse to unleash the conflicts endemic to contingency and expose the stratagems by which traditional institutions suppress the volatility of plurality, but maintains the aspiration to establish a political order within which this conflict can take place without lapsing into dysfunction. In many ways this impulse is a rather conservative one, given its acceptance of the inevitability that the powers shaping social life will remain ever elusive while at the same time working to establish means to channel this power: The main question of democratic politics becomes then not how to eliminate power, but how to constitute forms of power which are compatible with democratic values. To acknowledge the existence of relations of power and the need to transform them, while renouncing the illusion that we could free ourselves completely from power – this is what is specific to the project that we have called ‘radical and plural democracy.’ Such a project recognizes that the specificity of modern pluralist democracy–even a well-ordered one – does not reside in the absence of domination and of violence but in the

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Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy establishment of a set of institutions through which they can be limited and contested (Mouffe 2000: 22).

Emancipation occurs not, or not simply, through moments of resistance to power or the creation of space for difference to emerge but through the development of the capacity to shape power in more democratic and inclusive ways while enabling ongoing contestation of the symbolic, hegemonic, and practical manifestations of power. In order for contestation to be democratic rather than only oppositional, it must take place within a social framework that allows those in conflict to envision themselves as part of a shared order, even as they are encouraged to contest this same order. Thus conflict “needs to take a form that does not destroy the political association” (Mouffe 2005a: 20). Why must conflict occur within a relatively stable social order? For agonistic democracy the emancipatory ideal involves the creation of a symbolic order, cultural ethos, or political association that permits the subjects of power to engage explicitly and collectively the forces that constitute them. While it is never possible to master the contingency of a post-foundational world, it is possible to engage these forces in intentional and critical ways. To the extent democratic values involve some element of individual and popular sovereignty, the post-foundational account of democracy can express these values in terms of influence rather than control. It is undemocratic to be structured by forces of which one is unaware and over which one has no control; it is undemocratic to peddle the illusion that one is unfettered by such influences, as such an illusion reduces to lack of awareness. It is not undemocratic to recognize the limited realm of influence one might have on the circumstances of life and then work, individually and collectively, to maximize and extend that influence. Here we see both the idea of democracy as an ethos and democracy as an institutional order. The ethos expresses the aspiration for influence over emerging possibilities: it is an egalitarian constitution of cultural life that encourages people to participate in defining their own troubles and possibilities regardless of where these troubles originate and how narrow or broad they are in scope; it is, moreover, an ethos through which newly emerging constellations might reconstitute identities previously impressed upon them, thereby disturbing the established priorities of identity/difference through which social relations are organized; it is, therefore, a social process through which fixed identities and naturalized conventions are pressed periodically to come to terms with their constructed characters… (Connolly 1995: 153).

The democratic ethos expresses the critical commitment of agonistic democracy to constantly interrogate the processes through which meaning emerges in order to extend and reshape the possibilities available to citizens, thus expressing a notion of critique that is directed not only at disruption but also constructive engagement. The institutional commitment expresses the importance of establishing conditions

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under which this ethos can be fostered, that permit contestation, uncertainty, and disruption without dissolving the bonds of association that permit pluralism to flourish. This means that institutional conditions must be devised that highlight the contingently hegemonic character of the rules, procedures, and power of these institutions in order to encourage conflict over the basis of social order, while also providing sufficient commonality that these conflicts do not destroy the conditions necessary to exert democratic influence over our ongoing and contingent constitution as subjects. Thus, a “democratic ethos balances the desirability of governance through democratic means with a corollary politics of democratic disturbance through which any particular pattern of previous settlements might be tossed up for grabs again” (Connolly 1995: 154). The agonistic focus on the creation of conditions amenable to contestation combined with their attentiveness to the situated character of politics provokes revealing objections from radical democrats. Vázquez-Arroyo claims Connolly subverts democratic potentiality since “order and restrained partisanship seem to take precedence over democratic participation and equality” (2004: 9). Tally asserts Mouffe’s theory “does not seem very radical at all” insofar as it “winds up reinforcing the status quo” (2007: 8). Both object that agonistic democracy seems ultimately content to reform and improve current institutional and symbolic structures instead of overturning them. The objection reflects the deeply shared sensibility of radical democrats that politics is about transforming the world rather than improving existing forms. Thomassen captures this orientation well: Although any radical politics will have to start from the present order of things and take it seriously, the notion of heterogeneity gives us a way to think a form of radical democracy and politics that does not take the limits of the present as its ultimate – and fundamental – horizon of possibility. Radical politics is not the art of the possible, but the art of making possible what is impossible in the present (2005:114).

To the extent agonism represents the theory of democracy most appropriate to post-foundationalism, it concentrates not on making the impossible possible (though that might be a welcome if unintended by-product) but on reworking the existing order to unleash the emancipatory potential latent within the ontopolitical interpretation that shapes the present. A slightly different account of the differences between radical and agonistic accentuates the substantive assumptions each bring to their descriptions of democratic ideals. Despite its post-structural embrace, radical democracy posits an implicit good. Inspired in part by a republican and Marxist orientations toward the purposes of democratic politics, radical democrats evaluate politics with reference to its capacity to produce a more egalitarian distribution of power, recognition, and/or resources. To the extent liberalism cannot produce a dramatically more egalitarian distribution of these goods, nor even articulate the ways in which equal dignity is denied to otherness, contemporary political

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institutions can never be redeemed, only overcome. As Tally argues in his critique of Mouffe, “A radical democracy founded on adversarial politics cannot simply replicate existing structures of liberal, parliamentary democracy. It must change the game” (2007: 12). Democracy, on this account, simply cannot be achieved within the liberal framework, as the two are substantively opposed. Agonistic democrats are focused on the contest of politics itself, presuming no common good is possible. Protecting pluralism by engaging conflict in nondestructive, even productive, ways is the proper response to contemporary conditions of uncertainty, not because such an outcome is good in itself (or even the implicit objective of normative democracy) but because it best captures the historical values and shared principles available within contemporary democratic culture. While agonistic theorists generally expect that an egalitarian polity is most conducive to democratic outcomes, substantive equality is a by-product of agonistic politics. Certainly significant inequalities of power, resources, recognition, or information (amongst other things) will undermine the capacity of institutions to foster an agonistic political culture, and thus undermine the democratic ethos. And agonistic democrats presume that empowering more citizens to challenge one another and the “rules of the game” themselves will lead to greater equality as well as increased liberty. But they do not argue that these outcomes can only emerge when liberal values, institutions, and structures are overcome. Mouffe advances this claim most clearly when she refuses the demonization of liberal democracy, asserting “Liberal-democratic institutions should not be taken for granted: it is always necessary to fortify and defend them” (2000: 4). For her agonistic democracy is an extension and reformation of the promise of contemporary liberal institutions, intended to begin to realize their best potential, deficient as such practices may be in contemporary society. Vázquez-Arroyo, by contrast, asserts that liberalism and democracy are essential opposed values, since liberalism “is awash with promises of freedom and equality but it is incapable of realizing them” (2004: 8). The contrast here is stark: Mouffe wishes to fortify liberal institutions in order to realize their democratic promise; Vázquez-Arroyo insists that the status quo of liberal democracy renders its promises not merely illusory but unattainable. For radical democrats the substantive outcome of surpassing liberalism and all other contemporary forms of inegalitarian order is the objective of democratic politics. The objective of agonistic democrats is deepening the possibilities for adversarial conflict within existing liberal democratic structures in ways that better resonate with the ontopolitical commitments to liberalism and equality. Disch articulates another useful conceptualization of the distinction I wish to draw. She suggests theorists of radical democracy (amongst whom she includes those approaches I have labeled agonistic)4 can be differentiated by 4  Disch’s comments occur in a review of Tonder and Thomassen (2005). This collection posits that the difference between an ontology of abundance and an ontology of lack explains some of the variation in approaches to radical democracy. Disch is “ultimately unpersuaded to view “lack” and “abundance” as distinct ontologies” (2009: 3), but does find

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their assumptions about character of effective political agency. She identifies “the sharpest difference between these two schools of radical democracy: the difference between insisting on the agency of representation and trusting in the agency of self-organizing complexity” (2009: 9). Theorists who associate agency with representation consider institutional structure a condition of effective action and thus approach democratic politics as a matter of organization and institutions. Democratic action emerges within, in response to, and on the terrain of institutional politics. Theorists guided by faith in the democratic potential of self-organization and spontaneous insurgency view politics as oppositional. Democratic action takes place in the disruption of institutional order, which stands in the way of genuine popular politics. I claim that agonistic democracy presumes the agency of representation, and thus also a politics of institutions, while the opposition of radical democrats to institutional accounts is informed in part by their confidence in the self-organizing potential of democratic agency. Theoretical assertions dependent upon spontaneous or anarchic organization are problematic for post-foundational theories of democratic politics, insofar as such claims imply either a telos of organization or an extra-contextual capacity of subjects to coordinate politically. The emphasis of radical democrats on resistance, insurgency, and critique relies implicitly on a vision of politics in which the demos has the capacity to act in meaningful ways once barriers to that action are weakened. It is through work that reconfigures identities, local practices, linguistic relations, or other aspects of the everyday politics, or, conversely, through the disruption and fracturing the power of the hegemonic actors, that democratic possibilities emerge. The faith that these possibilities will express themselves democratically and politically rather than violently and chaotically is posited but rarely defended, or even articulated. That asymmetries of power and entrenched practices are barriers to egalitarian, participatory, or consensual politics would be accepted by both agonistic and radical thinkers; that the removal or erosion of these structures would lead to spontaneous expressions of democratic renewal would not. If the agonistic approach takes seriously the situated character of the political order, it is only through careful reformation of existing conditions that democratic possibilities might be realized, since those possibilities are neither inherent to subjects nor a privileged possibility of spontaneous self-organization. The possibilities for democratic renewal are possibilities cultivated by the contingent circumstances that make deeper democratization feasible, and it is by heightening, extending, and transforming these opportunities that democratic politics can emerge. This distinction is captured succinctly in Vázquez-Arroyo’s indictment of Connolly: “in this theory, there is a built-in failure to consider structural and institutional aspects of power in contemporary capitalist liberal democracies. This failure ultimately sabotages the possibilities of democratic renewal, while the groupings useful for understanding how various approaches interact with institutional politics. I share her skepticism of the abundance/lack division, especially as many agonistic thinkers fit neatly into neither category.

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allowing for centralized and crystallized forms of power to operate unnoticed and unhindered” (2004: 10). I take the point of this claim to be that Connolly’s focus on the cultivation of a democratic ethos drawn from the social and cultural resources available within contemporary liberal democracy represents a cooptation of democracy, since it takes as a starting point those institutions and structures that maintain the oppressive power democratic theory should resist. Because he does not reject existing modes of liberal democracy tout court, Connolly must propose a depoliticized understanding of democracy, one that denies the prospects for radical transformation necessary for spontaneous self-organization to emerge. In fact, “rather than offering a democratic critique of the tensions between democracy, liberalism, and the ideas he cherishes, Connolly has proceeded to cast democratic pluralism in a liberal light” (Vázquez-Arroyo 2004: 10-11). The objection illustrates the division between radical and agonistic positions, particularly their divergent understanding of the appropriate way to engage with the contingencies of the present. Connolly is undemocratic to the extent his theory accepts elements of liberal politics. He fails to offer an adequate “democratic critique” precisely because he refuses the stark division between a liberal politics, a democratic politics, and his own ideals. Pluralism cannot also be democratic unless it is unstained by liberalism. The objection reduces almost to tautology: democracy is the overcoming of liberalism; Connolly’s agonism does not overcome but reinterprets liberalism; therefore Connolly’s agonism is conceptually incapable of offering democratic critique. The problem for post-foundationalism is that liberalism is an unavoidable, and dominant, element of the contingent situation within which a more democratic politics would emerge, and thus cannot be overcome or eliminated. Agonistic theorists who take post-foundational premises seriously recognize the obduracy of institutions and the role they must play in organizing democratic politics. Resistance or critique may help to transform these structures in ways the make more democratic possibilities available (as radical democrats rightly observe), but these possibilities emerge within the continuum of history. Vázquez-Arroyo’s objection stems from a normative vision of democracy as something the emerges once oppressive, dominating, exclusive relations of power are stripped of their potency so as to enable the impossible in the present. A post-foundational theory that shares the same normative commitments asserts that these structures should be reworked, revised, and reformed to deepen the possibilities already latent within them. I maintain that the post-foundational political condition is most appropriately expressed by the agonistic theory of democracy, at least for those societies in which a commitment to liberty, equality, and democratic values shapes the contours of the symbolic. Agonism offers an account of politics appropriate to the contingency of ontopolitical foundations, the inescapability of hegemonic power, the constructed and situated character of subjectivity, the inevitability of antagonism, and the importance of institutions. The recognition that the framework of social order is both contingent and autonomous leads to the claim that conflict over the meaning, principles, values, procedures, assumptions, and institutions that form social life

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is endemic. Moreover, since the possibilities of identity and the constitution of interests can never be fully apprehended within any single account of the social, the particular hegemony that governs politics at any time always creates exclusion and oppression, as every attempt to establish a fully transparent or universal narrative produces external remainders made inexplicable within the metapolitics of hegemony. The excess of meaning describes the fundamental presence of pluralism in politics, as the norms established by hegemonic practices always encourage some groups and identities while rendering other invisible, irrational, or alien. A commitment to the values of liberty and equality under these conditions leads to the conclusion that a politics of contestation offers the most plausible route to more democratic outcomes, as a politics of contestation enables subjects to identify and intervene within the historical possibilities shaping their lives. By challenging the depoliticizing tendencies of normative power, contestation extends the cognizable boundaries of pluralism, and thus extends liberty and equality. This extension is never absolute, and always comes at the cost of some new exclusion. Agonistic democracy accepts the impossibility of full democratic inclusion as well as the inherent violence constitutive of all political orders and seeks not to overcome but to channel and illuminate these unavoidable perils. Finally, agonistic democrats evidence a commitment to building political institutions rather than the iconoclastic resistance to power evinced by radical democrats. These must be chastened, imperfect, self-undermining and evidently contingent institutions, but institutions there must be. Institutional structures already shape the horizon within which power operates, and these contain within them possibilities that may either foster or undermine democratic values. The challenge is to identify and nurture the possibilities within our historical situation that might sustain an agonistic practice of democratic politics.

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Chapter 3

A Typology of Agonistic Democracy Post-foundational thinkers claim the dominant trends in democratic theory (deliberative democracy, social choice theory, liberalism) depoliticize the assumptions of their models in an attempt to tame or restrict the conflict implicit in the fact of difference. By contrast, agonistic approaches assert that democratic politics must embrace the irreducibility of radical pluralism, and work to cultivate a politics in which no particular set of values, identities, or rules may establish itself as beyond contestation. Agonistic democrats offer an account of democratic practice consistent with the post-foundational assertion that no ultimate ground exists to resolve social conflict. Political order nonetheless demands some sort of shared presuppositions. Post-foundational political theory demonstrates that such presuppositions are at the same time necessary, contingent, and incomplete. Thus agonistic democrats envision political conflict as both extending to all aspects of the social order, as do radical democrats, while recognizing the necessity of establishing a context within which such contestation can take place. It is not sufficient for agonistic democrats to encourage conflict and critique; this conflict must take place in ways that produce relatively stable democratic outcomes, and thus demand a focus on the institutional conditions under which agonistic encounters emerge. The challenge for agonistic democratic theory is to establish a basis for collective decision-making given the contingent status of common beliefs under contemporary conditions of radical pluralism. This chapter provides context to evaluate institutions appropriate to agonistic democracy by developing a comprehensive typology of agonistic democratic theories. This typology serves two purposes. First, it clarifies the status of agonistic democracy as a theoretical project. Though they share post-foundational premises and endorse the essentially contestatory character of democratic politics, agonistic theorists propose a wide range of interpretations of these commitments. A comprehensive classification of theoretical approaches helps illustrate the range of understandings in the literature. Second, this analysis helps to identify which approaches are better suited to articulate institutional models and what range of institutional understandings are appropriate to an agonistic approach. These various approaches are not clearly demarcated, and any categorization will understate the degree to which agonistic theories deploy similar assumptions and methods in overlapping ways, but it is important to articulate a framework within which to situate agonistic theories if progress toward institutional implications is to be made. A number of scholars have proposed such distinctions, though their typologies group agonistic theories in very different ways using disparate criteria

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depending on the research questions that animate their analyses.1 In the following I try to catalog accurately all the theoretical accounts which have been labeled as “agonistic” and describe them clearly using their own texts. In the first section I suggest a coherent typology of the possible agonistic visions for democratic politics, bringing together disparate theoretical accounts in comprehensive framework derived from agonism itself rather than in the service of other arguments. In the second section I outline the central issues common to most agonistic theories and examine how the interpretation of these elements varies. In the final section I offer some reflections about the implications of these approaches for understanding democratic sovereignty in order to guide thinking about agonistic institutions. I conclude that those theories commonly considered “agonistic” can be divided into two basic camps, one focused on resistance and one emphasizing pluralist politics. The agonism of resistance, which encourages resistance to all social structures, associates democracy with disruption of the symbolic order, views differences of identity as irreconcilable, and thus views all politics as competitive. Pluralist agonism, which endorses the possibility of constructing social structures that are not inevitably unjust, emphasizes the interdependence of identity, and views contestation as a potential fount for reciprocity, offers a conception of democracy both most appropriate to post-foundational insights and most likely to generate institutional possibilities. The agonisms of resistance do not lend themselves to an account of institutional politics, while pluralist agonistic theories offer resources to support institutional prescriptions; in the remainder of

1  Schaap (2007) asserts that agonistic theorists must choose between a republican and realist concept of the political, with republicans understanding “political conflict as having a potentially world-disclosing or integrative function” (2007: 60) and realists envisioning politics as an inevitably exclusive enterprise in which identities only arise as a consequence of distinctions. Karagiannis and Wagner (2008) suggest a similar division, claiming agonistic democrats are either Arendtian or Schmittian. Arendtian agonists believe “some broad agreement about the nature of the common good is primary to the struggle among the citizens” (2008: 329), while Schmittian agonists deny the possibility of a common good and endorse conflict itself as end of democratic politics. Fossen (2008) suggests that agonistic democrats be distinguished by their different normative bases, emphasizing either emancipation or perfectionism. Emancipatory agonists hope to expose the exclusion and violence inherent in all attempts to manage difference and are largely defined by their critique of liberalism and deliberative democracy. Perfectionist agonism emphasizes individual subject formation in the pursuit of a standard of excellence. Based on the work contained in the edited volume Law and Agonistic Politics, Schaap offers a second typology, categorizing agonistic thinkers as pragmatic, expressivist, or strategic (2009: 1). Pragmatic agonism attempts to increase political participation by clarifying the options between right and left while defusing potential extremism by offering political passions an attractive outlet. Expressivist agonism concentrates on identity and resistance to oppressive social constructions. Strategic agonism envisions contestation as a tool in the struggle of the excluded and unequal to redress injustice.

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the book I will use agonistic democracy to refer only to those versions I categorize as “pluralist.” A Typology of Agonistic Democracy All agonistic democrats share some common presuppositions. (1) All recognize that the definitive absence of transcendental foundations upon which to erect a political order renders “foundings” contingent. No political order is established by an atemporal and uncontested set of principles; rather, foundings are a matter of ongoing rearticulation and interpretation in which those situated within a particular constellation of meaning accept or contest the sedimented assumptions structuring political life. A goal of agonism is to make this dispute visible so it can be engaged democratically. (2) All recognize the pervasiveness and danger of hegemonic power. As subjects constituted within and by the relationships (to language, meaning, other subjects) within which they find themselves, the potential citizens of possible democratic societies must be given the tools to engage the power that both restricts and enables them. To the extent autonomy from arbitrary coercion animates democratic aspirations, agonistic democrats share the impulse to identify the multifarious strands of power operating upon citizens and generate opportunities for subjects to participate in (rather than escape) the operation of that power of which they are always already a part. (3) Agonistic democrats all recognize the inevitability of exclusion. If the world is not intentionally designed to accommodate human meaning, and if the depth of history has produced irreducibly complex and conflicting understandings of the world, then no particular social order can ever adequately include every manifestation of identity or every vision of a good society. Remainders will always be produced by the generation of political order, no matter how generous and inclusive its goals. Rather than trying to solve the dilemma of difference by developing ever more universal theories, agonistic democrats offer strategies to highlight the necessarily unjust consequences entailed in the establishment of any sort of stable politics. They further look to find methods to embed this awareness within the regular operation of politics so that democratic citizens will be more attuned to the particularity of their own perspectives, perspectives that without such signals will inevitably come to seem universal. (4) Finally, all recognize the perils of democratic mobilization. Given the absence of external constraints on norms of behavior and the irreducibly plural identities in conflict in any society, the potential for violence is always present. Two very different dangers are endemic to this sort of pluralism. The first is the impulse to contain and manage this hazard by establishing widespread and unreflective “consensus” about the role and extent of politics in order to contain or prevent the emergence of the democratic impulse. Badiou describes the modern democratic form of this impulse as the generation of “authoritarian opinion” (2005a: 78). On this account the main threat to democracy is the ungovernability of the people, and the purpose of democracy is to harness this energy toward legitimate ends. Some

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agonists assert that all government fits this pattern and should always be resisted, while others agree that the danger is ever-present and hope to devise methods to generate order without extinguishing democratic ungovernability. The second risk is that the tensions inherent to a post-foundational pluralism will manifest as violent conflict directed toward the extermination of the other. On this pole we see the danger of democratic mobilization around a totalitarian impulse to associate the “people” with a particular identification: to maintain the fiction of oneness, all others must be expelled or destroyed. This peril calls for institutional solutions that encourage a public culture of both contestation and accommodation. Agonistic theorists tend to disagree about the extent to which this danger is serious and about the most effective means to obviate it. This broad consensus on the justifications for an agonistic politics does not lead to convergence on their recommendations for democratic practice. As demonstrated above, the interpretations and emphases of agonists can vary broadly. As a result their normative visions and political aspirations diverge broadly as well. In the following, I offer a framework, inevitably reductive, within which to understand the dominant strands of agonism as applied to democratic thought, with particular focus on which are most and least congenial to proposing a theory of agonistic institutions. I address specifically post-foundational agonists, since my focus is agonistic democracy as a response to post-foundational conditions. Democratic theories depending upon an anti-foundational or essentialist position leading to agonistic politics are not included. Oppositional Agonism Oppositional agonists argue that democracy is not and cannot be a form of state politics. All state power, regardless of normative commitments, inevitably attempts to impose sustainable order by constraining the conceptions of meaning accessible to subjects. If some basis for consensual order could be identified in nature, transcendence, or the popular will, then its maintenance by a state might be justified. But oppositional agonists assert the essence of politics is found in the contest about the interpretation of reality, and to the extent this contestation is constrained, possibilities for egalitarian participation in self-governance are foreclosed. It is the absence of foundations combined with the necessity of their creation (and thus the necessity of conflict and exclusion) that makes the political an ontological character of social life; democracy describes a mode of politics in which foundations are undermined and their replacements created, only to themselves in turn be opposed in the name of egalitarian inclusiveness. Thus democracy describes a strategic position within the space of the political, one that works to constantly bring to light the arbitrary character of consensual social orders. As Rancière describes it, Democracy is not a regime or a social way of life. It is the institution of politics itself. The system of forms of subjectification through which any order of

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distribution of bodies into functions corresponding to their ‘nature’ and places corresponding to their functions is undermined, thrown back on its contingency (1998: 101).

Oppositional agonism describes an orientation of resistance to consensus, which is always an expression of hegemony that generates exclusions. Democracy describes not an alternative to state politics but the confrontation with it. Rancière is explicit on this point, asserting that the undetermined politics that erupts to fill the void of absent foundations provides the basis for normal politics. Power is only exercised upon people if it is exercised through them. The people are both the objects of power and its source. This potential power, both latent and always exercised, is the source of government: What remains is the extraordinary exception, the power of the people, which is not the power of the population or of the majority, but the power of anyone at all, the equality of capabilities to occupy the positions of governors and those of governed. Political government, then, has a foundation. But this foundation is also in fact a contradiction: politics is the foundation of a power to govern in the absence of foundation (Rancière 2006: 49).

Politics, which is to say contests to establish meaning in a post-foundational world, founds government. To the extent democracy describes the contest to establish and challenge foundations, democratic politics founds all social orders: “democracy is neither a society to be governed, nor is it a government of society, it is specifically this ungovernability on which every government must ultimately find out it is based” (Rancière 2006: 49). Democratic power is the power of ungovernability, of resistance to all narratives, all consensus, all attempts to impose a hegemonic interpretation of reality upon the world. More succinctly, democracy is post-foundational, and democratic practice draws attention to the lack of certainty at the heart of every regime. This means democratic politics is opposed not just to relations of oppression and subordination produced by some states but to the institutionalization of politics itself, regardless of the operating principles guiding these institutions. Since the democratic impulse describes the fundamental impossibility of capturing plurality under any comprehensible system of rules, any system that establishes such limitations and enforces them through violence is necessarily undemocratic. Thus all organized societies are oligarchic in character as organized power is always deployed to maintain the privileged position of a powerful minority: “Societies, today as yesterday, are organized by the play of oligarchies. There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as democratic government. Government is always exercised by the minority over the majority” (Rancière 2006: 52). The institutionalization of power in government always diminishes the democratic origins that sustain it by imposing a vision of reality that obscures the people’s generation of the power imposed upon them. Badiou’s discussion of democracy

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follows a similar prescription. He argues that democracy can only be understood by its opposition to institutionalized power. The concept democracy can only be relevant to politics “as long as ‘democracy’ is grasped in a sense other than the form of the state. If politics is an end in itself by virtue of the distance it is able to take from the statist consensus, it might eventually be termed democratic” (Badiou 2005: 85, italics in original). The agonism of democracy is understood as a resistance to any formalization of power, as every such manifestation both draws upon and subjugates the democratic energy of the people. Though oppositional agonism is largely defined by resistance to institutionalized power, it is not indifferent to distinctions between types of institutions. It may be true that all states are oligarchic, but not all oligarchies are equally dangerous. Nor are all oligarchies equally difficult to engage without being captured by their logic. Oppositional agonists recognize that states are a fact of contemporary politics, and strategies to contest their undemocratic implications will be more effective in contexts in which a public sphere makes effective engagement possible and where space is preserved for the organization of movements not immediately subject to state power. Rancière writes: “Democracy can never be identified with a juridico-political form. This does not mean it is indifferent to such forms. It means that the power of the people is always beneath and beyond these forms” (2006: 54). That the state cannot be democratic does not mean that democratic possibilities opened up by resistance to institutional politics are not conditioned by the structures the state adopts and the vision of reality it defends. The state is a fundamental existential with which we are compelled to grapple, though always with care and skepticism. Oppositional agonism proposes that this grappling be done from a standpoint of exteriority. Badiou suggests that the trick is to find ways of engaging the state that do not require participating in the mode of subjectivity the state demands, which in his case entails refusal to vote, to join political parties, to stand for office, or participate in administration (2001: 99). Instead, where absolute exteriority cannot be maintained, democratic politics “is a matter of requiring something of the state, of formulating with respect to the state a certain number of prescriptions or statements” (Badiou 2001: 98). These prescriptions have something of the character of demands, though demands made external to the state’s apparatus of input and interest aggregation. These are demands that the excluded and oppressed be made to “count,” to become visible and thus to change the consensus interpretation of reality that defines the common boundaries of inclusion and citizenship. Clearly some institutional forms make the development of such demands more likely and the effective power of such prescriptions more plausible. So to a meaningful extent, oppositional agonists are concerned with institutional forms, if only in the negative sense. Institutions also impact the capacity of oppositional agonism to heighten awareness of the constitutive gap between the state and the essential ungovernability of democracy upon which state power depends. Since justifications of institutional power are contingent narratives always in tension with the spontaneity of the democratic potential upon which it rests, a conflict between administration and

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indeterminacy, between the police and politics, is lodged in every order. Rancière claims the tension between these two logics generates the possibility of a public sphere separate from the government (2001: 19-21). The more this sphere expands, the less dominant will be the power of oligarchy, and vice versa. The state seeks to privatize the public sphere in order to minimize challenge to the state’s capacity to shape reality. Thus democracy can be viewed as “a process of struggle against this privatization, the process of enlarging the public sphere” (Rancière 2006: 55). As this public sphere expands it also creates more space for movements to coalesce, identities to proliferate, and alternative interpretations of meaning to emerge. While democracy can only advance a form other than the state (Badiou 2005: 88), the antidemocratic vision of oligarchy can only be opposed effectively if the public space exists for consensus to be challenged. The contemporary vacuity of post cold war liberalism illustrates the point: The long decline and brutal collapse of the Soviet system, as well as the weakening of social struggles and movements of emancipation, have allowed a consensual vision to establish itself on the back of an oligarchic system. According to this vision, our basic reality does not leave us the choice to interpret it and merely requires responses which are generally the same, whatever our opinions and aspirations (Rancière 2006: 77).

If the form of the state obscures the tension between power and the people by relegating such passions to the private realm, or if the form of the state crushes all eruptions of this conflict in the public sphere, then it becomes very difficult to advance democratic interpretations of reality through an oppositional critique. If, on the other hand, the form of the state makes such opposition possible, then the struggle to create a more democratic social order has more chance to succeed. Oppositional agonism emphasizes hostility toward institutions, norms, concentrations of power, and foundations of all sorts. But it also recognizes that political life is inevitably characterized by these objects of hostility. Those concerned to advance democratic values have no choice but “to include the state within our political field, to the extent that, on a number of essential points, we have to work more through prescriptions against the state than in any radical exteriority to the state” (Badiou 2001: 98). Democratic practices, democratic movements, democratic narratives, and democratic actions are the domain of subjects shaped by and resistant to the oligarchic ambitions of the state. An oppositional agonism looks to inspire and nurture an abundance of democratic practices that will undermine the aspiration of institutions to close off access to the popular power upon which it draws. These goals must of necessity be pursued from a position that eschews direct participation in institutional politics so as to avoid becoming the sort of subject such participation demands. Oppositional agonism cannot, therefore, produce a theory of institutions, but it can provide criteria through which to evaluate how more or less dangerous to the democratic spirit any institutional form might be.

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Ultimately oppositional agonism might be better categorized as a form of radical democracy given the distinction between the two developed in the previous chapter. Radical democrats exhibit faith that the people, however understood, have the capacity to organize themselves without the need for structures of coercion or even common interpretations of the sensible world. They tend to believe that contestation can and should extend to every element of life, and that doing so will produce a more emancipatory and egalitarian politics. Similarly, oppositional agonists suggest that democratic politics consists of resistance to structure and order, insofar as the procedures, rules, processes, and assumptions that give collective life its consistency reflect not democratic equality but the imposition of power. Rancière expresses this position succinctly: Politics is generally seen as the set of procedures whereby aggregation and consent of collectivities is achieved, the organization of powers, the distribution of places and roles, and the systems for legitimizing this distribution. I propose to give this system of distribution and legitimization another name. I propose to call it the police (1998: 28).

In Rancière’s work institutional politics as traditionally understood is unambiguously associated with inegalitarian oppression. A democratic politics demands that those who are excluded from the legitimate order make themselves visible, and in the process disrupt or reconfigure this order. Thus politics (as opposed to policing) “consists in refiguring the space, of what there is to do there, what is to be seen or named therein. It is the established litigation of the perceptible” (Rancière 2001: 20). The agonism of democracy is thus a perpetual contestation of the ordering of meaning that structures society and can never be coordinated with the policing function of government. Moreover, for Rancière at least, politics emerges rarely, episodically, and unpredictably. There cannot be agonistic political institutions, only police and the occasional assertion of equality against them; an agonistic democrat can work to foster and support these eruptions, but cannot design institutions to perform the same role. Expressive Agonism Expressive agonism affirms the virtue of contestation and competition as goods in their own right. Animated largely by the Nietzschean tradition in political philosophy, expressive agonists emphasize the centrality of self-creation to a democratic politics. Asserting the irreducible gulf between conceptions of the world, this interpretation of agonism sees politics as the venue for competition between individuals and the conceptions of reality to which they belong. Human flourishing is associated with the articulation and deepening of multiple perspectives engaged in ongoing strife to determine the direction of public life. A democratic version of this competition strives to perpetuate conflict in order to create room for a multitude of conceptions of the good, perspectives on value, and

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visions of citizenship. In practice this demands a democratic order that permits not merely conflict between conceptions of the good, as liberalism does, but also permits contestation of the boundaries, procedures, and standards by which political life proceeds. For expressive agonism, democracy entails both a realm of public engagement between different perspectives expected to share little or no common ground, and a commitment to enabling challenges to its own terms of existence. Two versions of expressive agonism emerge in the literature, perfectionist and critical. The first views the competition of agonism as a means to achieve human excellence through competitive engagement between equals. Excellence can only be attained through political engagement and conceptions of the good can only be deepened by the encounter with divergent views. Perfectionist agonists concentrate most on the importance of self-creation and expression, which requires a public context in order to be meaningful. This is not surprising, given the Greeks’ focus on personal excellence in their origination of the concept and the heavy influence of Nietzsche’s thought on most agonistic democrats. The second version approaches agonism as the central tool in the project of re-politicizing contemporary politics. Critical agonists value politics as an expressive realm in which the infinite possibilities for human difference can be disclosed. This interpretation of expressive agonism leverages conflict to combat the displacement and exclusion of difference that follows upon the consolidation of any political order. To the extent agonism encourages radically divergent expressions of identity and perceptions of reality, democratic possibilities for self-creation multiply. Following Fossen (2007), I suggest Owen’s work is the most significant exponent of the perfectionist disposition, though elements of the perfectionist impulse are often found in other versions of agonism. This expressive emphasis derives largely from an interpretation of Nietzsche stressing the ideal of selfovercoming. Nietzsche’s assertion that democracy “expresses a leveling mode of equality that undermines the conditions of self-respect in the relevant sense,” provides crucial insight into the need for a more agonistic political practice (Owen 2002: 113). Democratic citizens aspire to sovereignty, either collectively or over their own life. The contingency of social life, expressed in Nietzsche by the concept fortuna, makes complete self-mastery impossible; if individuals can never master their own fate, it follows, self-government is even less viable. After the death of God (or the recognition that all foundations are contingent) subjects find themselves in situations not of their own making understood through perspectives not of their own creation, with no sure criteria against which to judge their actions and beliefs. Rather than attempting to assert control over the contingencies that shape our subjectivity, we should accept “that self-government involves the exercise and cultivation of the capacities and the disposition required to affirm this fact. And because chance and necessity are ineliminable, and therefore must be perpetually affirmed anew, such exercise and cultivation must itself be perpetual, a process without the slightest prospect of an end” (Owen 2002: 118). By affirming one’s capacity to both embrace and shape the contingency of life, one creates the

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conditions for self-respect, understood in part as the capacity to engage in action in the face of uncertainty. Human nobility is associated with the capacity to propose, cultivate, and hold oneself accountable to a conception of excellence (Fossen 2007: 389). Owen asserts the primacy of the autonomous aspect of the democratic ethos, where autonomy means not absence of external influence but achieving perspective on one’s own constitution in a way the permits the individual to exert and extend power over the self. The respect to which Owen refers is the respect one owes oneself for holding oneself accountable to a standard of excellence pursued in the face of uncertainty. While the language of self-respect, nobility, and self-government might reinforce the dominant interpretation of Nietzsche as an opponent of democracy, Owen asserts “that he is not, as commonly supposed, an anti-egalitarian thinker, but an advocate of, what we might call, the perfectionist view of equality in which everyone is called on, and aided, to develop their capacities for selfgovernment” (2002: 120, emphasis in original). His concern is rather that democracy’s insistence upon the equal basis of self-respect and its aversion to distinction tend to undermine the subject’s potential for self-overcoming; democratic power, as de Tocqueville and Mill also demonstrate, more effectively operates upon the souls of citizens than any previous regime. Democracy easily lapses into dependence and conformity, and when it does so the democratic promise is extinguished. Owen argues that a democratic culture that fosters contest and competition can resist this tendency: modern democracy can avoid the pitfalls that Nietzsche identifies in “the democratic movement of our times” to the extent that it cultivates an agonal political culture in which citizens strive to develop their capacities for self-rule in competition with one another, a culture that honors exemplary democratic citizens as setting standards that we should seek to match and surpass. The point of this Nietzschean argument is that if democracy is to meet its own best aspirations, it requires citizens who cultivate those political virtues (e.g., independence of mind) which are necessary to this task. This is a central purpose of the democratic agon: to cultivate citizens who stand to themselves politically as sovereign individuals (Owen 2002: 126).

This vision of democracy would appear to be one in which public contestation over the meaning and values that guide life dominates, and not one in which institutional administration can be a source of democratic potential. Institutions aspire to closure, self-replication, and endurance, and craft citizens who fit this mold. Owen thus rejects some liberal aspirations to deploy the state to foster excellence, instead proposing that agonistic politics “uses the public sphere to allow citizens to generate and develop conceptions of the good and virtuous life against a background of temporary, contestable public standards the meaning of which is continually at stake” (Fossen 2007: 392).

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Critical agonism opposes closures, both substantive and procedural. Recognizing the impossibility of neutrality, it demands of democracy openness not just to all reasonable positions but every possible position. It recognizes that all established democratic institutions favor some identities over others and render some unimaginable, and insists that the democratic principle of egalitarian inclusion requires resistance to these limitations. It is not sufficient to identify the blind spots of democratic practice and work to correct these, as the corrected procedure will not then be universally inclusive; rather, the allegedly more inclusive new practices will merely shift the boundaries of exclusion so the burden of explicability falls on a newly obscured set of identities. No politics can avoid the danger of devolving into oppression, no matter its liberatory provenance, since “once any conception of politics and identity or agency begins to sediment, its usefulness as a lever of critique is diminished and its generative power becomes a force of constraint” (Honig 1993: 206). All politics will involve the production of invisible remainders. These are not issues that can be resolved, as liberals and deliberative democrats believe, through rational discourse. Subjects find themselves occupying social roles without which their own existence is unimaginable, and these roles cannot be made to fit together in a frictionless fashion. The conflicts between worlds of meaning are too deep to be bridged, and any apparently conflict-free political order can only appear so at the cost of systematic homogenization of difference. The impulse to ignore and repress difference is an ever emergent threat, given the challenges to subjective coherence that accompany the constitution of identity within these relations of difference. In his earlier work,2 Connolly describes the way that the generation of difference and identity occurs within subjects as well as society. Faced with the contingency of our lived identities, identities that ultimately feel entrenched and true to us, as they are not and can never be voluntary choices extracted from the particular ontology within which we live, the drive to universalize some elements of these identities is great. The urge for stability is strong and the opportunity to live within an identity confirmed by others as true and normal is powerful. When widely shared, the urge for certainty becomes a drive toward normalization, demanding of subjects that they either purge their “unethical” contingencies or repress their differences from the norm so as to match the expectations of universality: Entrenched in this indispensable relation [of identity and difference] is a second set of tendencies, themselves in need of exploration, to congeal established 2  Connolly’s account of agonism has shifted over time. Prior to the publication of The Ethos of Pluralization (1995) his version of agonism emphasized self-overcoming and self-creation and portrays democratic politics as one of displacement and critique. In his later work he suggests that the importance of critical responsiveness to difference should dominate a democratic ethos in order to foster agonistic respect. He discusses this shift explicitly in an interview with Campbell and Schoolman (2008: 313-19).

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Critical agonism resists this tendency to convert difference into enemy or tame it through homogenization. Insisting that democratic values require resistance to every stable social order in order to open up space for the repressed to emerge and express its identity, critical agonism demands resistance to power in all its forms. For the critical agonist the democratic position is one that continually exposes the unimagined exclusions of the political order so that new possibilities of expression (or old ones that have been suppressed) can emerge. This exposure can never be complete and no hegemony ever adequate to the irreducible difference of human existence. Moreover, these injustices are not, fundamentally, the work of the state or other institutions of power; rather, the subjects of democracy enact and maintain these exclusions as they perform their identities. Honig argues that the structures of power “are not static, never at rest. They are all performative products, maintained daily, politically, and imperfectly. Sometimes they enable a democratic politics, but their sedimentations also have disempowering effects that are not easily overcome or challenged” (1993: 209-10). Absent the possibility of a universal narrative, it follows that all articulations of the political will not only impose a cost to difference but will inevitably become barriers to democratic inclusion. A democratic ethos recognizes that we are the authors of these exclusions and sedimentations of power; it therefore calls upon democratic subjects to resist the comfort of security, transgress the expectations of one’s community, and recognize that the heightening of dissonance and discomfort are manifestations of political contestation. The character of such a democratic ethos is agonistic. The danger of politics is the aspiration to extinguish those contingencies defined as “different” in order to establish the universality of other contingencies defined as acceptable identity. The advantage of democracy is that the potential for contestation always found in its animating ethos provides resources to resist the dogmatism of universality; democracy is almost uniquely situated to foster strife without lapsing into violence. It is this agonism within and between selves, within and between identities, that permits differences to be politicized and identities situated in contingency. Agonistic democracy employs democratic culture and institutions as essential resources to highlight the contestation and contingency of identity and expose the pressures toward normalization to which human societies are prey. Agonism is a means to expand the range of possible expressions of meaning within the contingency of social life, while minimizing violent conflict. It is thus focused negatively on the creation of space for resistance and experimentation rather than on the generation of institutional structures. Much like perfectionist agonism, critical agonism takes as its primary concern the expressive capacities of the subject, and views democracy as a means to expand those possibilities.

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A commitment to a Nietzschean view of the importance of self-overcoming unifies the two approaches to expressive agonism. And through Nietzsche, expressive agonists are linked back to the originary Greek ideal of the agon upon which he drew. Kalyvas suggests that ancient agonism should be understood “as a political and symbolic order that facilitates, regulates and channels the narcissistic urge of a multitude of individuals who compete to win and to outdo each other in an adversarial quest for greatness, distinction, and primacy” (2009: 26). Democratic citizenship was characterized by the pursuit of excellence expressed publicly and manifested in political participation. Pursuit of the common good did not drive political engagement. Instead “the narcissistic demand for distinction is the motivating force of civic participation and public dedication” (Kalyvas 2009: 26). For the Greeks the aspiration for individual glory and distinction drives agonistic politics. This emphasis on the individual dominates the perfectionist agonism of Owen, who, drawing on Nietzsche, describes politics as “the privileged locus of the good life, since it is in the arena of politics that we are concerned with the character of nobility…” (1995: 160). Perfectionist agonism prescribes contestation as a means to open up possibilities for the proliferation of forms of human excellence, all contingent and all rooted in the particularity of individuals. While the critical approach of Honig and the early Connolly does not partake the implicit elitism of Owen, their portrayal of agonism shares its focus on the situated subject and fostering the capacity to engage in creative self-constitution. In a passage that connects well the ancient and modern views of expressive agonism, Honig writes: To keep the contest going requires a commitment to a politics of self-overcoming, a politics that contests closure. For Nietzsche, the ancient Greek practice of ostracism provides an institutional expression of that commitment to contest over closure by protecting the agon from domination by any one great individual or hegemon. But the agon is less easily protected in late modern times because it is threatened not by a single individual possessed of great force but by numerous, overlapping forces… (1993: 209).

For Honig the prime purpose of agonism is to create possibilities of resistance against the closure of universalisms, and democratic practices properly engaged can provide the resources necessary for subjects to resist domination. Democratic contestation protects citizens from hegemonic power and normalizing pressures in the same way ostracism protected the integrity of the Greek agon. Like perfectionist agonism, critical agonism embraces the valorization of creative possibilities of the self, of a democracy that produces self-constituting subjects in proud diversity. They reject, however, the privileging of excellence and victory, instead trying “to fold Nietzschean agonism into the fabric of ordinary life by attending to the extraordinary character of the latter” (Connolly 1991: 187). The difference is one of emphasis and outlook rather than strategy, as both types of expressive agonism ultimately advocate a democratic ethos of contestation in order to foster self-overcoming and resistance to normalizing tendencies.

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Oppositional and expressive versions of agonism share a commitment to resist institutional orders, which are viewed as barriers to democratic social forms. For both, all attempts to instantiate a common framework for the political organization of collective life represent an effort to contain the conflict inherent to a post-foundational world. If no common narratives can ever capture every aspect of the ineliminable differences characteristic of a world, then every institutional structure will tend to produce undemocratic outcomes. For oppositional and expressive agonists even partial and contested consensus is anathema, as it always expresses the urge for closure and predictability that generates naturalization and exclusion. Only constant struggle against vertical power and competition between identities horizontally situated can sustain the fragile openness of the democratic aspiration. If the boundaries between differences are blurred and the social strife of difference gentled, the democratic impulse is placed at risk. Constitutional Agonism Constitutional agonism, as should evident from the label, does not share the proudly corrosive convictions of the oppositional and expressivist variants. Constitutional agonists recognize that struggle over the fundamental values and structures of political life are essential to democratic practice, but also insist this struggle can and should take place within a framework which encourages mutual respect for and meaningful communication between different values and identities. While democracy demands in practice that a set of rules and principles govern political associations, these rules must not be confused with the practices they are intended to foster and protect. The disputation of principles and values characteristic of democratic life in an explicitly post-foundational era cannot rest on some deeper, non-contestable ground; nonetheless, to avoid the probable deeply undemocratic outcomes of unconstrained contestation between utterly incommensurable differences, a non-foundational and negotiated grounds for engagement must be established. It is essential for constitutional agonists that the rules, practices, and principles guiding democratic politics “cannot be seen as a permanent foundation or framework which underlies democratic debate and legislation,” and that all such frameworks are “open in principle to democratic challenge, deliberation and amendment” (Tully 2002: 208). It is this negotiated framework always in principle subject to revision that defines the constitutional aspect of agonism. Tully makes it clear that an agonistic constitution must be understood as an activity rather than a limiting criterion for politics. The purpose of a constitution is to establish the context for democratic freedom, and it expresses the current best understanding of how a particular society has negotiated the process of democratic contest. Constitutionalism thus relies upon democratic principles, and its status is always subordinate to that of the practices it is meant to protect. Tully explains that the result of this subordination implies that constitutionalism’s “legitimacy does not rest on its approximation to some ideal consensus, but rather on the mutual relationship between the prevailing rules of law and the democratic and judicial

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practices of ongoing disagreement, negotiation, amendment, implementations and review” (Tully 2002: 209). Insofar as democracy must permit constant disputation, it follows that the rules citizens agree to observe while engaging in this struggle must themselves be subject to similar dispute. Unlike more traditional views of democratic theory, the function of the constitution is not merely to provide the procedures within which debate can take place but to also be implicated in and susceptible to these disputes. A constitution both makes possible democratic contestation and is the ongoing product of this activity, and its authority depends upon the democratic activity it sustains. Constitutions are always living codes and their authority inaugurates rather than forecloses conflict over its own meaning. Nonetheless, this conflict cannot be constant or boundless. Constitutional agonists assert that some sort of boundaries to difference must be accepted if the reciprocity necessary to sustained non-violent contestation is to emerge. Democratic order demands some sort of limitations; not everything can be contested perpetually. They emphasize that the principles of democratic engagement must always be susceptible to challenge, but also insist that this contestation need not take place all the time in order to maximize democratic outcomes, as oppositional and expressive agonists assert. The possibility of fundamental objection to constitutional principles insures their democratic character, but democracy does not demand that possibility be constantly realized. Tully describes this balance: “particular negotiations will proceed in accord with some principles, rules and procedures which are not questioned in the course of negotiations, on pain of infinite regress, to be constitutionally legitimate, but which must be open to democratic review in the future, to be democratically legitimate” (2002: 208, emphasis in original). At any particular point in the ongoing negotiations of conflict that make common democratic life possible, the particular context of rules and principles understood to constitute the democratic order must be held in common. Disputants cannot reach some sort of peaceful outcome, however temporary, if they are arguing about both the content of the dispute and the rules of engagement themselves. But this acceptance of the rules at a given point as legitimate is dependent upon their future revisability, and thus also the future revisiting of the compromise produced under these rules. This interplay defines the democratic status of a constitution: it is the particular product of the activity of ongoing contest and negotiation, always subject to objection and reformulation in response to the democratic agonism of the political, the enabling of which is the purpose of the constitution and from which it derives its legitimacy. Tully’s focus on the combination of stability and revisability derives from his account of freedom and agonism. Drawing upon Wittgenstein, Arendt, and in particular Foucault, he views freedom as the ability to refuse to be governed in ways that deny one’s capacity for self-determination, understood broadly. A subject is free when it can practice strategies that resist the rules guiding social interactions and contest the norms shaping social life. Freedom emerges as the struggle against sedimented practices expressed by the “rules of the game” of any arena of human activity. Freedom is therefore always an agonistic practice, as it

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always involves the work of dissent against the apparent consensus that regulates society. Such agreement is always provisional since “no agreement will be closed at a frontier; it will always be open to question, to an element of non-consensus, and so to reciprocal question and answer, demand and response, and negotiation” (Tully 2008: 143). To the extent the democratic ideal involves promoting human freedom and self-determination, both individually and collectively, it must encourage rather than minimize the opportunities for subjects to identify the sites of closure and imposition that mark all determinate orders. Democracy must enable a practice of freedom because: if it is always possible to go on differently, if a consensus on the rules has an element of ‘non-consensuality’, then an important aspect of concrete human freedom will be ‘testing’ the rules and purported meta-rules of the current game, ensuring that they are open to question and challenge with as little rigidity or domination as possible, and experimenting with their modification in practice, so humans are able to think and act differently (Tully 2008: 144).

This capacity to dispute the rules, both as explicitly stated and implicitly assumed, defines the democratic character of a constitutional regime. The agonistic dimension of constitutionalism has another advantage. It confers legitimacy upon the necessarily coercive decisions of governance, even for those who find the decisions unjust. The constitution is not the final word resolving definitively the democratic disputes always present in pluralistic societies. To the extent a constitution is viewed in this way, it is dangerous to democracy. If a constitution serves as the final arbiter of social conflict, and the decisions attributed to it are thought to end a dispute instead of opening the next phase of negotiation, then it serves to constrain freedom and undermines the legitimacy of democracy. In practice such a constitution will be opposed by those who lose these debates, constitutional decisions will come to be seen as just another avenue for the normal antagonistic politics of interest pursuit, and constitutional decisions will come to be viewed not as democratic expressions of current negotiations but partisan expressions of victory. Absent the possibility of non-contingent foundations, no constitution can claim final authority over the demos, and dissent will always follow every decision. But decisions cannot be avoided and rules must be promulgated. What makes it possible for agonistic constitutionalism to maintain its legitimacy with all sides in a dispute is that “the dissenters remain attached to their democratic society because they know that the reconciliation they lost is in turn potentially open to contestation, negotiation and amendment in the future” (Tully 2008: 216). So a democracy can be considered free to the extent the rules negotiated to maintain the enterprise are subject to dissent, revision, and renegotiation, and that these rules makes such agonistic engagement plausible and accessible rather than difficult and rare. Though it proposes a more extensive realm of contestation than the liberal alternatives, constitutional agonism presents some problems for a post-

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foundational democratic theory. Unlike Rawls or Habermas, Tully’s agonism does not seek to remove from debate the “background institutions of society” or provide a universal standard of reason against which to evaluate decisions. But the depth of agonism suggested in his theory must be somewhat more limited than might be appropriate for a post-foundational account of democracy. Two problems emerge in his theory: the role of reason in guiding negotiations and shaping dissent is too strong, and the process of subject formation involved in participation in constitutional democracy is too intrusive. Tully restricts the range of dissent available to citizens by circumscribing it to the “possibility of reasonable disagreement” (Tully 2002: 208). Citizens recognize the legitimacy of outcomes with which they fundamentally disagree because they see that there are reasonable grounds for the alternative positions and situate their own dissent in relation to this reasonable outcome: they probably gain some degree of recognition in the compromise agreement, and, given reasonable disagreement, they continue to believe that their cause is reasonable and worth fighting for again. Most importantly, they know that they have the freedom to challenge the latest hegemonic norm of mutual recognition in the future if they generate the reasons to support it (Tully 2008: 311, emphasis added).

This repeated insistence that reason provides both the justification for acceptance and the condition for opposition will rightfully strike post-foundational agonists as too restrictive of the diversity of possible conflicts of identity and values likely to be present in a truly democratic social order. Why, if Tully is aware of the importance to freedom of contesting all the rules of the game, does he nevertheless neglect to position reason itself as worthy of contest? I believe the source of this position can be found in his account of “citizenization,” which implies both that “reason” refers to the situated discourses of a particular social order and that subjects within this order come to embrace this discourse as the horizon of their agonism. Citizenization refers to the relationship between constitutional principles, democratic practices, and the process of identity formation. Subjects “acquire their identity as citizens – a form of self-awareness and self-formation – in virtue of their exercising these rights: of participating in democratic-constitutional institutions and, more importantly, participating in the array of practices of deliberation over existing institutions” (Tully 2002: 210). Post-foundational thinkers of any persuasion understand that, as Tully suggests, social practices shape identity, and vice versa; it is precisely because of this power to shape subjectivity that agonistic democrats insist upon the possibility of resistance to any particular ideal of citizen identity. Tully appears to leverage this dynamic to generate legitimacy for agonistic constitutionalism. Within permanent contestation of its legitimacy, Citizens develop a sense of identification with the principles and the association to which they are applied not because consensus is reached, or is on the horizon,

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but precisely because they become aware that, in spite of its current imperfections and injustices, the association is nonetheless not closed but open to this form of democratic freedom (Tully 202: 211).

Tully thus extends the commitment to contestation farther than deliberative democrats, Rawlsians, and Habermasians, but ultimately he restricts agonism to the bounds of reason, as developed within a particular social order and internalized by citizens.3 Tully’s agonism is insufficiently attentive to the real depth of difference opened up by post-foundational ontologies. He downplays the irreducibility of conflict within particular orders, which allows an implicit consensual assumption about reasonable disagreement to emerge, and he neglects to consider the possibility of a constitutional order that contains within itself multiple and conflicting citizen orientations. Nonetheless, his vision of constitutionalism does capture an important insight into agonistic democracy. If agonistic theorists are to move beyond a purely critical position to pose institutional suggestions for democracy, the problems of collective decision-making demand that some sort of legitimate framework exists within which actions are taken. The dilemma is to propose a common framework that need not rely upon an implicit external standard or the production of identities constrained by the very institutions meant to legitimize agonistic self-governance. Adversarial Agonism Mouffe’s version of agonistic democracy shares the concern of constitutional agonists to establish some form of practice that recognizes the depth of pluralism endemic to post-foundational politics without losing sight of the importance of an ordered context for contestations. Her theory begins with two basic assertions. First, the political is characterized by irreducible antagonism which can never be resolved, insofar as the conflicts that emerge between situated world-views in a post-foundational universe will never share sufficient commonality to be fit together without either amputations or exclusions. At the base of all society lurks the possibility of violent conflict: “given the ineradicable pluralism of value, there is no rational resolution of the conflict, hence its antagonistic dimension” (Mouffe 2000: 102). Drawing upon Schmitt, Mouffe argues that this antagonism is likely to emerge as the thematized relationship between friend and enemy, where 3  Lindahl offers a similar analysis, claiming that because Tully’s “approach is genuinely a dialogical rather than an agonistic one, it is also logically committed to an idea of unity. ‘Tully’s concern is not merely to conserve plurality, but to achieve a form of unity in which a plurality of perspectives can recognize themselves as being part of a whole. The task of a politics of cultural recognition is to overcome plurality, albeit provisionally, in a constitution that is culturally – and politically – “neutral”, as Tully puts it’. Agonism is genuinely pluralistic but the kind of dialogical approach that Tully wants, according to Lindahl, is not” (Christodoulidis and Tierney 2010: 8).

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the identity of the former demands the destruction of the latter, and vice versa. Second, democracy’s function is not to overcome this antagonism by establishing substantive consensus on content or principles but to offer a pragmatic solution to the dilemma of co-existence. This pragmatic solution involves converting the antagonism Schmitt describes into an agonistic relationship in which the struggle between constituencies can take place without demanding the eradication of the other. She is explicit on this point, writing that the aim of democracy is “to defuse the potential of hostility that exists in human societies by providing the possibility for antagonism to be transformed into agonism,” in which “the presence of antagonism is not eliminated but ‘tamed,’ so to speak” (Mouffe 2005b: 126). If successful, agonistic institutions will create a public sphere in which hegemonic projects compete with one another to shift the operative interpretation of democratic values and modify the frontiers of identity to their advantage. Democracy requires “drawing the we/they distinction in a way which is compatible with the recognition of the pluralism which is constitutive of modern democracy” (Mouffe 2005a: 14). The move from the political, which is a realm of ontological conflict, to politics, which is “the set of practices and institutions through which an order is created, organizing human coexistence in the context of conflictuality” (Mouffe 2005a: 9) always involves the shaping or transformation of the symbolic space within which collective action takes place. If politics takes place within a symbolic order that demands a unity of identity or a shared interpretation of commonly held values, there will be no space for legitimate conflict between contending identities, and the likely result will be either the overt domination of authority or the emergence of liberal essentialism. If the orientation of the symbolic is moral, then conflicts will be forced into a rationalist framework, leaving opponents of the moral order no possible social role other than enemy. If democratic politics is to embrace the irreducible pluralism of latemodern existence, it must create a public sphere that is non-exclusive and shares a common framework within which passionate conflicts can take place without transforming into something like war. Mouffe asserts that the values of liberal democracy, shorn of the moral register, rational aspirations, or essentialist identifications, can provide this framework. Mouffe’s political theory is always a situated and practical one, rather than a normative ideal. Democracy is a cultural practice and its limits are defined by the context in which it emerges. Within late-modern democracies, certain symbols and values, particularly the figures of liberty and equality, occupy a central status in the constitution of politics and collective identities. Liberal democratic values may therefore serve as the common symbolic within which agonistic pluralism engages ongoing contestations. These values must remain essentially contestable within a wide range of shared understandings, as the adversarial contests of citizens take place within the competing interpretations of these values. Mouffe describes the role of liberal values in agonistic democracy in the following:

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Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy The elaboration of a liberal democratic political philosophy should deal with the specific values of the liberal democratic regime, its principles of legitimacy, or … its ‘political principles.’ Those are the principles of equality and liberty for all; they constitute the political common good which is distinctive of such a regime. However, there will always be competing interpretations of the principles of liberty and equality, the type of social relations they should apply, and their mode of institutionalization (1993: 114).

Thus a commitment to liberal democratic values, and more importantly a commitment to ongoing contestation about the scope, meaning, and implications of these values, provides the common framework within which antagonistic identities can engage one another without running up against incommensurability. The struggle to define these shared values, which Mouffe describes as contesting hegemonies, is the condition that permits “a we/they relation where the conflicting parties, although acknowledging that there is no rational solution to their conflict, nevertheless recognize the legitimacy of their opponents” (Mouffe 2005a: 20). Ultimately agonism requires adversaries to “see themselves as belonging to the same political association as sharing a common symbolic space within which the conflict takes place” (Mouffe 2005a: 20). Mouffe’s repeated discussions of the importance of a shared commitment to the liberal values of liberty and equality serve a function in her theory of agonistic democracy similar to that of Tully’s constitutionalism. Mouffe’s theory of democracy faces a recurrent dilemma: she describes democratic practice as a contest between hegemonic positions, while concurrently asserting this contest takes place within a common symbolic frame. As Rummens (2009) points out, these positions seem to be in tension. But if we view her claims through the lens of Tully’s constitutionalism, this position begins to make more sense. Mouffe writes: What we should aim for in modern democracy is the political creation of a unity through common identification with a particular interpretation of its political principles, a specific understanding of citizenship. Political philosophy has an important role to play here, not in deciding the true meaning of notions like justice, equality, or liberty, but in proposing different interpretations of those notions (Mouffe 1993: 115, emphasis in original).

Agonistic democracy requires some provisional commonality to enable meaningful collective decisions that will obtain some degree of legitimate compliance. What makes this outcome plausible and democratic is not, as Tully proposes, that citizens identify with the practices themselves and thus come to act reasonably within these rules (while always recognizing the right to challenge them), but that citizens share a set of commitments to democratic principles and understand that the interpretation of those principles is always in flux. What constitutes an agonistic democracy is the values its citizens share, values that are not transcendentally

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true but which constitute the particularity of the society within which agonistic disputes over their implementation form the core of democratic practice. Agonistic democracy describes the practice of hegemonic contestation over the interpretation of shared values, the meaning of which is always susceptible to revision while also always provisionally held in common at any point in time. Not only does this model offer a plausible solution to the dilemma of adversarial politics by providing a common but non-exclusive field upon which conflicts can play out, it has the additional virtue of mobilizing political passions so that citizens are more engaged in politics. The “conflictual consensus” of Mouffe’s public sphere supplies “the privileged terrain of agonistic confrontation among adversaries.” Within this terrain, “such a confrontation should be staged around the diverse conceptions of citizenship which correspond to the different interpretations of the ethico-political principles … Each of them proposes its own interpretation of the ‘common good,’ and tries to implement a different form of hegemony” (Mouffe 2000: 103-4). Such competition to establish hegemonic dominance mobilizes citizen passions by providing a multitude of potential collective identifications. Mouffe insists that affect and passion are essential elements of agonistic pluralism, emerging inevitably in the relations of antagonism ever lurking below politics; any political institutions that ignore or suppress these passions as irrational, inappropriate, or unintelligible will find its order corroded by their exclusion. Agonistic confrontations offer an outlet for passion and dissent that make it far less likely for antagonistic relations to emerge (Mouffe 2005a: 21). And within these struggles between irreconcilable hegemonic projects bound by an agonistic conflict over shared symbolic values, citizens find themselves immersed in competing identifications that constitute them as democratic citizens with an interest in recognizing the legitimacy of their adversaries and capable of recognizing that the enterprise of democracy is a common one. Agonistic citizens participating in such a politics can recognize and accept the gap between competing identifications and identity of the people, rather than be troubled by this indeterminacy. In fact, Mouffe argues, “Liberal democracy is precisely the recognition of this constitutive gap between the people and its various identifications” (2000: 56). Unlike expressive or oppositional agonisms, adversarial agonism does not aspire to eliminate exclusion or create openness to infinite variation in the expression of human meaning. Mouffe’s ambitions are practical and local. Her prescription for democracy does not base itself on the ontology of antagonism constitutive of the political, though this ontological claim shapes her theory; rather, she proposes a form of politics appropriate to those cultures that express allegiance to liberal democratic values. She recognizes the specificity of modern pluralist democracy and that this specificity does not derive from rationality or transcendent truth. But there are other politics and other symbolics, and not all are amenable to democratic social organization. This means that agonistic democracy in its adversarial variant is not appropriate for every culture, but only those with democratic resources available within its possible identifications. It also means

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that even in those societies that are appropriate for agonism, not every identity or value will be accommodated: The agonistic approach does not pretend to encompass all differences and to overcome all exclusions. But exclusions are envisaged in political and not moral terms. Some demands are excluded, not because they are declared to be ‘evil,’ but because they challenge the institutions constitutive of the democratic political association. To be sure, the very nature of these institutions is also part of the agonistic debate, but, for such a debate to take place, the existence of a shared symbolic space is necessary” (Mouffe 2005a: 120-21).

Adversarial agonism applies to particular historical situations, with particular symbolic resources, and to identifications with particular dispositions. It advocates a bounded pluralism, one as expansive as possible consistent with the maintenance of peaceful contestation. Some scholars have criticized Mouffe’s theory precisely because of its pragmatic orientation. Breen, for example, lodges three complaints. First, he asserts she “ends up mirroring her deliberative democratic rivals” (2009: 138). Second, her version of agonism “cannot pose a fundamental threat to the terms of political association” (2009: 139). Third, he claims she does not take seriously enough her assertions about the depth of antagonism, since “her theory of agonistic democracy paradoxically suggests that this condition can be largely overcome” (2009: 139). Together Breen’s objections express disappointment that Mouffe’s agonism is insufficiently radical and inadequately engaged with the significant issues of justice and oppression. In many ways, Breen’s claims accurately capture elements of Mouffe’s approach, but I suggest that his objections presume political goals Mouffe does not share. Breen and others object to Mouffe’s agonism in part because it is not consistent with the aspirations of radical democracy, or even the normative implications of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. But, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, the distance between radical democrats and agonistic democrats, which often traces back to their slightly different account of the relationship between foundations and emancipation, is significant. While the literature continues to group them together, this categorization is misleading, as Breen’s quite accurate objections to Mouffe help to illustrate. Taking his critiques in reverse order, Mouffe does not argue that the antagonism of the political can be overcome, merely that it can be channeled into a narrower range of contending hegemonic identifications competing to shape the local interpretation of shared liberal values. Her claim is not that antagonism can be overcome, but that within particular boundaries can be managed. It is precisely because antagonism cannot be reduced that democratic citizenship requires boundaries. This point helps explain why Mouffe is not offering a lever to contest oppressive relations beyond the bounds of the demos within which agonism operates. While she recognizes that many issues of the political extend far beyond a particular agonistic public sphere and can only be addressed in a wider context,

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she also is explicit that “this wider context cannot be coextensive with the entire planet. Democratic governance requires the existence of units, demoi, where popular sovereignty can be exercised, and this entails boundaries” (Mouffe 2005b: 131). And it is precisely this insistence on the bounded character of the demos that leads Breen to see resonance with Rawls and Habermas. Agonistic politics can be transformative of citizen identifications and public distributions of power, and entails vibrant contestation over the terms of belonging and limits of identity, but these contests can only harness antagonism to democratic outcomes if some sort of consensus binds the diversity of citizens. The consensus is itself a subject of contestation, but there must be some sort of shared values to permit antagonism to convert its character. In this sense she resembles Rawls and Habermas, but her consensus is situated and evolving rather than universal and normative. Responsive Agonism While all agonistic responses to the post-foundational conditions of late-modernity accept that democratic life will be characterized by an irreducible diversity of identities and orientations to the world, they do not all agree about the depth of this diversity or the necessity of conflict. Oppositional and expressive agonists describe post-foundational diversity as a manifestation of differences so deeply held that common ground may not be possible. The political excludes some differences and privileges others, thus necessitating ongoing conflict in order to create a constantly shifting terrain of exclusions. All boundaries must be contested and all democratic relations are competitive. Constitutional and adversarial agonists approach diversity in less stark terms. While accepting that differences are constituted socially by relations of power, they emphasize the potential common framework within which conflict can take place. These conflicts are not entirely antagonistic and their outcomes need not (though they often in reality do) produce oppressive exclusions or homogenizing domination. Constitutional and adversarial agonisms express confidence that political boundaries might be constructed in a way that discourages the worst consequences of conflict, even while insisting that contestation and dispute between ultimately irreconcilable positions proceed without cessation. Only a commitment to shared but differently interpreted values holds antagonism at bay. Responsive agonists share the premises of the constitutional and adversarial theories while offering a vision of agonism emphasizing the possibilities of genuine respect for and intimate engagement with the pluralism of postfoundational democracy. White offers what might be considered the motto of responsive agonism: “the depth of one’s commitment does not translate immediately into the absoluteness of conviction” (2009: 4). White’s claim is uncomplicated. It is entirely possible for one to hold non-negotiable positions while also understanding that these commitments have no warrant beyond one’s own experience of them as essential to one’s own identity. The contingency of foundations makes final resolution of conflicts over truth impossible, but it also

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opens space for human beings to abandon the urge to impose upon or destroy otherness. Responsive agonists like White and the later Connolly propose an approach to democracy that cultivates an ethos of generosity and acceptance without demanding a diminution of the deep differences of contemporary pluralism. What distinguishes democracy from other social forms is its acceptance of the pluralism of any particular temporally defined constellation of differences and identities, its commitment to disrupt any potential naturalization of the current constellation and resist the drive to fundamentalism, and its attentiveness to new, previously unarticulated identities. Connolly asserts that “a democratic culture that disrupts dogmatic identities opens up possibilities for a politics of pluralization: it increases the number of positive identities and changes the tone of contention and collaboration between constituencies” (1995: 98). The locus of conflict in responsive agonism falls upon the process of subject formation of citizens. The two major dangers of conventional pluralism are the failure to respect those manifestations of difference that conflict with one’s own identity and a refusal to permit the emergence of new identities that disrupt the arrangement of stable tolerance that allows peaceful pluralism to persist. Both perils emerge when hegemonic identities, perhaps but not always defined by their relations of hostility, define the consensus horizon of meaning for political life, thus freezing identities in relations of antagonism or dependence and preventing the emergence of disruptive movements. Democracy undermines this consensus: Democracy is the cultural practice that enables participation in collective decisions while enabling contestation of sedimented settlements from the past. To achieve an operative consensus on the ambivalence of democracy would be to consent together to a world in which criticism of the politics of nonconsensuality is enabled while the deceptive comforts of stable consensuality are attenuated. These tensions constitute my ideal of democratic equilibrium, or, if you prefer, of democratic politics as an ambiguous medium of enactment and disturbance (Connolly 1995: 103).

Democratic agonism is not primarily about the mobilization of partisan passions in order to place in question the emergent hegemonies of politics. Instead it is about the creation of a culture of ambiguity and attentiveness to difference in which all claims to mastery and all assertions of dogmatism are disrupted. The key element of this vision is the construction of identities capable of recognizing and accepting the contestability of their own formative beliefs without succumbing to resentment of competing accounts of truth.4 4  Connolly’s example of agonistic respect central to interfaith academic dialogue amongst religious studies scholars illustrates this point: “Many faculty members in religious studies now conclude that differences of religious faith are apt to persist as long as human life survives on earth. The question therefore becomes how to cultivate your own faith while responding with nobility to that diversity” (2008a: 89).

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Given this focus, responsive agonism locates the task of democratic politics in the process of self-formation. If democracy is largely defined by its resistance to dogmatism and openness to the contingent emergence of new identities, then the subjects whom enact democratic politics and sustain democratic culture must themselves exemplify these practices. If the dangers of consensus and fundamentalism derive from the anxiety of difference, which drives subjects to attempt to destroy or repress challenges to their own hegemonic vision of reality, then democratic progress demands transformation of democratic subjects. “Hegemonic identities depend on existing definitions of difference to be. To alter your recognition of difference, therefore, is to revise your own terms of recognition as well” (Connolly 1995: xvi). An agonistic democratic culture requires agonistic citizens, and agonistic citizens must engage explicitly in democratic self-constitution. Responsive agonism thus emphasizes the importance of ethos, as this theory of democracy depends upon the cultivation of a set of temperaments, sensibilities, and practices within identities that produce democratic outcomes. An “ethos provides us with an orientation, or disposition, toward everyday life and the ethical and political problems we encounter there” (White 2009: 4). This ethos is democratic if it is attuned to the way in which the normalizing pressures, insecurities, and frustrations of a contingent social order constantly tempt us to create an illusion of self-mastery and security by naturalizing our own identities and defining differences as deviant and dangerous. A democratic ethos “would ask us to develop strategies of the self that work toward dampening that hostility and moderating those expectations” (White 2009: 30). Such an ethos should encourage habits of generosity and respect for other convictions despite our inability to adequately understand them, and despite in many cases the fact that these competing commitments dispute our own non-negotiable ontological commitments. Connolly’s more recent work offers the most fully-formed account of the agonistic ethos of democratic self-creation. His “ethos of responsiveness” involves three different aspects: agonistic respect, critical responsiveness, and a politics of enactment or becoming. Agonistic respect and critical responsiveness describe the democratic orientation toward other identities intended to maximize space for the emergence and continued presence of plural constituencies: If critical responsiveness is an ethical relation a privileged constituency establishes with culturally devalued constituencies striving to enact new identities, agonistic respect is a relation between two contending constituencies, each of which has gained a fair amount of recognition and power in the existing order (Connolly 1995: 235, note 40).

Within the current constellation of identities and interpretations of reality, a democratic ethos enters respectful relations with competitors. The basis of this respect is a conscious recognition of the ambiguities and contingencies that subsist in every coherent account of meaning. This respect is agonistic because

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the diversity of pluralism does not permit a smooth narrative of commonality that can encompass all identities without conflict; since every identity emerges in part through articulation of that which it is not, pluralism carries with it a temptation to describe difference as otherness. An ethos of agonistic respect helps call attention to this impulse and directs it away from antagonism and toward adversarial esteem. Critical responsiveness directs this ethos toward those identities that have not yet emerged as part of the social fabric of agonistic respect, perhaps because their constitution as invisible remainders make possible the comfortable subjectivity of dominant identities, or perhaps because the interplay of pluralist life provokes the development of something unrecognizably new. In either case, it is the ethical responsibility of those democratic citizens whose position is secure to be attentive to emergent pluralism. This “takes the form of careful listening and presumptive generosity to constituencies struggling to move from an obscure or degraded subsistence below the field of recognition, justice, obligation, rights, or legitimacy to a place on one or more of those registers” (Connolly 2005: 126, emphasis in original). An ethos of responsiveness involves attentiveness to the ontological emergence of identities and differences while resisting the urge to expel into otherness or invisibility those emergent identities that challenge fundamentally our constitution of self. Put more simply, Connolly describes a democratic ethos as one “that seeks to enhance the possibilities of agonal interdependence between an enlarged set of constituencies thrown together by hook and by crook, rather than to refine a common consensus or to consolidate already fixed understandings” (1995: 27-8). White’s interpretation of Connolly’s ethos emphasizes the dialogic relationship between openness and otherness, and provides a helpful lens through which to understand responsiveness: His subject acknowledges its constitutive dependence upon, or indebtedness to, difference and the temptation/pressure that is implicit in it for anxious mortal beings. And the primary way in which this is acknowledged is by a persistent cultivation of presumptive generosity toward the other. Understood in this fashion, generosity has two aspects. First, it has a quality of initial openness and attentiveness toward difference that bears witness to, or expresses a mimetic relation with, the agonistic becoming or presencing of life. And, second, it dampens the persistent temptation to transform difference into hostile otherness (2009: 48, emphasis in original).

Critical responsiveness here is articulated as actively assisting and witnessing the emergence of new modes of being, while agonistic respect is described as resisting the urge to transform recognized differences into alien otherness. Together they describe a democratic ethos of responsibility to encourage and sustain radical pluralism. The ethos of responsiveness serves as the basis for the ongoing pluralization of democracy. If the emergence of a hegemonic consensus represents the diminishment of democratic politics, a democratic ethos combats the sedimentation

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of a particular constellation of identities and differences by creating the conditions for the disruption of stability. Connolly describes this disruption variously as the politics of enactment or politics of becoming, in which the space created by responsiveness fosters the surfacing of unsettling challenges to any momentary stability. The contingency of foundations is always inadequate to capture the abundance of being, and a democratic ethos will open “up space through which new possibilities of being might be enacted.” These new possibilities, once they emerge, force hegemonic identities “to translate this experience of disturbance into a will to modify themselves so that they no longer remain exactly what they were, so that they change enough to open new possibilities of negotiation and coexistence with new claim to identity” (Connolly 1995: 180, 180-81, emphasis in original). Subjects animated by the ethos of responsiveness do not merely facilitate pluralism and the emergence of new identities; they find themselves always under pressure to modify, transform, and revise their own core commitments as they engage the pluralism they enable. The ethos of responsiveness, expressed in a politics of enactment, thus perpetuates and deepens democratic commitments among identities otherwise defined by their opposition as it “links a growing number of constituencies to appreciation of the fundamental contingency of things; to acknowledgment by more people in more settings of the role power plays in the naturalization of cultural boundaries; and to enhanced cultural responsiveness to the call to open up room for positive identities to crystallize out of the energies and injuries of difference” (Connolly 1995: 181). Responsive agonism builds the capacity of citizens to tolerate contingency, embrace ambiguity, welcome difference, and accept fundamental challenges to their own deep commitments without provoking hostile response, internally or externally. The key to democratic agonism is the cultivation of a will to go beyond tolerance for diversity and instead engage in ongoing self-constitution in the face of emergent difference, without losing the capacity to hold one’s own deepest commitments authentically. Self-revision within an ethos of responsiveness highlights the undecideability of meaning that haunts every identity. Every ontology is incomplete and every contingently held foundation rife with ruptures. A democratic ethos embraces this undecideability and deploys it to buttress an everevolving, always revising pluralism of identities in agonistic but complementary relationships. Unlike adversarial agonism, responsive agonism does not assert that political identity depends upon a constitutive outside. Identity can be constructed in this way, and often will be, but the politics of enactment works to displace this boundary, constantly opening identity to its other and highlighting the undecideability of every commitment. Agonistic respect does not draw boundaries between identities in order to mobilize democratic passion, but fosters multiple connections between constituencies that open themselves up to transformation. This softening of boundaries and attentiveness to the imbrication of identities with one another leads to a healthier democratic culture, since “possibilities for democratic political action are enhanced when diverse, interwoven constituencies

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resist becoming frozen into contending claims to intrinsic identity or exclusive morality” (Connolly 1995: xx). In practice the ethos of responsiveness suggests that political rule and established governance will be regularly disrupted. Agonistic respect actively counters the tendency of policy to reinforce a particular perspective by continually shifting the relations of power between contending identities. It is difficult for any ontological account to naturalize itself as the dominant public philosophy if citizens are disposed to question any emergent consensus and aware of the play of exclusions endemic to any policy position. Perhaps more importantly, critical responsiveness encourages the development and surfacing of new social movements demanding the recognition of new identities. Critical responsiveness cultivates the possibility of innovations in subjectivity and is attentive to the ways that social structures, even those committed to pluralism, tend to produce resistance to the inevitable normalizing pressures of political order. This resistance should find itself able to generate a movement that places pressure on the current constellation of recognition in order to introduce transformations, both to social order and the lived identities of late modern citizens. Thus a democratic ethos now becomes, among other things, a setting in which nomadic movements periodically interrupt centered cultural presumptions so that elements of power, artifice, and contingency in these all too readily naturalized forms becomes more palpable, so that voices defined as (interior, internal, external) Others in the established order of things can locate cultural space to contest some of these definitions so that new combinations emerging out of these disturbances can develop agonistic respect for one another in the changing contexts of interdependency (Connolly 1995: 179, emphasis in original).

Responsive agonism portrays democracy as an ongoing process of disruption and accommodation, where citizens are willing to respect contending identities, cultivate openness to the emergence of new identities, and expose the costs of any particular and contingent democratic modus vivendi. The politics of enactment thus demands a perpetual emergence of new movements and new negotiations of pluralism so that every consolidation is shadowed by the contingency upon which it rests. Ultimately responsive agonism rests upon two assertions: (1) the absence of foundations combined with multiple horizons of meaning in a globalized world will result in continual eruptions of difference, and (2) violence and anarchy come not from the lack of consensual grounds but from the attempt to suppress these differences under a totalizing order. The first claim reflects what Connolly has called immanent naturalism. This account of the generation of meaning draws upon the radical empiricism of William James and the ontology of Heidegger. Immanent naturalism maintains that our experience of being is one of always situated and mediated interpretation of sensations, and that the range of interpretations possible is not limited by reason or transcendence. The universe itself is plural insofar as

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it always exceeds our ability to offer a comprehensive account of its being, both because it exceeds us as a matter of ontological fact and because our attempts to understand it are already situated within a framework of interpretation that is not, for us, optional. This means that “the world comes equipped with strong pressures toward a diversity of being,” “in which surprising events of multiple sorts periodically burst forth, [and] a fundamental diversity of beings keeps blooming and surging forth on its own” (Schoolman and Campbell 2008: 315). White suggest the democratic response to this ontology is to adopt “an ethos of ‘generosity and forbearance’ toward the presencing of difference that continually unsettles one’s identity” (2009: 43). But if communities instead respond to the diversity of being with fear or dominance, and attempt to tame this blooming confusion by imposing a consensual narrative upon the diversity of meaning, then this consistency and stability can only come at the price of repression, violence, and exclusion. Thus a responsive agonism is not only a more just, inclusive ethos than the alternative, it also better reflects our fundamental experience of being. Distinctions in Agonistic Democratic Theory Difference vs. Pluralism All agonistic theories recognize that differences in identity, values, perspective, or world-view are social constructs that emerge from the ontopolitical grounds of the political. Most assert that democratic politics demands attentiveness to the exclusivist character of these differences, recognizing both that the generation of differences can become hierarchical and that the visibility of a particular spectrum of differences relies upon the expulsion of another spectrum of differences. Agonistic democrats share a belief that the production of difference must be repoliticized and made visible as a condition for any more emancipatory politics. Agonists differ, however, in the way they approach this issue of repoliticization, with some emphasizing the exposure of exclusion and others the construction of a hegemony that is more capable of recognizing its own shortfalls. The former aspire to endlessly politicize difference, the latter value the creation of a political order that can accommodate meaningful pluralism. Agonists focused on difference emphasize the displacements and remainders that emerge as identities are constructed; the goal of agonism is to expose the operations of exclusion so that differences never become naturalized. Difference agonists aspire to full inclusion while recognizing its impossibility, and thus identify justice with the politicization of difference in a way the keeps its boundaries in motion and available for intervention. Politics is oppositional and critical: all politics involves reification and injustice, so the function of contestation is perpetual resistance to this depoliticization of the generation of difference. Oppositional and expressive agonists adopt this perspective.

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Pluralist agonists, amongst whom I count the constitutional, adversarial, and responsive approaches, recognize the arbitrary character of difference and exclusion but focus more on the concept of the “constitutive outside.” Pluralism cannot be infinite as it only emerges within a political terrain defined by cultural, historical, and ethical boundaries. The purpose of politics is to foster a pluralism that is not ultimately reconcilable in all its aspects and provide a framework for the widest possible manifestations of difference, while also recognizing that not every value or identity can or should be included. Pluralist agonists emphasize the necessity of unjust exclusions as a consequence of establishing a social order and hope to design a politics that extends the range of pluralism as far as possible without destroying the conditions that make pluralist politics possible. Agonists focused on difference wish to politicize every element of identity and undermine every hegemonic narrative in order to prevent the perpetuation of any particular set of injustices Agonists focused on pluralism aim to heighten the political conflicts that generate and sustain pluralism without aspiring to avoid hegemonic narrative altogether. Put differently, pluralists accept the inevitability of hegemonic exclusion and try to construct narratives that extend the possibilities for conflict and contestation (and thus increase potential inclusion) as far as possible, while difference agonists contest the operation of any and all hegemonies and exclusions, regardless of the consequences for any particular social order. Self-creation vs. Collective Identities Agonistic democrats eschew individualism, associating this term with the atomistic imaginary of capitalist liberalism. Subjects, agonistic democrats recognize, are situated beings constituted by power within a network of linguistic, cultural, and historical influences. No subject can be understood in isolation from the society within which it comes to understand itself. They also avoid the language of collectivism, recognizing that the democratic tradition emphasizes both popular and individual sovereignty and that any plausible vision of democratic politics must emphasize the space for agency. Moreover, the language of collectivism obscures the contingent character of the subjects that make up any group identity; while subjects are produced by social power, they are shaped within particular conditions unique to their own circumstances and thus exist as contingently situated actors. No subject is its own architect, and no subject is identical with any other. Agonistic democrats differ significantly in the emphasis placed on the capacity of subjects to engage in their own creation and the importance of establishing some sort of common identification with democratic values sufficient to prevent the collapse of conflict into anarchy. Expressive and responsive agonists emphasize the creative capacity of the subject and tend to offer an account of democratic politics oriented toward extending the capacities for subjects to exert ongoing influence over their own constitution. A democratic agonism creates opportunities for engagement

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across identities in ways that produce tension and ambivalence within and between subjects. This tension can open space for creative reimagining of one’s own possibilities (Honig and Connolly) or foster the pursuit of one’s own conception of excellence (Owen). The ethos is directed toward the expansion of democratic space for subjects to engage their contingency with creativity and agency, and democratic structures should be directed toward this end. Rancière goes even further, arguing that democratic processes pluralize identities and subject positions in ways that counter the concentration of power and privatization of public life. Democracy thus implies “the action of subjects who, by working the intervals between identities, reconfigure the distributions of the public and the private, the universal and the particular” (Rancière 2006: 61-2). Democratic agonism not only emphasizes the radicalization of difference but associates democracy with the resistance to, proliferation of, and displacement of the identities and the interpretation of the sensible that maintains these identities to which subjects are directed. Agonistic democrats who emphasize the collective character of democratic identity foreground the importance of creating possibilities for identification with democratic values. If contestation is to take place without destroying the social context that makes such conflict possibility, agonistic democracy must offer an account of political identities that will allow subjects to envision themselves as part of a democratic project. As an alternative to the individualistic model of democratic politics, agonistic democracy emphasizes the collective identifications that create affective connections between subjects and permits conflict to occur without collapsing into warfare. Absent appropriate collective identities, undemocratic possibilities will emerge and thus threaten the institution of democratic politics. In order for agonism to make democratic contestation manageable and avoid the descent of politics into antagonistic wars of destruction, democratic orders must help to mobilize possibilities of identity that provide the opportunity for passions to emerge while directing them toward constructive engagement. Constitutional and adversarial agonists like Mouffe and Tully insist that while power, institutions, and hegemony cannot be escaped, and while it is sensible to articulate strategies to resist the urge to closure inherent in governance, we must also embrace the challenge of constructing a form of governance that lends itself to a more democratic public. Both emphases recognize the implication of collective and subjective identity, but the differential foci generate divergent accounts of the importance of identity formation in democratic politics. The Boundaries of Politics Agonists agree that politics is characterized by conflict; more precisely, postfoundational agonists agree that conflict is an ontological certainty given the contingent but ever-present character of the political. Any manifestation of certainty with regard to questions of politics will eventually be disrupted by the lack of certainty upon which this claim is based, and the political will emerge again. Agonistic democrats disagree, however, about the best means by which to manage

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the necessary antagonism of the political. Eruptions of the political are disruptive and unsettling, and have the potential to destroy democratic commitments if not channeled productively. But the attempt to control the disruptive force of antagonism risks destroying the very possibility of contestation that agonism celebrates. How, then, should democratic advocates balance the valorization of radical contestation with the aspiration to perpetuate a peaceful context within which this conflict can emerge? Oppositional and expressive agonistic theorists associate democratic practice with the perpetuation of struggle and constant rearticulation of the boundaries and basis of politics. For these theorists any limits upon contestation are presumptively undemocratic and potentially destabilizing. The core of democratic politics is the ongoing struggle to constitute and simultaneously contest the character of a political community, and any boundaries placed upon this protean engagement reflect attempts to tame and displace the agonistic spirit that generates a democratic ethos. Democracy should contest boundaries and restrictions, not erect limitations. On this account, agonism is “a democratic politics of augmentation that perpetually reauthors a regime’s constituting structures for the sake of the remainders that sedimentations (of identities and constitutions) would otherwise engender” (Honig 1993: 10). The function of agonistic politics is to perpetually contest every regulative ideal, every assertion of objectivity, every pretention to universality in order to expose relations of subordination and thus make possible resistance to them. Badiou goes so far as to associate politics only with the unraveling of bonds and boundaries, since the regular relations of interests and proper places enslaves thought and action; politics, in his account, “will always strive to deconstruct the bond” (2005: 73). Rancière, similarly, asserts that the primary subject of democracy “exists only as a rupture of the logic of arche, a rupture of the logic of beginning/ruling,” and thus only emerges as a surplus in contention with the normal structure of politics; he remarks that “the whole question of politics thus lies in the interpretation of this void,” associating democratic action with the moment of disruption within the grounding narrative of the social order (2001: 14-15) Constitutional, adversarial, and responsive agonistic thinkers assert that the establishment of some sort of boundaries is a condition for democratic contestation to occur. For these theorists the antagonism of the political can manifest in dangerously undemocratic forms of essentialism, violence, and subordination. The urge to destroy an enemy always lurks, and antagonism improperly channeled often produces the least democratic of outcomes. Thus democracy must provide guidance that will allow the irreducible plurality of political conflict to express itself agonistically rather than destructively. The “main tasks for democratic politics consist in defusing the potential antagonism that exists in social relations” (Mouffe 2005a: 19). The danger is that this diffusion will completely displace the antagonism of politics by imposing a standard of reason, rationality, or nature upon social relations and thus establish a peaceful politics of exclusion; agonistic critiques of liberalism and deliberative democracy highlight this danger. But for

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agonistic democrats who posit the necessity of limits on contestation, the risk of war and the risk of pacification are both real and both must be addressed. Radical openness to contestation and oppressive containment of conflict both endanger democratic practice. The commitment to the necessity of boundaries can be quite extensive, and quite explicitly institutional. Mouffe explicitly argues that a “democratic society requires the allegiance of its citizens to a set of shared ethico-political principles, usually spelled out in a constitution and embodied in a legal framework… ” (2005a: 122). Tully makes a similar argument, asserting that agonistic demands must “be made good to others in terms of the principles, values, and goods they all share to some degree” (2000: 475). These principles cannot be placed beyond dispute, but contestation must take place within this common framework, without which antagonism generates not political conflict but something closer to warfare. Ultimately what appears to separate the two inflections of agonism is the orientation toward institutionalization. Theorists who view agonism as a strategic tool deployed to combat oppression and subordination resist bounding its range, while theorists who envision agonism as a viable model for pluralist politics endorse the need for common frameworks and limitations on its practice. Reciprocity or Competition? Agonism emphasizes the intractability of difference and the impossibility of consensus. No social order can smoothly include all possible identities and values. Frictions between irreconcilable conceptions of the world characterize all politics; agonistic theorists insist that democracy must offer a means to accommodate this irreducible plurality. The standard liberal position, rejected by all versions of agonism, suggests that the ideal solution to the problem of plurality is the establishment of a neutral state and legal order that favors no particular identity, combined with a political culture that emphasizes tolerance. Both neutrality and tolerance are problematic for agonists. Neutrality always implies an apolitical perspective from which conflicts can be adjudicated, and agonists assert that no such perspective can exist. To the extent a social actor establishes its “neutrality,” it should be seen instead as having established its dominance of the social order: the neutral perspective is always only the perspective of the hegemonic identity, whose position of authority has rendered its own particularity invisible. Neutrality, like universality, is an ideological fiction. Tolerance is problematic because it suggests that difference is an inconvenience at best and pathology at worst. One tolerates something that is unwelcome and that one wishes could be expelled, but cannot. It suggests an attitude of forbearance rather than acceptance. A politics of toleration is a politics that aspires to do away with pluralism and has reconciled itself to failure. Constitutional and responsive agonists propose that the appropriate response to radical pluralism is the development of an ethos of respect and reciprocity amongst citizens who do not share deep comprehensive commitments (or even,

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in many cases, a common vision of the world). The diversity endemic to a post-foundational world cannot lend itself to easy understanding, and common ground cannot ever be presumed. Instead, these agonists recognize that pluralist democracies will bring together identities and values that view one another not merely as wrong but as existential threats. It is not possible to posit a deeper moral ground upon which such differences can be adjudicated. Nonetheless, a democratic order involves interdependent citizens with incommensurable visions of the good living together with some sort of mutuality. Connolly argues that agonistic respect can serve to maintain this mutuality, since it is “a civic virtue that allows people to honor different final sources, to cultivate reciprocal respect across difference, and to negotiate larger assemblages to set general politics” (2002: xxvi). Rather than finding a common point of agreement upon which to build civil order, Connolly asserts that citizens of pluralist democracies can come to care for their common life and thus respect the irreducibly alien commitments of fellow citizens in a contested and uncomfortable, but respectful fashion. Tully argues that those living under an appropriately democratic constitutional order will come to constitute their subjectivity in a way that internalizes the virtue of reciprocity, seeing it as central to their own sense of political virtue. The vision common to these accounts is one in which deeply contradictory world-views and identities nonetheless commit, for reasons embedded in political culture or norms, to engage respectfully views antagonistic to their own. In a sense this type of reciprocal agonism aims to preserve the hostility endemic to democratic pluralism while fostering convergence on a public commitment to respectful rather than antagonistic engagement. The ideal is a chastened agonism which recognizes the irreconcilability of pluralism while limiting public contestation to those claims that do not threaten the possibility of mutual respect. Reciprocal agonism must almost by definition be a bounded agonism; as Connolly points out, “the ethos of pluralism supported here does acknowledge the necessity of setting limits” (2002: xxix). Oppositional and expressive agonists, by contrast, emphasize the competitive and fractious element of pluralism. Democracy, on this account, is characterized by constant confrontation between opposing positions. Confrontation serves two related purposes. For expressive agonists it increases the likelihood that no implicit consensual politics comes to dominate, and thus displace those identifications which cannot be recognized by it. The “displacement of politics with law or administration engenders remainders that can disempower and perhaps even undermine democratic institutions and citizens” (Honig 1993: 14). The impulse toward stability, consensus, and comity is strong; a contentious public sphere provides some bulwark against this tendency. For oppositional agonists the constant conflict of normal politics makes it more likely that a moment of real politics might emerge, where the order of domination might be meaningfully ruptured. While even the most contested pluralist regime reflects an appropriation of power, the democratic possibility of rupturing the logic of ruling might be improved by a more vibrant competition between subjects. As Rancière writes,

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“democracy is thus precisely not a political regime in the sense of a particular constitution that determines different ways of assembling people under a common authority” (2001: 11). Certainly democracy cannot be found in the reciprocal respect of subjects within such an order. Mouffe’s adversarial agonism falls between these two positions. On the one hand, vibrant confrontation provides an avenue through which the mobilized passions of democracy can be channeled toward adversarial rather than antagonistic outlets. If one danger of democracy is the quietist subjugation of consensus, the mobilization of exclusivist identifications directed toward the destruction of the enemy represents the extreme alternative. By providing “the institutions allowing them to be expressed in adversarial form” (Mouffe 2005a: 30), conflicts both engage citizens in democratic rather than destructive politics and counter the temptation to drain pluralism of its radical incommensurability. Antagonism cannot be resolved or even tempered by mutual respect, but only channeled in democratically productive vectors such as her suggestion that the distinctions between left and right be valorized rather than diffused. Agreements will occur, but any such compromises “should be seen as temporary respites in an ongoing confrontation” (Mouffe 2000: 102). On the other hand, adversaries must be “friendly enemies,” and thus open to cooperation and reciprocity. Agonistic citizens “are friends because they share a common symbolic space but also enemies because they want to organize this common symbolic space in a different way” (Mouffe 2000: 13). The competition between adversaries cannot be oriented toward the disruption or destruction of the basis of the social order, as oppositional agonists suggest, as it is only the commitment to a shared constellation of meaning and values that make peaceful confrontation possible. Ultimately Mouffe’s emphasis on converting antagonism to agonism demonstrates the primacy of reciprocity in her approach. The contrast with oppositional agonism here is profound, and highlights the extent to which the agonism of Tully, Mouffe, and Connolly presumes a view of democratic confrontation strikingly different from that of Rancière, Honig, and the radical democrats. Agonistic Democracy, Pluralism, and the Prospects for Popular Sovereignty It should be evident at this point that agonistic democracy does not describe an undifferentiated theory of politics. While all five versions of agonism share a number of significant traits, they also differ substantially in their analysis of politics, their interpretation of post-foundationalism, and their vision of democracy. All agonistic democrats share a commitment to thoroughgoing political contestation, and emphasize that such contestation cannot be limited to conflicts between citizens and groups. Democracy is not merely the playing field upon which conflicts take place, and institutional conditions are not neutral arbiters. These are the epiphenomena of democracy; agonistic theories want to make the procedures, principles, assumptions, and narratives that structure political engagement between citizens susceptible to contestation as well. A political order is only

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potentially democratic if its contingent conditions of articulation are visible and their constitution an ongoing process in which democratic citizens are engaged. All agonistic theories endorse a post-foundational ontology and thus suspect any consensus as a symptom of possible domination. All agonistic theorists view identity formation as a central issue of democratic politics and offer strategies to make the project of subject formation more accessible and its constraints visible. All express commitment to foster possibilities for an expanded range of identities to emerge and claim a place within an egalitarian social milieu. Beyond these rather basic similarities (and even these can be articulated in incompatible ways), agonistic theories offer distinctly different visions of politics and these visions can be more and less congenial to the development of a theory of institutions. As Table 3.1 shows, the five types of agonism differ significantly across the four axes outlined in the second section of the chapter. These different profiles help clarify some categorical resemblances between theoretical dispositions. Agonistic theories that emphasize difference in subjectivity also view the contestation of social boundaries as a central function of politics and describe the structure of social life as competitive. Thus both oppositional and expressive agonism share a vision of democratic politics that works to destabilize accumulations of power, resist all claims to commonality, and perpetuate an uncertain and contentious public sphere in order to create opportunities for different subjectivities to emerge or different articulations of the people to coalesce in confrontation to power. I will call these versions the agonism of resistance. Agonists whose theory of politics emphasize the depth of the connections between identities and thus propose a more pluralistic view of democracy also accept the idea that the construction of political boundaries is a necessary element of egalitarian politics and describe the structure of social life as at least potentially cooperative and reciprocal. Thus constitutional, adversarial, and responsive agonists promote an approach to politics open to the possibility that correctly designed rules, practices, and procedures might help to preserve and extend pluralistic diversity while fostering relations of reciprocity sufficient to generate stable conditions within which democratic contestation can take place (at the level of everyday politics, procedural politics, identity politics, and constitutional politics) without requiring the regular disruption and overthrow of the social order. This constellation of agonistic theories I will label pluralist agonism. The affinities of these two categories of agonisms have implications for their capacity to express democratic sovereignty. The theories that emphasize difference, contested boundaries, and competitive social relations generate suspicion of organized power of any sort and skepticism that popular sovereignty can be produced or sustained by institutions. They tend to view popular sovereignty as an eruptive, ephemeral event that opens up possibilities for creative disruption of sedimented social arrangements rather than a sustainable democratic practice. The ethos common to oppositional and expressive agonisms is one of resistance to power, even (or perhaps especially) democratic power, since they generally dissociate the realm of the social, where egalitarian contestation

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Table 3.1

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Mapping Agonist Theories on the Axes of Distinction Difference/ SelfPluralism Creation/ Collective Identity

Construct/ Reciprocity/ Can Contest Competition Popular Boundaries Sovereignty be Exercised?

Oppositional

Difference

Both

Contest

Competition

No

Expressive

Difference

Self-Creation Contest

Competition

No

Constitutional Pluralism

Collective

Construct

Reciprocity

Yes

Adversarial

Pluralism

Collective

Construct

Reciprocity

Yes

Responsive

Pluralism

Self-Creation Construct

Reciprocity

Yes

and self-formation takes place, from the institutional, which generally poses barriers to the expansion of democratic culture. This is not to assert this style of agonism is irrelevant to institutional questions, despite its explicitly antiinstitutional prescriptions; to the extent they describe the tendencies toward resistance and ungovernability that should characterize a vibrant democratic polity, they offer an aspirational standard against which institutional suggestions should be evaluated. Agonistic institutions must be able to sustain a culture of resistance and accommodate radical critique, and they must be responsive to the anarchic possibilities of collective and personal subject-formation that escape their expectations. The agonistic theories in the second category are significantly more congenial to the possibility of institutionalized democracy. Given their shared emphasis on the interdependent character of pluralism, the possibility of creating relations of reciprocity, generosity, or respectful contestation within those relations, and their acceptance that political life (and especially democratic forms) demand the careful construction and ongoing revision of social boundaries, these versions of agonism provide a promising context for thinking about democratic institutions. They are open to the possibility of meaningful expressions of popular sovereignty, as long as these expressions are understood to be contingent and impermanent, and are eager to suggest strategies by which democratic expressions of collective will can be implemented without risking the sedimentation of that same power. While constitutional agonism may sometimes veer a bit afar from the postfoundational basis of agonistic democracy, adversarial and responsive agonisms both suggest the importance of institutional forms for guiding democratic

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practices in a contingent universe. And even Tully’s occasional over-emphasis on the importance of reason can be interpreted to describe the situated practices of identity within particular societies. This book explores the institutional prospects of agonistic democracy. That project dictates the investigation of institutions be guided by a theory of agonism open to institutional politics. In the following chapters, therefore, agonistic democracy will for the most part be deployed in its pluralist, reciprocal, bounded variant. Insofar as the guiding ethos of democratic theory is the establishment of popular sovereignty, it is sensible to focus on theories that consider the practice of popular sovereignty a meaningful possibility. This is not to say that the more critical and resistant orientations to agonism do not inform the discussion; they do, especially as a standard against which to evaluate the probable impact of institutional structures on political culture and social practices. But, for the most part, the discussion of agonism in the evaluation of institutions will draw upon the responsive and adversarial theories of democracy.

Chapter 4

Agonistic Democracy and the Question of Institutions The distinctive theoretical contours of agonistic democracy detailed in Chapter 2 set the foundation for a discussion of institutions proper. What is the appropriate way to define a political institution for a theory of politics so focused on the ongoing collective constitution of identity and power? Are agonistic theories of democracy compatible with any realistic form of democratic institution? If so, what political institutions might best foster and sustain the form of society necessary for agonistic practices to flourish? Should agonistic institutions be themselves contested or must their relative stability serve as the bulwark against disorder needed to generate authentic agonistic citizenship? This chapter attempts to develop an understanding of the concept of political institutions suitable to an agonistic theory of democracy. Such institutional criteria are essential to determine which range of political rules, norms, and practices are most likely to support an agonistic politics. The first section of the chapter addresses the concern that agonistic theories emerged primarily as critiques of institutions and as such should not be used to develop or defend any particular model of political practice. The second section draws on empirically informed theories of institutions to explore the range of institutional possibilities appropriate to the agonistic understanding of politics. The final section proposes a framework for use in evaluating the dominant models for organizing democratic governance, based on the likelihood that they might generate agonistic outcomes. I claim, ultimately, that while democratic institutions cannot themselves be strongly agonistic, it is possible to design them in such a way that the disequilibrium present in any democratic institutions can be accented. More important, I argue that the primary function of agonistic political institutions should be to foster an agonistic mode of political participation amongst citizens and provide multiple opportunities for these conflicts to shape the more mundane operations of politics. Thus, the final section develops criteria to evaluate the capacity of democratic institutions to create and sustain conditions consistent with an agonistic vision of politics. Should Agonistic Democrats Propose Institutions? Any attempt to derive institutional implications from agonistic theory must address a fundamental objection: agonistic democracy is generally interpreted as a critique of institutions and the undemocratic, unjust, and exclusive consequences that

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follow inevitably from any establishment of political rules, norms, or practices. Critics of the project might claim that agonistic democracy should be understood as a fundamentally anti-institutional theory of democracy that opposes the potential closure of institutional frameworks by exposing their inevitable exclusions. Agonistic theorists who develop institutional claims betray the critical goals of agonism, which should be unrelentingly oppositional. Importantly, to propose institutions is to impose limits on contestation of some sort, if only provisionally, since even intentionally agonistic institutions must produce an external remainder that will likely be rendered invisible within the framework adopted. In short, the concept of agonistic institutions is self-cancelling. I suggest that such a position is not the dominant one in the literature, nor does it adequately capture the diversity of responses appropriate to post-foundational circumstances. Certainly the strain of agonism closest to the radical democrats would sympathize with institutional skepticism, and if agonism were limited to its oppositional and expressive forms these objections would be more plausible. But as I have been at pains to demonstrate, a plurality of agonistic theories proffer both negative critiques of existing politics and positive accounts of democratic politics. It is credible to assert that agonistic approaches have something of value to offer politics apart from critique. Nonetheless, agonistic democracy does emerge from a tradition emphasizing resistance and disruption, so it is important to explain clearly why an agonistic theory of institutions is not oxymoronic. That argument could take on a number of strands. I suggest three: • The external argument: Any theory of democracy needs to offer more than critique if it is to be taken seriously by scholars who do not share its premises. To the extent the project of democratic theory is a constructive one, a purely negative approach is unlikely to attain significant influence in the literature. This claim is particularly true for political science, which tends to see the role of political theory as generating research questions or producing models for empirical scholars. • The internal argument: Post-foundational democratic theory emphasizes the indeterminacy of social meaning and highlights the danger involved in attempting to offer final, complete solutions to social problems. Any such solution will inevitable generate injustices and exclusions as the condition of its universal applicability; agonistic democrats identify this tendency toward closure as depoliticization, and expose the presence of this inclination in dominant theories of democracy. It need not follow that an acceptance of indeterminacy and resistance to closure requires rejection of any and all institutions. Interrogating injustices and exclusions (both in current practice and ideal theories) is completely compatible with attempts to redesign institutions that mitigate the magnitude of such inevitable injustices. Post-foundational theorists should understand better than most that the contingent character of all politics does not mean one should withdraw from it. I think it clear that the attempt to theorize

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political institutions so as to heighten awareness of exclusion, conflict, and indeterminacy is perfectly consistent with agonistic premises, especially when the goal is to determine which institutions are most likely to minimize the tendency toward closure and maximize awareness of the contingent character of the political. • The corrective argument: Though some scholars who identify themselves with the post-foundational tradition would endorse a purely negative understanding of agonism, they are not representative of agonistic democratic theory broadly understood. Among scholars of democracy unfamiliar with post-foundational and agonistic approaches, however, the caricature persists that these theories offer little more than obscurantist critique. While I recognize no single essay or book can correct such widespread misperception, I do think it important to continue to resist this false impression. A different sort of objection would come from agonistic theorists who insist that politics should be understood not only to exceed institution but to be, in some sense, beyond them. Thomson describes this objection succinctly: agonism “identifies democracy as a political principle that cannot be directly aligned with a particular regime. Democracy as self-rule becomes something more like an ethic, or what Wolin calls ‘a mode of being” (2009: 107). I think two versions of this objection are likely, depending on how one chooses to conceptualize institutions. The more narrowly stated objection would be the claim that institutions are expressions of the state, and politics takes place in a realm that exceeds the state. Bickford, relying on McClure, summarizes this claim about politics and the state quite well: Contemporary radical pluralism (McClure contends) holds a particular kind of promise precisely because it questions that the primary site for political action is the state. The way in which contemporary groups have politicized practices and relationships previously screened into the so-called private realm makes possible “a politics which extends the terrain of political contestation to the everyday enactment of social practices and the routine reiteration of cultural representations.” Conceptualizing politics in terms of a plurality of sites for action makes it possible to sustain and enact multifaceted political identities (1999: 90, citing McClure 1992: 123).

Much of contemporary democratic theory, agonistic or otherwise, recognizes that the essence of politics exceeds the institutional forms of the state. Just as it would be a grave error to limit analysis of politics to an analysis of what states do, so too would it be problematic to propose institutions to produce agonistic democracy, as such proposals would inevitably work to domesticate politics back into the state apparatus. This initial objection is simple to forestall. First, institutions and states are not the same thing. States are a type of institution and states often shape and

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control institutions, but they are not co-extensive. A theory of institutions limited to describing the structures of state power would certainly be inadequate to agonistic democracy; this simply means that an appropriate theory of institutions should involve more than the state, as any serious theory would. Further, it is not inconceivable to envision state institutions that operate to defuse or diminish accumulated power, just as it is possible to recognize some of the sites for action that challenge state power as institutions upon which we might seek to exert influence. Third, unless contemporary theorists posit the realistic possibility of a stateless future, politics will in practice take place in the presence of and under the influence of states. While agonistic democrats recognize the importance of non-state politics, and may hope to privilege these sites, any objection that depends on the assertion that states are unnecessary is bound to fail. Politics involves institutions, and among those institutions is the state; to the extent agonistic democracy proposes a theory of politics, it must also account for institutions, including the state. The second form of the objection offers a stronger claim: democracy is not a method of governance but a form of social engagement that exceeds institutional limits. Any attempt to reduce the democratic ethos to institutional structures inevitably introduces undemocratic tendencies. There are two broad versions of this objection, one that views democratic practices as an ethos for self-cultivation and one that views the democratic impulse as one of resistance to power. Both versions share a critique of discipline and both fear that any attempt to institutionalize democracy will increase social/political discipline and diminish the capacity to identify such institutions as contingent. Both privilege the suggestion that the ideal of democracy is most closely approached in social practices that resist and undermine sedimentations of culture and social identities, and might assert that “institutions” are only democratic insofar as they serve to mobilize resistance among democratic publics. The democratic ethos is contingent, paradoxical, and disturbing. It opposes forms of democracy expressed as rules, shared norms, or accepted strategies located within some type of boundaries. Translated, the democratic ethos opposes institutions. Thomson describes this position: “Through a conflation of academic liberal political theory with the rhetoric of consensus in contemporary Western political discourse, agonists portray their own arguments as a virtuous attempt to foster a kind of pluralism they advocate, grounded in practices rather than institutions” (2009: 107, emphasis added). Thomson attributes this tendency to agonists generally, and he is right that they share a suspicion of institutions and a preference for practices. But the distinction between practices and institutions is much more central to agonists of resistance than the pluralist agonists. Both offer an account of politics grounded in social practices; only oppositional agonists view these practices as in tension with institutions. Each version of the objection demands a slightly different response. The ethos objection is simpler to address. This objection is strongest in the oppositional and expressive forms of agonism, which view democratic politics as a means to cultivate one’s own identity, whether collectively expressed or self-created. Their resistance to institutions arises from a completely accurate concern that institutions

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generate their own stability, and this social stability tends to become naturalized. If the cultivation of a plurality of identities is the primary purpose of democratic politics, if that purpose requires that the contingency of social order be revealed, and if this process of creation can only take place in resistance to boundaries and within a strife-filled and competitive social milieu, then institutions are at best obstacles to that purpose. That need not mean, however, that institutions cannot be made compatible with the cultural ethos of democracy as contestation. If institutions were both properly understood and properly designed, they might be able to support the cultivation of plurality while encouraging the demystification of their own naturalized status. Moreover, the variants of agonism that emphasize pluralism rather than resistance are less committed to the proposition that the democratic ethos is inconsistent with institutional limitations, and in Mouffe’s case such structures are posited as necessary for democratic outcomes. The argument that democracy demands resistance to all forms of institutionalization is somewhat more difficult to address, particularly since advocates of that position often criticize the ethos position. Most of these thinkers are strongly rooted in the traditions of radical democracy and are reluctant to embrace what they see as agonism’s potentially depoliticizing emphasis on the self. Nor do they wish to abandon as contingent the resources for resistance developed over generations of oppositional politics. Here is an objection with real traction. I believe, however, that this version of the objection to institutional design is not ultimately an objection from within agonistic democratic theory. It emerges, instead, from the project of radical democratic theory; despite their common ancestry, agonistic and radical democratic theories are, as I have argued, at this point parallel branches on the progressive democratic theory tree (or perhaps distant nodes on the democratic rhizome?). Thus this objection is external to the project of agonistic democracy, despite the “familial” resemblances. Even where the two approaches are analogous, the basic impulses of agonistic theorists open to democratic institutions are not compatible with those of radical democrats, who wish to foster not agonism but antagonism, not sustainable contestation but aggressive conflict, and who offer not a situated vision of politics but an expansive aspiration to revolutionary transformation. Radical democrats oppose institutions because opposition to power is part of their democratic ethos; agonistic democrats are suspicious of institutions but recognize both their importance and inevitability.1

1  Although Vázquez-Arroyo’s critique of Connolly actually offers a third possible response, as he objects that an agonistic ethos takes the focus of political theory too far away from institutions. He asserts that Connolly’s decision “to formulate democracy as an ethos has important (anti-)political implications, especially in its subtle way of restricting the range of concerns traditionally associated with democratic experience. A “political ethos” has more to do with “modes of civic conduct” than with the mainstay of political theory: constitutional principles, democratic institutions, political economy” (2004: 11). I address this concern at some length in Chapter 8.

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Moreover, strong evidence may be found in a range of agonistic work indicating that political institutions of an appropriate sort are needed to attain democratic outcomes. This evidence is particularly strong for pluralist agonism, whose texts include regular references to the need for institutional structures to guide and cultivate a democratic ethos, as well as explicit concern about the institutional bases necessary for such an ethos to persist. Mouffe’s project includes perhaps the most direct articulation of the necessity of institutions for a post-foundational democratic politics. At various points in her work she insists that the forms conflict take must be tempered so as to avoid destroying the conditions that allow political associations to exist (Mouffe 2005a: 20, 120; Mouffe 2000: 25, 93). She makes it clear that adversarial agonism must develop a theory of institutions if it is to manage the dangers of antagonism and social conflict a democratic public sphere encourages: The adversarial model has to be seen as constitutive of democracy because it allows democratic politics to transform antagonism into agonism. In other words, it helps us to envisage how the dimension of antagonism can be ‘tamed,’ thanks to the establishment of institutions and practices through which the potential antagonism can be played out in an agonistic way (Mouffe 2005a: 20-21).

These institutions are not only necessary for agonistic democracy to emerge; once established they also determine the limits of its inclusion. Those who challenge these basic institutions may be legitimately excluded from democratic participation, despite the explicit mission of agonism to expand inclusion, since a “democratic society cannot treat those that put its basic institutions into question as legitimate adversaries” (Mouffe 2005a: 120). There is little ambiguity here. For Mouffe agonistic democracy requires some sort of political institutions that shape the public sphere of politics within which adversaries compete and that foster an agonistic citizenship which permits antagonists to recognize their reciprocal commitment to common values. White evinces similar concerns about the centrality of institutions. In his discussion of the predicaments of late-modern democracy, two of his three dimension (economic inequality and the “changing social basis of the democratic polity,” by which he means the dominance of middle class citizens in contemporary democracy) refer to institutional rather than cultural issues (White 2009: 77ff). He suggests that a democratic response to these issues will need “to look for palpable criteria of greater or lesser oppressiveness that might guide the development of a graduated repertoire of democratic practices” (White 2009: 85), an explicit rejection of the oppositional pessimism of Wolin and Derrida. And he suggests that a promising strategy by which contingent democracies might address these predicaments “is thematizing a politics of coalition building among constituencies that may share some interests and not others” (White 2009: 88). To claim that democracy must address concrete issues of policy and distribution in a way that

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makes possible coalitions of interest is not an approach to politics hostile to the notion of institutional design. In fact, both Connolly and Mouffe offer a series of specific but underdeveloped suggestions for conceptualizing democratic institutions. While their discussions of these alternatives are frustratingly shallow, they nonetheless demonstrate the importance to agonistic democracy of engaging the problem of institutions. Connolly describes the pluralization of the political as taking place across six “sites” of politics: (1) the micropolitics of the self, (2) the politics of disturbance of identities, (3) the politics of enactment through which identities become movements and emerge into the current conception of the political, (4) “a politics of representational assemblages through which general policies are processed through the state,” (5) a politics of interstate relations, and (6) a politics of non-state and interstate and cross-national movements that pressure states and other institutional actors (Connolly 1995: xxi). At least the latter three of these sites imply the role of institutions in responsive agonism, and the fourth indicates a representative process of some sort is a part of agonism. Mouffe discusses the role of parliamentary forms in maintaining agonistic relations, going so far as to claim that when “parliamentary institutions are destroyed or weakened, the possibility of an agonistic confrontation disappears and is replaced by an antagonistic we/they” (Mouffe 2005a: 23). In a discussion of democracy and globalization she offers a tentative defense of regional federalism, though conceding these ideas are underdeveloped (Mouffe 2005b: 131). There are sufficient hints about the centrality of institutional design to agonism for scholars to recognize that “though these accounts allude to the importance of democratic rules and procedures, there is still something of an ‘institutional deficit’ in their respective theories” (Howarth 2008: 189; see also Schaap 2007: 68-9). It would seem clear that an agonistic theory of institutions is neither inappropriate nor oxymoronic, and for pluralist agonisms even implicit. A final objection must be addressed before proceeding to a discussion of agonistic institutions. Many democratic thinkers, radical and otherwise, suggest that institutions are not merely barriers to democratic practices but essentially and unavoidably expressions of anti-democratic power. Institutions are not merely the rules of society, the practices of sovereign power, the norms of political life, or the expressions of sovereign power. Rather, they are the means by which complexity is reduced, politics is tamed, and contingency obscured. Institutions, on this account, are normatively opposed to democratic outcomes, as institutions are defined by their aspiration to closure. Two quite different examples of this position help illuminate the power of this critique. Rancière suggests that institutions represent the limit point of politics rather than a mode of expression of political conflict. The function of institutions, identified with the police, is to prevent the emergence of the sort of anarchic, ungovernable, limitless excess that democracy expresses. Politics is not about the management of society but the articulation of the partition between ruler and ruled, and politics only takes place when the members of these two categories are undefined. The central ethos of democracy is that everyone can rule, and anyone should: to the extent that power expresses itself with consistency

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or structure it has done so in opposition to the anarchic expression of equality that democracy entails. Institutions can never be democratic, as their commitment is to depoliticize the people and overcome the contingency that makes politics (rather than policing) possible. To discuss institutions as if they might do more than serve as the provocation for democratic politics is a normative mistake. Christodoulidis provides very differently grounded version of this objection in his critique of the republican understanding of civil society. He fears that the willingness of many contemporary democratic theorist to see the state as a “benign guarantor of the democratic process” overlooks the tension between social order and the contingency upon which that order rests (1998: 5). Republican acceptance of the preeminence of the legal order in determining the boundaries of politics suppresses the vitality of political discourse and contains the potential for political action (Christodoulidis 2006). A theory of democracy that endorses the role of institutions in delimiting the structure of the political is one that risks depoliticizing the contingency of the social and thus imperils democracy itself. What each position highlights is the normative assertion implicit in the project of this book. Posing the question, “what institutions are most appropriate to cultivate an agonistic politics” implies that institutions are capable of fostering democracy at all. It is not a trivial assumption to make, nor an unproblematic one. I offer two stipulations before proceeding. First, I do not assert that the institutions appropriate to agonistic democracy will be themselves expressions of democratic politics. I suspect, in fact, that the tendency toward self-preservation and tendency toward the depoliticization of their own status are unavoidable elements of institutional politics, and this must be kept in mind in the evaluation of institutional options. My concern is rather to evaluate which institutional structures are most congenial to an agonistic politics, understanding that any and all concrete articulations of institutional politics will mitigate against the emergence of their own contingency. Second, I approach the question of the book as a pragmatic one. Contemporary democratic politics is structured by institutional forms and the distribution or discourse or relations of power are shaped by these forms. Moreover, adopting an explicitly post-foundationalist interpretation of agonism demands recognition of the situated and historical conditions within which articulations of power and meaning emerge. As I argued in the first two chapters, post- (rather than anti-) foundationalist premises recognize the contingency of our historical situation while also accepting that these contingent circumstances circumscribe the range of possibilities for democratic politics. While not rejecting the importance of resistance to power or the attempt to articulate alternative accounts of institutional politics, I think it valuable to investigate what prospects for an agonistic politics might be possible, taking institutional accounts in their more traditional form. Third, I approach the question of agonistic democratic theory as a question relevant to political science, which entails working within that intellectual framework, at least to the extent possible without fundamentally altering the integrity of agonistic theory. Though cognizant that the vocabulary of institutions deployed in political science can be reductive, I nevertheless believe

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that fruitful engagement between post-foundational and positivist political science is possible. Thus I both accept that traditional political institutions tend toward closure, depoliticization, and permanence and believe it possible to work to develop an account of institutions that might cultivate an agonistic politics, drawing from existing accounts in political science and political theory. How Should Agonistic Democrats Define Institutions? Institutions Generally I start at the most general level possible. Institutions are social structures that constrain the actions and shape the opportunities of those situated within them. This influence must be somewhat stable over time and will manifest itself as power, with power understood broadly. Institutional theories “share a common set of concerns and assumptions, particularly an interest in the way in which some set of regularities in political life (rules and procedures, organizational structures, norms, cultural scripts) shapes the expression and aggregation of political preferences, allocates power and regulates its exercise, and therefore affects political outcomes” (Lieberman 2002: 699). I further note that the impact of institutions on individual behavior is usually seen as the central issue, as institutions are explored as a means to explain collective outcomes of individual decisions. North’s (1990: 1) simple description captures both points well: “Institutions are the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction.” North emphasizes both the constituted character of institutions and their central role in determining how human beings relate to one another; presumably this interaction includes reflecting upon and attempting to revise the institutions that shape the preferences and interactions of those acting within them. Rules and structures, however, come in many forms, and the metaphor of the game is misleading. Institutions are dynamic and the rules they provide are not external to the game played, especially in democratic contexts. Moreover, the object of institutional rules or the motivations of the rule-makers do not always lead to outcomes that are intended, and unlike rule changes in a game, rules that produce unintended consequences are rarely reviewed or redacted. Institutions are not only rules but also processes for rule-generation, and the process itself is subject to modification over time. Pierson (2004: 14-15) describes this situation when he writes that “the long term effects of institutional choices, which are frequently the most profound and interesting ones, should often be seen as the by-products of social processes rather than embodying the goals of social actors.” Despite the day-to-day sense that institutions are fixed entities within which human behavior occurs, they are, in fact, historically embedded and evolving facets of our constituted social world; they are, as Heidegger might describe them,

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ontic existentials of our situated existence.2 Just as the meaning of language both constrains what we think and how we act while also adapting and changing as we exert ourselves differently within and against its limits, so political institutions both structure our sense of our own interests, possibilities, motives, and actions, and respond to as well as shape human behavior. At the general level the account of institutions common in much of political science is also compatible with the ontological positions adopted by agonistic democrats. Institutions, broadly conceived, are social structures that shape human behavior by delimiting the range of meanings, preferences, values, and relationships considered viable. These limits persist if institutions generate sanctions of some sort to maintain those conditions. Over time the range of understandings available to social actors changes, and institutions change with them; the causality of this relationship is unclear. These structures are political to the extent they are vested with power in some formal sense or exert power in the defense of some sort of advantaged interest or collective (Weingast 2002). A theorist working from postfoundational premises should have no trouble accepting such a description of the social constitution and maintenance of meaning, nor any trouble accepting that such institutions clearly impact the possibilities for fostering any sort of democratic forms, agonistic or otherwise. Indeed, to the extent some agonistic democrats believe that democracy is less about modes of governance and more about the culture, ethos, and social practices that governance reflects, a concern with institutions should be a priority. Institutions in Action While a variety of camps in political science might accept some version of the account of institutions offered above, it would be harder to reach consensus on how those institutions work in practice. These debates are ongoing and largely interminable, as the field cycles from historical description to behavioral analysis to ideological explanation to functionalism to rational choice to historical institutionalism, and back again. I am unconcerned to engage these debates. I do wish to mine these approaches for useful insights that will help consider an account of institutional action appropriate to post-foundational thought and agonistic politics. Rational choice theory dominates much of the literature on institutions; given the messiness and complexity entailed in even defining institutions with any rigor, this outcome should not be surprising. Rational choice deploys powerful tools to explain human behavior, especially questions that allow clear articulations of preferences, constraints, rewards, and costs. All political institutions fit this pattern to some degree, so the further assumption that agents within institutions 2  Mouffe (2005a: 17) articulates a similar claim: “The social and the political thus have the status of what Heidegger called existentials, i.e., the necessary dimensions of any societal life.”

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are rational seems a small addition that generates large insights. Kato describes two similar manifestations of rational choice institutionalism: the first simply adds “institutional factors to the analytic framework of micro-economics or public choice theory,” while the second “consider[s] institutions to be organizational contexts in which individual rational behavior is cultivated and promoted” (1996: 553-4). The former asserts that human actors may capably optimize their preferences, at least in the aggregate, while the latter invokes bounded rationality to account for the lack of information and predictability that characterizes much of political life. In both cases institutions are seen as the designed product of interested actors seeking to advance or protect their interests, and in both cases the preferences of actors may change as the institutional incentives change. While agonistic democrats reject the premise that preference maximization always guides human behavior, rational choice analysis is valuable in at least two ways. First, it explains clearly and powerfully the difficulties encountered in any attempt to change or reform institutions. Insofar as the rules structure outcomes, and the outcomes distribute power unevenly, any institution will generate its own powerful defenders. Second, rational choice analysis demonstrates how difficult it is to predict and control the outcomes of institutional design, particularly over the long term. As Pierson (2004: 107ff) shows, it is impossible for even the most rational of actors to predict accurately the long-term effects of institutional design, anticipate the unintended effects, or account for environmental factors beyond the control of the institutions. Both insights are useful for agonistic democrats interested in institutional design. The first claim demonstrates why and how the existing institutions of any democratic society are unlikely to facilitate contestation of political principles and values or encourage an ethos of resistance. Institutions are designed to prevent conflict and reduce transaction costs, not to produce disagreement and hinder the smooth operation of power. The second insight offers hope to overcome the problems made apparent by the first. If the purposes of agonistic democracy include contesting and disrupting stable patterns of interest and making visible the conflicts at the core of democratic politics, then the fact that no institutional equilibrium is likely to maintain itself and no set of actors controls the by-products of their strategies provides regular opportunities to nudge society in the direction of contestation. Moreover, if agonistic democrats are concerned primarily with process and culture rather than the advancement or protection of any particular interests within society, then the perils of institutional design identified by Pierson are not problems to be solved but opportunities to be embraced. A second approach to the study of institutions emphasizes the importance of ideas and norms in the operation of institutions. These scholars emphasize the historical character of institutions and the cultural context within which they emerge. They try to avoid overtly functional or structural explanations of the development and operation of institutions, focusing instead on the reciprocal relationship between ideas and actors. Berman notes that:

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By comparison to the rational choice approach, scholars who focus on ideas and ideology describe institutions as ensconced within an historical framework that provides contours to rule-making while also offering multiple opportunities for agents to impact those structures. Institutions respond to new ideas and shifting norms when they gain sufficient purchase within society to change the framework of acceptable understandings within which institutions operate. Institutions in turn shape the environment within which ideas emerge, imposing some bounds to ideological diversity. Thus what “appear to be different ideological preferences may in fact reflect the impact of institutions, which facilitate or hamper group influence and shape group ideology and demands” (Finbow 1993: 695). It should be evident that this approach to institutions is congenial to agonistic theory. If ideas and norms shape political institutions, then a democratic theory focused on ethos and culture might lay claim to greater efficacy than sometimes conceded. A shift in culture can, under the right circumstances, transform formal institutions. If we focus on the characteristic of stability over time, it becomes apparent that something beyond interests, preferences, and rationality must constrain behavior in ways that contribute to institutional constancy. Norms, ideology, or culturally shared ideas can play this role: The grounds for looking at institutions as norms rest on an assumption that many observed patterns of interaction are based on the shared perceptions among a group of individuals of proper and improper behavior in particular situations. To understand why some regularized patterns of interaction exist, one needs to go beyond immediate means-ends relationships to analyze the shared beliefs of a group about normative obligations (Crawford and Ostrom 1995: 583).

Here Mouffe’s emphasis on the importance of the symbolic and the interpretive differences between her account of pluralism and that of mainstream liberals like Rawls provides an example of how agonism can operate not merely as analysis but strategy. She argues that the “important difference is not an empirical one; it concerns the symbolic level. What is at stake is the legitimation of conflict and division…” (2000: 19). In terms of institutional change this makes perfect sense, as shifts in the ideas and norms of pluralism are likely to impact the manner in which more formalized institutions deal with pluralism. A third approach to institutions emphasizes their purely formal character. The formal approach has the virtue of limiting the scope of inquiry to nothing more than “parchment institutions,” which provide openly defined rules and structures accessible to straightforward analysis (Carey 2000). If institutions provide rules,

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incentives, and constraints, then formal institutions codify these rules most transparently. It is also true that the codified rules never operate outside the context of ideas or interests, so any analysis of parchment institutions must take place against the background of those less clearly demarcated political institutions. An agonistic theory of institutions must begin with the informal, the cultural, and the interests of the powerful, but it ultimately should produce claims about formal institutions of governance. Agonistic democracy needs a theory of parchment institutions, informed by ideology and cognizant of interests. Agonistic Democracy and the Place of Institutions Agonistic democracy needs to proffer a theory of appropriate institutions; what sort of institutions should it address? I suggest that agonistic institutions should be understood in two broad categories, and that a third approach should be excluded. Given its emphasis on social practices, the generation of meaning, the status of identity, and the (self-) enforcement of norms, the first approach to institutions should focus on their “soft” aspects. An analysis of soft institutions, however, should lead to proposals for the rules and structures through which collective decisions are made and enforced, which might be considered “hard” institutions. Agonistic democratic theory should offer an account of both the social practices and norms that express a democratic culture and it should propose guidance for the design of formal political institutions within which democratic culture might flourish. Both practices and parchment, norms and constitutions. It is the role of the “hard” institutions to foster the conditions most conducive to the development and maintenance of the “soft” institutions at the core of agonistic democracy. A third approach, probably more commonly adopted in the agonistic literature, is the focus on praxis. I take praxis to mean theoretical engagement that produces a change in social relations. The concept of praxis helps unveil the ways in which critical inquiry might have direct political effects; particularly in the intellectual traditions informed by Gramsci (among which some agonists must certainly be counted), exposing the conceptual distortions of hegemony permits thought to escape the boundaries of appearances and generate new political possibilities. Thus philosophy and critique can be considered forms of institutional politics, insofar as counter-hegemonic analysis can transform the rules and assumptions of a social order by the very act of exposing their contingent and class based character. Praxis, on this account, is both theory and action together. I do not wish to contest the value of praxis. I do claim, however, that even if a philosophy of praxis works precisely as its proponents assert, it does not offer resources for institutional design. Praxis can expose, transform, and undermine exclusive constructions and reveal the contingency of social arrangements; clearly such actions have effects. Those approaches I categorized in Chapter 2 as radical democracy tend to emphasize these elements. But praxis cannot serve as the core of a positive articulation of democratic institutional structures, at least for any theory of democracy that moves beyond oppositional politics and toward

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concrete recommendations. Insofar as agonistic approaches take seriously the situated character of politics and accept the necessity of working within inherited contingencies, a focus on praxis can only provide a useful tool in the project of institutional design, in part by exposing obscured possibilities and lending insight to the sociological functioning of existing institutional forms, but it cannot provide the core account itself. Dismissing praxis as a path to institutional design does not mean the insights of hegemonic critique are irrelevant. On the contrary, the preliminary focus on soft institutions arises from this approach. It is precisely the highlighting of the contingent status of the practices and norms of a social order that draws attention to their importance as explicitly political structures. As Mouffe writes: To take account of ‘the political’ as the ever present possibility of antagonism requires coming to terms with the lack of final ground and acknowledging the dimension of undecideability which pervades every order. It requires in other words recognizing the hegemonic nature of every kind of social order and the fact that every society is the product of a series of practices attempting to establish order in the context of contingency (2005a: 17).

The core of the political is the effort to construct stability in the face of contingency, and the struggles of politics involve first and foremost the shaping of social practices. It is these social practices that allow formal institutions to operate, and if these practices become naturalized then the formal institutions appear inevitable. The critique of liberal democracy developed by responsive and adversarial agonists, for example, is not a critique the liberal democratic form of institutions, but of “liberal democracy” as the exclusive ideal of political institutions, a form that appears inevitable and natural. But these forms only appear inevitable if the social structures within which such institutions operate accept this premise. To continue Mouffe’s argument: The political is linked to the acts of hegemonic institution. It is in this sense that one has to differentiate the social from the political. The social is the realm of sedimented practices, that is, practices that conceal the originary acts of their contingent political institution and which are taken for granted, as if they were self-grounded. Sedimented social practices are a constitutive part of any possible society; not all social bonds are put into question at the same time (2005a: 17).

Both the priority of social practices and the inextricable connection between practices and institutions are made explicit in this text. Social practices are constitutive of political institutions, and political institutions shape and are shaped by such practices. Nor would such separation be desirable. As Mouffe makes clear, any social life at all requires that some practices be left unquestioned at any given time. Although all norms and assumptions should be susceptible to critique and transformation, they cannot all be up for grabs at the same time, as social action

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needs a base from which to operate and upon which to rest, however contingent that foundation actually is. The goal of agonistic democracy is not to replace stability with contingency, but to use the fact of contingency to make institutional politics transparent and negotiable. The focus on “soft” institutions does not diverge radically from the approach to institutions found in more mainstream political science. In their analysis of the grammar of institutions Crawford and Ostrom describe the institutional character of what agonists identify as sedimented social practices. They “propose not to argue about whether institutions are rules, norms, or strategies. We use the broad term institutional statement to encompass all three concepts” (1995: 583). On their account, “institutional statements” express both tacit and explicit understandings of appropriate political behavior, including the sort of sanctions and rewards that might follow. While institutional statements are often promulgated by states or organizations, the concept also captures the way in which shared perceptions of reality and powerful social norms structure the range of alternatives available to members of a political order. I suggest an agonistic account of democratic institutions must focus on the “institutional statements” expressed by sedimented social practices, and institutional design should highlight the ways in which existing practices both constrain the range of alternative institutional paths and the ways in which shifts in rules and structures may transform those same practices. In sum, an agonistic theory of institutions must take as its first concern the “soft” institutions of any potentially democratic society, as any possibility for a contestatory democratic politics must emerge within a social realm that is conducive to such conflict. Though practices, or “the social,” take priority in the agonistic analysis of politics, democratic social practices do not generate collectively binding decisions in a manner appropriate to modern mass societies. Nor can practices adequately organize or constrain the exercise of sovereign power. Assuming an agonistic democracy will, in fact, possess and exercise sovereign powers, some type of formal guidelines for that power need to be established. An agonistic ethos that offers no account of the appropriate ways to structure, coalesce, and articulate political decisions and sovereign power cannot be considered a theory of democracy in any but the negative sense. It is important to evaluate the existing range of plausibly democratic institutional possibilities to determine which structures for collective decision making are both compatible with an agonistic political culture and capable of fostering agonistic practices amongst citizens. More important, perhaps, is the question of whether any democratic institutions designed to guide collective decision-making are capable of preserving the sense of common belonging needed to prevent adversaries from becoming enemies, while still encouraging ongoing conflict between citizens and continual contestation of the institution’s own status. Put most simply, is it possible to design explicitly contingent “hard” democratic institutions that avoid the perils of naturalization, incorporate agonistic conflict, and maintain wide-spread legitimacy among citizens engaged in adversarial

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quarrels, quarrels that will often involve contestation over the very structure and organization of the institutions themselves? The possibility depends, in part, on the status of existing institutional structures. Institutional design cannot occur only in the abstract—I am not proposing the development of ideal models against which to judge actually existing democratic institutions. A commitment to start with existing resources is not merely pragmatic. Any post-foundational theory of politics must take seriously the embedded character of social forms. The historicity of meaning, whether linguistic, cultural, political, or aesthetic, represents a central common claim in all post-foundational political thought, agonism included. Any politics and any set of norms emerges and emerged contingently (that is, it could have developed otherwise, and its development expresses no teleology or truth) and historically (that is, they function as they do because of the specific events, actions, and practices enacted by human beings). The assertion of historicity might be considered the core of post-foundational politics, as an embedded politics can neither be grasped as a totality nor generate institutions designed independently of existential facts. Marchart, drawing upon Laclau, captures this element of agonism well: As Ernesto Laclau reminds us, some of the political stakes involved in a post-foundational approach to politics ‘founded’ on the dissolution of the very myth of foundation consists in an enlarging space for politicization, including emancipatory politicization. This weakening of ground may lead to the increasing acceptance of the contingency and historicity of being, which potentially has liberating effects (2007: 156-7).

Note Marchart’s accurate rejection of an a priori connection between the recognition of historicity and the outcome of emancipation; the assumption so commonly encountered in radical and agonistic thought that emancipation follows from the recognition of contingency imposes an ahistorical telos inappropriate to post-foundational insights. Which means that the emancipatory potential made possible by the recognition of contingency can only be realized if that awareness leads to particular kinds of social and political transformations. An account of agonistic institutions, it follows, must embrace the situated character of politics and recognize that any attempt to foster contestatory democratic culture will need to begin from existing politics. Put differently, while an agonistic account of political institutions need not be pragmatic in aspiration, it must be practical in its recommendations. A further important point needs to be made here: recognition of historicity also means recognizing that institutions are not infinitely plastic. Thus a plausible theory of agonistic institutions must both work within existing social and political structures and articulate outcomes which might plausibly be reached based on these existing conditions. This position is consistent with agonistic approaches, even absent explicit discussion of institutions. Mouffe’s recurrent emphasis on the importance of the liberal democratic values of equality and liberty may help illuminate the point.

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Mouffe consistently argues that agonistic democracy emerges from traditional liberal democratic values: It is therefore crucial to realize that, with modern democracy, we are dealing with a new political form of society whose specificity comes from the articulation between two different traditions. On the one side we have the liberal tradition constituted by the rule of law, the defense of human rights and the respect of individual liberty; on the other the democratic tradition whose main ideas are those of equality, identity between governing and the governed and popular sovereignty (2000: 2-3).

Agonistic democratic theory embraces the paradox between these two widespread norms in order to articulate a form of politics better able to embrace both. She takes this position not because liberty and equality are particular goods with transcendent authority but because these two values structure the understanding of political and social relations in existing democratic orders. The task for institutional design is to offer structures that work within these traditions and norms to advance an agonistic understanding and practice of democracy. Owen’s discussion of the relationship between constitutionalism and sovereignty in agonistic politics illustrates the potential of this approach. He asserts that democratic citizens must exhibit something like Tully’s principle of reciprocity in order for agonistic politics to function.3 How, if conflict is fundamentally irresolvable, can such reciprocity exist? Because it is already present in the democratic institutions out of which agonism must emerge: …Tully is not addressing any constitutional political order but specifically a democratic constitutional order; thus the ‘we’ that is performatively constituted and re-constituted in the course of agonistic struggle is not simply to be seen as establishing (albeit never finally) a collective self or plural subject but as establishing such a self or subject characterized by a specific internal normative structure comprised of the two sets of critical and abstract norms outlined above. Once this point is appreciated, we can see that the principle of reciprocity is not an external constraint on political agonism but, rather, a constitutive condition of (constitutional democratic) political agonism; it is part of the grammar of such political agonism (2009: 77).

Owen’s claim illustrates the connection between soft and hard institutions, as well as the embedded character of institutional design. Constitutional democracy (the hard institution) shapes the norms of behavior common to citizens. These norms, in this case reciprocity or recognition of others as worthy of respect, in turn permit the hard institutions to function. Transforming some elements of one or the other 3  Owen defines the principle of reciprocity as “the necessary acknowledgment of one’s fellow citizen’s as free, equal, and plural…” (2009: 77).

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will transform the character of both, but neither can be considered in isolation. One can posit that to the extent public citizens in a democratic constitutional order exhibit reciprocity, this reciprocity might be preserved as the institutions begin to encourage more agonistic engagement instead of consensual politics. Thus agonistic democratic institutions must begin from the assumption of liberal democratic society and culture, and work from that starting point. In a surprising sense, agonism shares with Rawlsian political liberalism a commitment to developing democratic principles appropriate to a particular and specific political tradition, though in the case of some types of agonism, that tradition potentially encompasses movements for democracy both in the West and elsewhere. Agonistic democrats accept that politics takes place within an historical context, and that political change can only occur from within these situated conditions. Institutions demonstrate a plurality of interconnected manifestation, where the allocation of resources and power shape incentives within a network of social norms, cultural expectations, and sedimented practices. In most contemporary democratic societies of the kind most amenable to an agonistic program, these relationships of power are formally codified and the mores of social behavior relatively well-understood, even if only as a subject of contestation. Far from violating the integrity of post-foundational democratic theory, then, developing an account of institutions understood as the most explicitly formalized manifestations of the ontopolitical grounds upon which the social order depends, is a necessary element of any mature political theory that takes contingency seriously. Agonistic Democracy and the Evaluation of Institutions An Agonistic Framework of Institutions The theoretical commitments of agonistic theory converge upon a set of concrete claims about the character of political institutions and the challenges posed by these elements. In some cases these challenges have been presumed inherent to all institutions, which helps explain the skepticism toward institutionalization common to much of post-foundational and agonistic political thought. Exploring the framework within which agonism should understand institutions and the concerns this framework elicits clarifies the range of functions with which institutions can be trusted, and the sort of outcomes they should seek to generate. Political institutions are situated. The fact that concepts, rules, norms and organizational structures have a history is a central insight of post-foundationalism. Every political order operates within an emergent network of meaning and depends upon deeply embedded habits of mind and behavior. The possible patterns of human behavior that institutions both shape and reflect are not designed by agents and cannot be reformed or revised by intentional engagement, absent a massive application of authoritarian power (and even then the limits of institutional/cultural evolution are likely to assert themselves quite quickly). Though institutions are

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fundamentally expressions of human activity and cannot exist apart from those actions, they are not susceptible to systematic mastery; institutional transformation is possible but radical disjunctions between regimes is not. The situated character of institutions illuminates two challenges for agonistic democrats. First, the lived experience of institutional stability tends to generate a degree of further stability. Accumulations of power and encrustations of habit generate their own stability and are likely to narrow the range of apparently plausible institutional options available within any given social horizon. This constrained range of interpretations will tend to favor those whose privileges depend upon them. Agonistic democrats must propose strategies by which institutions disrupt this internal tendency toward sedimentation, so that democratic institutions include some sort of centripetal tendencies contrary to stability. Second, situated institutions do impose some meaningful and democratically non-negotiable limits to the changes possible in any society. Agonistic institutional design must resist the urge to propose the radical transformation or revolutionary remaking of existing institutions, as attempts to overcome the situated character of the institutions in question betray the fundamental insight that political principles are both contingent and foundational. Thus situated institutions require agonistic recognition of the particular circumstances and history of any democratic structures while working to uncover and expand resources for de-sedimentation and transformation specific to that history. In part because institutions reproduce themselves within a situated history, they are also always partial and exclusive. Every society defines itself within some set of boundaries that determine membership; as common expressions of the rules, norms, and preferences that establish the parameters of a particular way of life, institutions define the terms of membership in the political order. Precisely because these expressions are embedded within a situated history, the particularity of every political order shapes the limitations of citizenship, and these limitations in turn inform the practices generated by institutions. Absent the possibility of a universally inclusive account of political values and social norms, politics and the institutions within which political relations operate always create an exclusive boundary within which citizenship is defined. Exclusivity and partiality pose two specific challenges to the creation of more agonistic institutions. Exclusivity tends to produce closure, which leads to a narrowing of the range of interpretations of identity and values available for public recognition. Agonistic institutions must offer possibilities through which this narrowing of interpretation is made visible and resisted, without positing a non-exclusive or universal alternative norm, especially given the well established association between universal aspirations and exclusivist norms. Second, the tendency toward closure incurs the risk that dominant interests and identities will produce a political consensus on basic values that appear to ground the legitimacy of institutional outcomes. Consensus is always a sign that democratic contestation has been suppressed, but it is always a risk of situated, bounded political orders. Thus offering resources to resist

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consensus without attempting to overcome the partiality and exclusivity of real, situated political life is essential to agonistic institutions. Agonistic democrats emphasize the essential role institutions play in the process of subject formation. Human beings find themselves inhabiting identities which they do not choose and implicated inextricably in relations of meaning over which they have little control. Thus institutions, as a significant influence in the maintenance and extension of the horizon of identities within which subjectivity emerges, have a constitutive function. The norms institutions support, the interests they advantage, the collectivities they recognize, will all impact the ongoing processes by which citizens come to understand themselves and their capacities for action. On the agonistic account subjectivity will always be potentially open to multiple interpretations and fraught with internal contradictions, since the contingent and always incomplete bases for meaning offered by any social situation will always be inadequate to capture the diversity of lived experiences or the conflicts that emerge in the friction of interaction. Agonistic theorists therefore need to be attentive to the constitutive impacts of institutional models. Two issues in particular require special attention. First, agonistic democrats should favor institutional designs that make the process of influence on identity formation transparent. At the very least, democratic institutions should recognize the contingent element of social categories and engage in intentional pluralization of potentially naturalized identity formations. Ideally they will structure cultural norms and political rules in ways that call attention to the conflicts endemic to democratic subjectivity, thus both reducing the likelihood of violent antagonism and increasing the capacity for reciprocity and generosity. Second, institutions should foster an ethos that does not privilege the ideals of unity and mastery in subject formation. McManus (2008) suggests that a politics of public contestation might have the salutatory effect of calling attention to the similarly composed internal conflicts of constituted subjectivity; if institutions encourage recognition of the pluralized or agonistic self, they will likely foster models of citizenship that can better tolerate the ambiguity of agonism. Political institutions, finally, are coercive. Regardless of how broad or narrow a conception of the operations of non-state power one might advocate, it is incontrovertible that what defines the formal institutions of politics is the capacity to threaten violence in order to compel compliance. Agonistic democrats recognize that power operates in myriad ways across multiple sites, and formal politics is but one element of this network. Insofar as democracy has to involve some degree of popular influence over the operation of power on citizens these myriad sites are proper targets for politicization. But direct coercive authority backed up by the real possibility of incarceration and death continues to form the core of institutional power, and agonistic democrats need to consider the challenges endemic to this capacity of the state. I suggest that agonistic institutions cannot reject the continuing presence of the threat of violence as a central aspect of democratic politics, nor can they aspire to eliminate the operation of informal coercion. Instead, agonistic institutions should promote two outcomes. First, the

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norms and structures guiding political life should encourage the politicization of non-state power. Social power extends throughout society, is embedded in the processes of subject formation and identification, and pervades informal and apparently private interactions. Democratic institutions should, as much as possible, help to make these operations of power visible and thus more accessible to collective influence. Second, and perhaps most centrally, agonistic institutions must minimize the possibility that the coercive authority of the state ever becomes captured by any particular portion of the demos. Power should belong to no one and should be associated with no particular will or identity. The locus of power, as Lefort describes, should always be empty, in order to protect agonistic politics from descending into civil war. The framework within which agonistic democracy should be developed specifies the challenges posed by situated, partial and exclusive, constitutive, and coercive institutional structures. Within this framework, and in addition to managing the challenges identified above, agonistic institutions must accomplish specific tasks. These positive functions express the specific vision of democratic politics proposed by agonistic democrats and produce the conditions most likely to make an agonistic political culture viable. First, agonistic institutions need to create and sustain a stable context within which agonistic contestation can occur. Not all conflicts are democratic and not all contestation is agonistic. If the structures of the ontopolitical within which political clashes take place do not provide the foundation for agonism, then democratic politics will not emerge. This means that the contingent foundations of a democratic society must articulate a common symbolic horizon within which citizens encounter one another. Without a shared commitment to some set of common values and practices, political conflict will, inevitably, become antagonistic. Without a shared horizon within which to articulate contrasting visions, a dynamic of exclusion and dominance will develop as citizens try to capture the grounds of the social. Agonistic institutions are only viable if they can plausibly maintain the existence of and collective commitment to a democratic symbolic; importantly, this means in practice that cultures without existing symbolic resources appropriate to the development of a shared commitment to contestable but common democratic values may not be amenable to agonism. Second, agonistic institutions must establish the boundaries of citizenship. Just as agonism is not a universal theory of democracy but a situated vision appropriate only to some conditions, agonistic citizenship is also particular. The shared symbolic that enables reciprocity and collective action while encouraging fundamental disagreement about the interpretation and application of common values also implies limitations on the scope of democratic membership. Institutions are situated, identities are mutually constituting, and the ontopolitical narrative contingent and particular. This need not imply a state of warfare or conflict with all (or any) other political orders, but it does mean, as Mouffe makes clear, that some identities, values, and perspectives are inconsistent with the basic commitments that

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make an agonistic public sphere operable, and these articulations of subjectivity cannot be included within the demos. Third, while the institutions of agonistic democracies must stabilize the common context for contestation and establish the boundaries of collective citizenship, they cannot stifle the emergence of new movements, values, and identities. Too much emphasis on order and limits will result in stultification and sedimentation, and undermine the dynamic creativity that should also characterize democratic life. Moreover, an agonism that never produces new perspectives or innovative possibilities of subjectivity is an agonism that will weaken the consciousness of contingency that ultimately provides the justification to endure the difficulties of an engaged polity. Agonistic democracy is not the natural consequence of postfoundationalism; the decision to pursue agonistic institutions reflects a normative commitment to highlight the potential for diversity, creativity, and discovery that the awareness of contingency makes possible. Thus agonistic institutions should embrace this normative aspiration by cultivating new movements and new identities that will challenge established constituencies, disrupt stable coalitions, and re-energize or extend the contest of interpretations that make agonistic democracy distinct. Fourth, agonistic institutions must offer some means to channel and synthesize the diversity of preferences that emerge within the agon in order to promulgate policy. While the literature of agonism sometimes seems to stress the process of politics to the detriment of the product of politics, a viable theory of political institutions must recognize the importance of policy. If the cacophony of contestation produces only more contestation and never a result, then it is likely both that citizens will find their motivation for participation diminished by the frustration of process and that conflicts will lose their vigor. Political competition is only meaningful if the fight is worthwhile. For the ancient Greeks that might mean recognition and fame; for a contemporary democratic citizen it might mean a change in social policy or a decision about public investment. Whatever the motive, agonism is only sustainable when something is at stake, and if a primary function of democratic institutions is to direct the dynamism of conflict away from antagonistic efforts to destroy the enemy, then they need to generate more routine but tangible outcomes. The expression of policy generates a concrete manifestation of the popular will, mediated through structures that synthesize the conflicts within the demos in order to propose a possible compromise position. The fact of the matter is that no substantial result of agonistic conflict can ever express “the will of the people,” as any properly agonistic polity can never achieve anything resembling the sort of unity that concept implies. Nevertheless, the implementation of policies by institutional actors helps to provide a constant reminder to citizens about the ultimate inadequacy of popular sovereignty and the meaningful stakes involved in political engagement. And, finally, the dissent that every decision should produce serves as a constant check against the illusion of popular consensus while potentially spurring the articulation of new movements

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in response to partial, incomplete, and mediated decisions enacted by institutions deploying popular power. Within the framework described above, agonistic institutions should be evaluated by how likely they are to produce two primary goals. First, they must foster an agonistic ethos amongst citizens. It is not realistic to expect political institutions to be, themselves, agonistic; in fact, if the institutions of democracy incorporated the same sort of contestation and partisanship that characterizes an agonistic public sphere, it would be unable to fulfill the stabilizing and lawgiving functions that are the condition of possibility for agonistic democracy to emerge. The objective of democratic institutions is to develop the structures necessary to cultivate an agonistic ethos while putting in place protections against this contestation producing unjust outcomes. Second, institutions appropriate to agonistic politics must assiduously prevent any capture of the symbolic locus of power by any of the contending constituencies within the boundaries of institutional authority. Democratic institutions must maintain the constitutive gap between the citizens engaged in contestation and the exercise of coercive authority by the state. It is essential to the maintenance of democratic culture that the place of power stays vacant. Finally, evaluating institutions based on the rough categories of norms, rules, and formal structures proposed by political science helps clarify the elements of an agonistic constitution of society. The norms of agonism include two elements, one that guides interactions between citizens and one that shapes attitudes toward coercive authority. The former is the norm of reciprocity and presumptive generosity which enables respectful contestation; the latter cultivates the ideal that democratic power never embodies a popular will but only a temporary consolidation of ongoing negotiations between contending collectivities. The essence of democracy is preserved only if no substantive consensus about the common good can occupy the ground of the social, as such outcomes would destroy the need for ongoing democratic engagement. Investigating Institutional Possibilities The second part of this book explores some of the candidates most likely to foster the institutionalization of an agonistic politics. Obviously the range of institutional options that might be evaluated is vast, and the literature on institutions substantial. I opt to focus only on three categories of institutional organization: participatory democracy, representative democracy, and liberalism in its Rawlsian variant. I use these categories for four reasons. First, I assume that agonistic democracy in its pluralist emphasis can only emerge from the particular context of Western liberal democracy within which it developed and to which it is addressed. Pluralist agonism is not a universal theory of democracy. It is applicable to those social orders already based upon an ontopolitical foundation committed to equality, liberty, and democracy. For the most part those social orders are characterized by liberal institutions, broadly conceived, and these institutions express some

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dedication to the ideals of participation, representation, and liberal values. Second, since a central objective of this project is to establish a meaningful connection between agonistic democratic theory and the broader analysis of institutions found in political science and political theory, it seems sensible to focus on those democratic institutions that have been well-theorized and explored empirically. To the extent agonistic democracy should be taken seriously in discussions of institutional theory, it needs to clearly situate itself within and against the existing theoretical parameters. Third, the post-foundational commitments of pluralist agonism dictate that any transformative project generating greater opportunities for agonistic practices to develop must begin within and emerge from contemporary practices. Thus a theory of institutions appropriate to agonistic democracy will be recognizably connected to the contingent but entrenched institutions already in place. In the case of liberal democracies, these institutions are participatory, representative, and liberal. Finally, I understand that other democratic alternatives are latent within or derivative of contemporary structures. Some of these I address tangentially in the chapters to follow. For example, I discuss the idea of plebiscitary democracy in Chapter 5 and populism in Chapter 6. Others I ignore as calling for too radical a transformation of already existing institutions to be appropriate to pluralist agonism; though an anarchic, self-organizing, or post-liberal version of democracy might ultimately better express the democratic ideal, and certainly oppositional agonists and radical democrats hope to create such possibilities through their critical engagement with the present, pluralist agonism offers a more conservative prescription for democratic change. As such, and in that spirit, I limit my analysis to those democratic forms present both within current practices and the political science literature, and those drawn upon by pluralist agonists as they articulate their vision of a more democratic future.

PART II Evaluating the Institutional Possibilities for Agonistic Democracy

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Chapter 5

Agonistic Democracy and the Limits of Popular Participation Of the institutional possibilities available to agonistic democracy, none seems more compelling than direct participation. Agonistic democratic theory often describes democratic ideals in a manner quite similar to that proposed by traditional participatory democrats. If agonistic democracy can draw upon the established account of politics proposed by participatory democrats, it might be possible to discover in this robust literature an appropriate solution to the problem of institutional design. If agonistic and participatory theories can be reconciled, it seems promising to imagine that political societies organized along participatory lines would encourage agonistic citizenship. Unfortunately the philosophical and normative commitments of the two approaches diverge so dramatically as to render them incompatible. I conclude that institutions based on the participatory model cannot generate agonistic outcomes. The chapter consists of four parts. First, I review in some detail the assumptions of agonistic democratic theory and compare these with the foundations of participatory theory. I then describe the main contours of contemporary participatory theory and show how it is not congruent with agonistic democracy. Participatory theories presume a strong account of the substantive ends of political life and depend upon a view of subjects as autonomous agents, while agonistic thinkers view such substantive commitments as barriers to democratic politics. Moreover, the justifications offered for participation reflect a normative account of citizenship and emancipation substantially at odds with the vision proposed by agonistic thinkers. Second, I examine a series of common objections to participatory politics drawn from the literature of democratic theory. For each, I show how participatory theorists defuse these objections and why agonistic theorists cannot. While the inability of agonistic theory to reply to the critics of participatory democracy is not fatal to the idea of agonistic participation, the difficulty demonstrates why the institutional recommendations of participatory theorists cannot be simply adopted for a post-foundational politics, even shorn of their substantive and normative commitments. The third section develops an understanding of participatory politics appropriate to post-foundational democracy, asserting that agonism requires broad involvement by various groups and individuals at the various sites in society where power is exercised. Democratic institutions appropriate to agonistic democracy would need to encourage such episodic engagement, following the suggestion of Warren (2002: 677) that “Wherever there is political conflict, democratic responses are possible.” The significant conclusion of this section is that while agonism

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supports participation, the style and function of that participation can be less direct without becoming ineffective; if participation is a pragmatic tool to engage and expose the operation of power rather than an obligatory form of normatively justified democratic structure, then the prospects for agonistic participation are significant, and significantly flexible. Most notably, agonistic participation need not be linked to decision-making in order to be considered meaningful. The concluding section considers how a participatory political culture appropriate to agonistic theory might generate legitimate collectively binding outcomes, even absent institutions that tie decision-making authority to direct participation. In this discussion I draw from Habermas’s work on the articulation of will-formation in the wildness of the public sphere. While perhaps a surprising source, given the general suspicion of his work amongst post-foundational thinkers, Habermas’s description of the participatory but institutionally unstructured emergence of competing articulations of the “popular will” offers a useful model for understanding the role of participation in an agonistic theory of institutions. I suggest his model (unlike the prescriptions of participatory democrats) can be wrenched free of the orientation to produce consensus without undermining the insights it permits to the functioning of post-metaphysical democratic orders. Agonistic and Participatory Democracy Compared The political implications of agonistic democracy depend upon two claims about political practice in democracies, the first about institutions and the second about citizenship. Institutions, agonistic democrats argue, must be fluid, revisable, and participatory, while citizens need to be active and engaged. Both outcomes involve a challenge to hierarchical institutional structures and capitalist political economies. These commitments are strikingly similar to those of theorists of traditional participatory democracy, who begin from the premise that meaningful self-government demands participatory and egalitarian political structures (Dewey 1954, Pateman 1970, Mason 1982, Barber 1984). The two approaches share much, including the assertion that social structures and practices shape the identity and behavior of citizens, that capitalistic relations of production inhibit such selfgovernance, and that a participatory polity will be characterized by a dynamic, conflictual public sphere. They differ significantly, however, on the philosophical and sociological premises upon which their claims rest. Two major issues separate the theoretical approaches. First, their understandings of the ends and justifications of politics differ dramatically. For post-foundational theorists, no universal truth justifies an agonistic politics; rather, the contingent democratic possibilities of contemporary politics emerge from the particular situation in which institutions act. Participatory theorists, by contrast, are animated by a conviction that self-governance and participation are goods in and of themselves, goods that yield human happiness and preserve human dignity. Second, each asserts a very different conception of the

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subject or agent engaged in participation. For agonistic democrats political agents negotiate their identities as part of the process of politics, a process that is more or less open to active engagement by the subject depending on its historical and institutional situation. Participatory democrats assume the traditional conception of the subject as an independent actor whose interests and principles are chosen based on some sort of preferences. The choosing subjects of this account are certainly susceptible to socialization, manipulation, and education, and may make better or worse, authentic or inauthentic choices depending on their political environment. But the socializing process of politics takes place upon subjects possessing an identity and interests in principle separable from their influences; hence the animating precept of most participatory theories is to liberate agents from the oppressive socialization impeding their pursuit of authentic interests. Participatory theorists expend significant energy investigating what sort of institutional structures might best cultivate a truly democratic politics. Here a third difference emerges between the two approaches: agonistic theorists have rarely attempted to articulate similar practical arguments. In part agonistic democrats are able to rely on the intellectual labor of their nominal allies. Because participatory democracy has such a long history in political science and philosophy, and because that history is well known to everyone who might read the agonistic texts, it is possible to propose a vaguely participatory politics and allow readers to fill in the gaps. Agonistic theorists are able to advocate critique and propose the cultivation of an ethos as a concrete agenda, while implying the emergence of a participatory politics of the sort that has already been well theorized.1 We see here a sort of Marxian double game about the future. Like Marx, agonistic democrats offer a critique of liberal democracy and proffer strategies to hasten its demise. Like Marx, the outcome of victory is unknowable; for Marx, we cannot see around the corner of history and for agonistic democrats, democracy in practice may be “impossible.” Like Marx, they are clear enough about what the outcome will not be (liberal, capitalist, hierarchical, bureaucratic, etc.), so that readers are able to discern with some clarity what outcome is implied. But if the practical, empirical, and theoretical foundations upon which participatory democracy depends are incompatible with the assumptions and aspirations of agonistic democrats, the latter cannot simply invoke the former to provide institutional models. Theorists of participatory or direct democracy proceed from a common premise: human beings should be free, and freedom may only be secured when the people control the binding authority of the state. Two normative commitments animate this 1  Obviously, this alliance is selective. Most agonistic democrats would reject, for example, a Rousseauian version of participatory politics, as his vision of the general will so clearly relies upon access to transcendental truth about the true interests of a community while also attempting to control or limit the range of possible political disagreement. See, for example, Connolly’s chapter on the perils of Rousseau’s political theory in Political Theory and Modernity (1989). But the work of Barber (1984) and Pateman (1970) seems far more congruent to the abstract outcomes implied by agonistic democrats.

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premise. First, emancipation represents a fundamental good of human flourishing, where emancipation is understood as substantial self-determination. Second, the proper purpose of government is to create the conditions for such emancipation. Taken together, these principles yield participatory models of democracy. The normative claims intersect an empirical assertion that political institutions do not merely meditate social relations but powerfully shape individuals. Institutional relationships shape human psychology in profound ways and may even obscure the desire for autonomy that participatory theorists postulate as a given of human personality. While proponents of direct democracy advocate a wide variety of institutional models, ranging from universal participation in all decisions to profound local control within larger and less participatory representative systems, all share some consensus that emancipation is a central human value institutions may help or hinder, that participation within social institutions shapes individuals in significant ways, and that participation yields educative benefits. I consider each in turn. While agonistic democrats assert a commitment to emancipation, their understanding generally involves an expansion of the acceptable range of identities and social practices available to human beings. Freedom on this account is not the actualization of collective self-governance but the quest to “create more room for difference by calling attention to the contingent, relational character of established identities” (Connolly 1991: 33). Emancipation thus demands attentiveness to the opening of horizons of meaning and resistance to the assertion of any foundation for truth. Participatory democrats offer a more traditional account of emancipation. Freedom means control, by the people, of structures of authority. As Barber puts it: “Men and women who are not directly responsible through common deliberation, common decision, and common action for the policies that determine their common lives are not free at all, however they enjoy security, private rights, and freedom from interference” (Barber 1984: 145-6). One might easily add, they are not free, however much room they have to be different or participate in the shaping of their own and others’ identities. Participatory democrats are committed to an old-fashioned ideal of individual autonomy, though one updated to accept a lack of consensus about common goods and values. So while both accept some version of the groundlessness of modern politics, participatory theorists retain an attachment to an ideal of the subject as an agent not wholly shaped by society, and define freedom as the capacity of this agent to participate in common decisions about the policies shaping the social milieu within which this agent lives. This understanding of freedom is a metaphysical commitment in tension with the agonistic understanding of emancipation. Participatory theorists are attentive the ways in which social, political, cultural, and economic practices shape human behavior and identity. Participatory theories thus “highlight the relationship between the authority structure of institutions and the psychological qualities and attitudes of individuals” (Pateman 1970: 27). If human beings experience domination and disempowerment in their daily lives, they will become passive, apathetic, and resentful. Conversely, if they exercise

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of power and control over their own lives, they learn to be assertive, engaged, and responsible. Institutions, particularly the organization of the workplace, shape the psychology of individuals, making them more or less disposed to political efficacy. Nagel (1987) captures this difference nicely in his distinction between “making demands” and “making decisions.” Employees and citizens who make demands simply express their preferences to those in power, adopting the role of supplicant or dependent. Employees who make decisions experience face-toface interactions in settings amenable to serious deliberation, adopting the role of experts and equals. Only the latter fosters a psychology appropriate to democracy. While it is unlikely they would object to the move from demand to decision, it is important to note that the underlying assumption about the effects of participation on citizens is not commensurable with the agonistic position. We find here a theory of socialization, not construction. Participatory democrats envision a shift in social relationships that leads to a shift in the socialization of individuals, and thus a transformation of their personality. The citizen herself is not an effect of the social process but an already existing subject affected by the process. By contrast, agonistic theorists assert that social processes constitute the identity of the subjects engaged in them. The distinction may seem minor, but it has profound implications. Pateman and others advocate participation in order to change the psychology of individuals, in order to emancipate them to more effectively pursue their real interests and resist political domination. Agonists support participation so the participants might more actively engage the construction of their own identity, and that of others. For participatory theorists making decisions is a means to an end: empowering already constituted citizens so they can enter the public sphere more effectively. For agonistic democrats, such participation is an end in itself, and the desire to create more space for difference and otherness the primary goal. Thus the status of the participants (personalities vs. subjects), the effects of the process (transforming psychology vs. constituting identity), and the goals of participation (creating citizens vs. contesting closure) all differ dramatically, despite the apparent commonalities. The educational benefit of participation is a long established theme of direct democracy. Thinkers as diverse as Rousseau, de Tocqueville, and Horace Mann emphasize the ways in which engagement in decision-making generates educational benefits that buttress the health of democracy. These benefits largely fall into two categories, acquisition of knowledge and clarification of interests. The former is simple: when citizens participate in self-governance they learn how institutions work, how their neighbors think, and how the relevant facts fit together. This knowledge permits better public policy decisions and discourages abuses of power. The latter is rather more complex. The standard argument asserts that through the experience of deliberation citizens come to understand their own interests better, usually in one of two ways. The first, popularized by de Tocqueville, is the shift from short term individual interest to long term communal interest. The claim is not that participation extinguishes self interest, but that the educational effects of participation lead to self interest “properly

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understood.” The second benefit follows from the first, as citizens come to better understand and refine their own personal preferences. As Bowles and Gintis point out, preferences tend to be “as much formed as revealed in the exercise of choice” (1986: 138). The operative assumption seems to be that individuals have preferences, but these are not always fully formed or well understood. Participation offers an effective means to refine preferences into interests, and in the process find ways to accommodate more of these authentic preferences in common. Once again a seeming parallel between participatory and agonistic theorists turns out to be a tension. For participatory democrats, citizens’ real interests can be clarified and enacted with some degree of certainty, and the political process should serve this process. For agonistic theorists, interests are, at best, epiphenomena of constructed identities, and the pursuit of a politics of interests tends to reify differences into inflexible and non-negotiable identities. To the extent participatory democracy depends upon an underlying model of the subject as autonomous, socialized, and interest-bearing instead of intersubjective, constituted, and agonistic, the theories will be in tension. Challenges to Participation Despite the somewhat romantic image of direct democracy, contemporary theorists of participation recommend rather chastened institutional reforms. For the most part, they accept the general structures of representative democracy as well as the division between public and private life. Pateman, for example, emphasizes local participation in community and workplace governance in the hope that such participation will increase the political skills and sense of efficacy of citizens. The goal is not fundamental transformation of representative democracy but a transformation of the hierarchical relationships that characterize the public and private spheres of liberal capitalism. If capitalism is transformed so that the workplace is both more egalitarian and more consensual, then citizens will develop the capacity to check the power of the administrative state, without requiring radical changes to existing political institutions at the national level.2 A lengthy quote from the concluding pages of Participation and Democratic Theory illustrates this point:

2  In their review of the theoretical and empirical literature on participatory democracy, Radcliff and Wingenbach make this point explicitly: “Thus the participatory model envisions society as a collection of institutions, with those institutions sufficiently small in scale to allow participation being democratized. Other institutions would of necessity be left in something approximating their current form. Thus participatory institutions form the “base” of the system, on top of which are grafted other (representative) institutions” (2000: 982).

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The argument of the participatory theory of democracy is that participation in the alternative areas would enable the individual better to appreciate the connection between the public and the private spheres. The ordinary man might still be interested in things nearer home, but the existence of a participatory society would mean that he was better able to assess the performance of representatives at the national level, better equipped to take decisions of national scope when the opportunity arose to do so, and better able to weigh up the impact of decisions taken by national representatives on his own life and immediate surroundings. In the context of a participatory society the significance of his vote to the individual would have changed; as well as being a private individual he would have multiple opportunities to become an educated, public citizen (1970: 110).

This quote illustrates a basic and important point: participatory models accept representation, voting, the primacy of private interests, and elite rule at national level. Participatory democracy aspires to correct isolating and disempowering liberal practices, but it does not require radical transformation of liberal institutions. Nor does it demand a reconfiguration of the identities of citizens, apart from the psychological socialization that participation brings to already established subjects. The transformations effectuated in citizens and societies by direct participation do not disrupt identity or stable political structures. If anything, the participatory model is oriented toward establishing greater consensus founded on a more accurate understanding of the real interests of individuals, accurately communicated through representatives, and enacted by politicians who understand their performance can be (and is being) assessed by engaged citizens. By contrast, the rhetoric of agonistic democracy evokes fundamental change. The pursuit of an agonistic democratic ethos involves significant transformation of our understanding of democracy, our identities, and our obligations. Democracy is not merely the means by which individuals exercise collective authority in pursuit of their interests, or even a process through which citizens come to reflective consensus on the values and policies appropriate to their current situation. It is, rather, a cultural ethos embedded within an institutional structure. This ethos challenges the very idea of consensus; Connolly asserts that “It is possible to construct a democratic theory appropriate to late-modern states that combines a critique of consent and consensus when they are absent with critical engagement with them when they are present” (1995: 102). This theory understands democracy “as an ambiguous medium through which the absence of consensus is interrogated and the presence of consensus is read as a sign of danger...” (Connolly 1995: 103). The animating concern here is twofold: first, the danger that consensus always involves exclusion of some set of identities, and thus is always enacting some sort of necessary injustice, and second, that any consensus generated generally ignores the inevitably political character of its formation. While this understanding of the goals of democracy may seem compatible with the participatory model, the similarities are misleading. Instead of valuing participation as a means to better control the administrative state, for agonistic democrats the fundamental goal of

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democracy is the preservation of social ambiguity and openness to a proliferation of differences. This openness must take place at the level of the subject, as the ethics of democracy demand an agonistic respect for difference through the self-experience of a life not exhausted by the identity that endows it with definition, predictability, and standing in its society – a respectful strife with the other achieved through intensified experience of loose strands and unpursued possibilities in oneself that exceed the terms of one’s official identity (Connolly 1991: 166).

Put simply, agonistic democracy requires radical transformation of the selfconception of subjects, a transformation that decenters and problematizes those aspects of their personality which are most central to their sense of self. Participation may be one means to that end. Participatory democrats, by contrast, aspire to add competencies to already situated and unproblematic subjects; once the appropriate political skills are learned, participatory democrats are confident that some sort of consensus between conflicting identities and interests may be worked out, however provisional and revisable.3 I emphasize this distinction for two reasons. First, the radically transformative ethos of agonistic democracy renders responses to standard critiques of participation more difficult, leaving the theory unable to rely on the already well established defenses of participation articulated by participatory democrats. Second, the vision of democracy as resistance to consensus and hegemonic identities implies that agonistic theory needs to develop institutional arguments appropriate to encouraging this end, and it is far from clear that participation is best suited to this goal. The Danger of Dictatorship It is almost clichéd to point out that democratic systems are usually susceptible to some sort of tyrannical manipulation. In the standard formulation liberty and 3  Ingram thinks the critique of consensus reflects a more wholesale rejection of governance: “Postmodern political theory holds that any attempt to legitimate democracy by appeal to moral reason or any other consensual basis is futile. Given the fragmentation of the political landscape, legitimation by way of democratic consensus is also not to be expected. Attempts to impose consensus – or even encourage it – are therefore totalitarian” (2001: 146). This last assertion is overstated. The agonistic claim is not that consensus or legitimacy are impossible; rather, constructing legitimacy and reaching consensus are both dependent upon deeper moral assumptions and identity commitments within any given society, and so the grounds for consensus are as much a product of political struggle as the consensus itself. Consensus is not totalitarian as long as it is recognized explicitly as contingent and incomplete. The institutional question then becomes: how might we organize political life in a way most conducive to the creation of a malleable consensus that is actively subject to contestation, while also making it possible for everyday life to go on?

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democracy are counterpoised, revealing an inverted relationship between individual sovereignty and popular sovereignty; to the extent all theories of democracy value self-determination, one useful taxonomy would examine the balance proposed between these two poles, with more liberal theories sacrificing collective power to maximize individual control and more participatory theories emphasizing the sovereignty of the collective. But this tension involves more than debate over the proper balance of equally important but conflicting democratic values. Thinkers as diverse as Rousseau, Madison, de Tocqueville, Mill, Riker, and Nietzsche, among many others, point out the tendency toward majoritarianism implicit in any form of democracy, and the concomitant danger that majoritarianism becomes tyranny. This danger cannot be eliminated entirely through institutional means, as the protections of minorities and limits on majority power are ultimately subject to democratic will. Hayek expresses this dynamic particularly well: It seems to be the regular course of the development of democracy that after a glorious first period in which it is understood as and actually operates as a safeguard of personal freedom because it accepts the limitations of a higher nomos, sooner or later it comes to claim the right to settle any particular question in whatever manner a majority agrees upon (1978: 2).

Hayek asserts that the majoritarian principle at the root of all justifications of democratic rule inevitably leads to an abuse of power, as those with power will only be able to retain it by providing the majority with the benefits and privileges it desires. He argues this drift toward plebiscitary dictatorship cannot be avoided under modern conditions, since the combination of unlimited sovereignty and the absence of some common moral belief to restrain power points toward tyranny.4 Hayek thus identifies a great danger of contemporary, foundationless politics: sovereignty dependent upon the masses without external check will drift toward dictatorship of expert elites, precisely because legitimacy derives from popular consent. Under such conditions, it is likely that popular power will be used to advance particular interests under the banner of democratic consensus. Participatory theory recognizes this risk explicitly. While the ideological commitments of Hayek are in most ways diametrically opposite those of Pateman or Barber, they share a diagnosis of the dangers of liberal democracy. Barber identifies this peril in his discussion of thin democracy, or the politics of “zookeeping.” Liberalism in its various dispositions (realist, anarchist, and minimalist) tries to minimize participation in order to avoid or repress political conflicts between individuals and maintain the private autonomy of citizens. But this radical individualism destroys democracy by undermining community, encouraging fanaticism, and breeding an attitude of control among political elites; 4  Hayek writes: “Indeed, the claim of Parliament to sovereignty at first meant only that it recognized no other will above it; it only gradually came to mean that it could do whatever it liked ...” (1978, 4).

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those who most benefit from thin democracy, he argues, are thugs and specialists. Barber’s remedy, strong democracy, “relies on participation in an evolving problem solving community that creates public ends where there were none before by means of its own existence as a focal point of the quest for mutual solutions” (1984: 152). If the Hayekian problem is that specialized elites will serve their own interests in the name of a common good, Barber’s alternative makes this outcome unlikely. Citizens are engaged in politics directly, at least at the local level, which makes such manipulation of interests difficult to pull off. Participation undermines radical individualism as well as the isolating political conflict such a conception of the person encourages. One reason majority tyranny seems likely derives from the tendency of self-interested individuals to pursue a zero-sum game in democratic politics. To the extent the only way to attain the interests of one group comes at the expense of another, portraying this outcome as the “will of the people” provides the best way to justify such abuse.5 Strong democracy, by contrast, views all conflicts as potentially amenable to resolution through discussion, debate, and compromise. Participation transforms conflict into mutuality, constructing common public ends through a transformation of interests and improved exchanges of information. Under such circumstances, rent-seeking behavior by self-interested elites becomes far more difficult, as citizens are better trained to understand policy and more likely to view zero-sum solutions as inappropriate to democracy. Finally, participatory theorists accept, for the most part, the institutional structures of contemporary liberal democracy. Representation, individual rights, judicial review, and the other central characteristics of liberal democracy are viewed positively by participatory theorists; the problem with liberal democracy is not, on their account, its institutions but its conception and practice of citizenship. Once citizens are educated and engaged through direct participation, these structures will serve democracy rather than masking the domination of elites. Accepting liberal institutions provides a significant bulwark against majority tyranny. As Shapiro notes, empirical evidence suggests that liberal democracy provides the best defense against majority abuse, and “the fear that majority rule would become the engine of majority domination has not been borne out historically,” at least where constitutional protections are robust (2003: 21). Thus participatory theorists may assert with confidence that a shift to greater participation decreases the likelihood of plebiscitary democracy, through increased political knowledge, decreased levels of conflict, and a reliance on proven institutional safeguards. Agonistic theorists possess rather fewer resources to refute the Hayekian objection. Since the goal of an agonistic practice of politics is not mutuality but ongoing respectful conflict between differences, where these differences are properly understood not as fundamental but socially produced (though no less real

5  Riker (1982) defines this tendency succinctly (if a bit disingenuously) as “populism.”

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because of this status), an element of democratic danger always remains.6 Surely if citizens came to see their identities as fluid, their interests as provisional, and their politics coalitional, majority tyranny becomes unlikely. But this assertion depends upon two questionable assumptions: that political engagement can reveal to subjects their own contingent character, and that the political practices that emerge from such an understanding of identity resist factional domination. Both are unconvincing. It seems far more likely that political contestation of the type described by agonistic democrats will, in the absence of strong institutional protections, lead to polarization and a hardening of divisions between groups. Expecting people to accept or even embrace the social groundlessness that the post-foundational analysis of politics reveals is naive and possibly dangerous. Warren describes the problem well: democracy is a response to the most difficult of social relationships – political relationships involving fractured or missing social grounds. It is not possible that a society could function, or anyone could live their lives, or anyone could be connected to anyone else, were our self-identities solidified primarily in a political mode, that of contestation – which is, after all, what extensive democratization would bring to the surface and enable ... Trust would be unlikely, and respect for differences would be fragile. So, the problem with a politicized society is not that it is totalitarian (as many liberals and conservatives alike often argue), but that it may contain too many contests and too few securities to function... (1996: 251).

Democratic politics in a daily mode requires some degree of certainty and security from which to operate and into which one might retreat. In that absence, it is likely that an agonistic practice of politicized citizenship will lead not to agonistic respect but provoke the sort of abuse of power Hayek identifies, often in the name of securing some type of normality. Agonism as an ethos within but not constitutive of democratic politics is likely to have positive benefit by undermining concretized power, but agonism as an institutionalized characteristic of democratic practice itself, at least in the absence of institutional securities, will in all probability generate undemocratic outcomes. While some agonistic theorists recognize this problem, it is not clear that consistent resolutions are forthcoming. Connolly, for example, recognizes that an “agonistic liberalism” must involve the regularization of political hegemony by some groups over others. He asserts that this hegemony must be contested 6  Mouffe’s reliance upon Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction to illustrate the violent potentiality always lurking below the surface of democratic politics is problematic in this regard. Abizadeh writes, “Theorists such as Mouffe, who ground their defense of agonistic democracy in collectivities’ putative need for an other, are conflating the Schmittian language of alterity with the Derridean language of difference” (2005: 46). For further discussion of this issue, see Fritsch (2008) and Dallmayr (1996).

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and contestable, and sees political rights as a particularly promising method to preserve this contestability (Connolly 1991: 211-14). But rights are themselves inimical to the agonistic ideal of protean and contested subject positions. In her critique of rights based on identities or status, Brown asserts that advocating for and eventually attaining such rights simply freezes the relations of power that constituted these (usually subordinated) identities in the first place, asserting such protections “codify within the law the very powerlessness it aims to redress” (Brown 1995: 21). Brown thus rejects the pursuit of rights as insufficiently radical or democratic.7 Given the insights of post-foundational accounts of power, identity, and knowledge, Brown’s claim is intellectually impeccable, and illustrates the larger problem: for agonistic democrats all of the institutions of actually existing (liberal) democracies are saturated with hierarchies, power relations, and constitutive oppressions. To rely on such institutions without dramatic reformulation risks perpetuating the very advantages agonistic democrats seek to undermine. The commonly asserted alternative is some sort of radically participatory politics. But as the discussion of participatory theory shows, participation depends upon these existing institutions to avoid tyrannical outcomes. As for the question of evidence, the literature suggests that a genuine political consensus often develops through the process of deliberation and debate, at least in moderately sized groups (Mansbridge 1980, Fishkin 1995). No similar compelling evidence that agonistic encounters lead to a commitment to accommodation and mutual respect exists; rather, some research indicates that otherness and diversity may undermine the sort of social trust necessary to sustain participatory practices (Walsh 2003, Putnam 2007). Moreover, some evidence suggests that deliberative participation improperly channeled produces negative outcomes, increased misunderstanding, and resistance to democratic participation that might be heightened by agonistic conflict (Schudson 1997, Brown 2000, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002, Mutz 2002). Leadership and Will Formation Participatory politics presumes citizens have or are capable of forming positions on issues of local and national interest. It is the function of participation to clarify and communicate these preferences in ways that guide policy formation. Participatory politics asserts that the people have (or may come to have through deliberation) a will, and that the public expression of this will is the source of political legitimacy. Schumpeter’s (1994) rejection of this claim remains the most cogent. He asserts the typical citizen has limited amounts of time, energy, and resources, and that as reasonable beings they will turn their energy to interests of direct concern. For most people, this means they will be well informed about their profession, their neighbors, and their families, but progressively less well informed about political 7  Chambers (2004) argues that Brown misunderstands both radical democracy and the democratic promise of rights.

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issues with less obvious effect upon their daily lives. Becoming informed is hard work, and most citizens devote that effort to their own immediate pursuits. In a democracy, however, citizens are expected to have opinions and positions about national issues, despite their relative ignorance, a situation that leads to what Schumpeter calls a “reduced sense of reality” leading to “a reduced sense of responsibility” and “the absence of effective volition” (1994: 261). Information is largely available, avenues for discussion open, and opportunities for education plentiful, but most citizens will not avail themselves of these resources and remain comfortable with their own deeply held but largely uninformed opinions. As Schumpeter describes, the average citizen “has one’s phrases, of course, and one’s wishes and daydreams and grumbles; especially, one has one’s likes and dislikes. But ordinarily they do not amount to what we call a will…” (1994: 241). If this description is accurate, and it surely is under current conditions in most advanced democracies, then two consequences follow. First, citizens are susceptible to arguments about public policy that they would never accept as valid in areas of life over which they have some expertise. Second, because their political preferences are largely affective and associative, they are susceptible to manipulation by those who do have real expertise. Schumpeter concludes that the role of democracy is not to measure and enact the will of the people, since they have none, but to select and check leaders and experts who will in turn help form the people’s will through the effective performance of their political tasks. The political class will compete to mobilize the latent preferences of the people, with those most accurately shaping public opinion in ways that reflect the long term interests of the population achieving the most electoral success. The obvious danger here is that leadership becomes manipulation. For Schumpeter this concern is addressed by limiting the range of decisions susceptible to popular control, thus leaving most decisions to the workings of the market, where citizens at least exercise some small bit of expertise about their own business. Here two problems emerge for any theory of democracy that places participation at its center. First, theorists must provide an account of democratic will formation that offers a plausible account of why people might turn their energy toward it. Second, they must show how such a system of will formation resists the manipulation of leaders and experts. As with concerns about tyranny, the traditional participatory theories of democracy offer plausible answers to the Schumpeterian problem. The strong emphasis on the educative benefits of direct democracy addresses both issues convincingly. Participatory theorists agree with Schumpeter that simple tasks such as voting have little impact on cognitive skills, in that they do not make sufficient demands on the individual. To produce the type of educative benefits the model envisions, participation would have to involve matters more immediate to the ordinary person’s day to day life, for only when the questions to be decided become genuinely and obviously related to the real circumstances of life can individuals be expected to take them seriously. As a consequence, only in such circumstances will meaningful learning take place. Moreover, as Schumpeter

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points out, it is irrational for most individuals to gather political information or bear the cognitive burden and opportunity costs required to analyze information with the sophistication they might employ in matters of more direct personal concern. Thus, to create more sophisticated public citizens we must include within the political precisely those issues most relevant to the day to day concerns of ordinary citizens. As one begins to “learn democracy” in some setting immediate to life, the greater connections between the directly personal and the greater political arena become apparent (Pateman 1970, Mason 1982, Nagel 1987). As a result, informed and responsible political activity becomes possible at all levels. If given the opportunity to understand and appreciate democracy—to learn democracy by doing it in a context immediate to one’s own life—citizens will come to share an interest in and commitment to democratic procedures, despite the continuing conflict endemic among people with diverse interests and appetites. Moreover, the process of participation need not be solely political in order to have clear political benefits. As abundant empirical evidence shows, workplace and community participation leads to greater degrees of efficacy and political awareness. A robust literature investigating a generous range of participatory contexts shows that active engagement in organizations which are not explicitly political nevertheless grow the psychological and practical skills necessary for conventional political participation. Studies of democracy in industrial societies confirm that personal efficacy increases along with workplace participation (Blumberg 1968), while evidence demonstrates that workplace participation develops the capacities and connections essential to effective political engagement (Elden 1981, Gardell 1976). Similar outcomes accrue based in union participation, even in otherwise authoritarian workplaces (Denney 1979, Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). It is abundantly clear that conventional political participation follows from non-political engagement (Lafferty 1985, Greenberg 1986, Arrighi and Maume 1994), as studies of participation in civil society organizations, including churches, demonstrate (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Leighley (1996) concludes that the evidence that participation in a wide-range of non-political organizations yields “unintentional” political mobilization is overwhelming. Participatory theorists may thus draw two conclusions with some confidence. First, citizens engaged in substantial self-governance at any meaningful site in their lives will likely experience democratic will-formation in ways that spill over into more traditional representative politics. It is plausible to assert that the apathetic citizens of a disengaged liberal state will not have a well-defined political will, but it is equally plausible that the same citizens can develop such a will if engaged in some degree of meaningful local participation. Second, participation increases political efficacy and knowledge, rendering it far more difficult for leaders and experts to manipulate citizens and shape their preferences. Even if citizens do not have a well-formed will on every subject, their participatory experience leaves them better able to judge the claims of leaders and resist propaganda. Add to this the socializing effects on personality Pateman asserts

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participation encourages, and the idea of a will-less, passive, easily-led citizenry becomes not just implausible but almost inconceivable, at least under conditions in which citizens are engaged in a participatory process transforming passive demands into active decisions taken together. Agonistic theorists have more trouble responding to the Schumpeterian critique, and the problems take two forms. First, the educative benefits of participation, as theorized by Pateman et al. and demonstrated in empirical studies, tend to accrue only under conditions where decision-making takes place in pursuit of a common goal. It is less clear that a participatory process privileging conflict and politicization of the boundaries of identity could provide such benefits. Second, the philosophical commitment to resisting closure in political life while actively engaging in the constitution of subjectivity tends to increase the risk that political elites might engage in manipulation. It seems plausible that the vision of politics as a field of social contestation in which we “presume that every social identity is a constructed, relational formation that engenders human differences, resistances, remainders, and surpluses through the very process of its consolidation,” will lead to a politics that is less communal, less cooperative, and less amenable to even provisional commitments to the idea of a common good (Connolly 1995: 89, emphasis in original). Politics requires activity and decisions, and political life cannot remain open and contested forever. As Feldman notes, “Even decentered subjects who enlarge their mentalities and relinquish exclusionary identities must nevertheless create some degree of provisional closure, even as they recognize that this closure is neither complete nor remainder free” (1999: 3). The risk for agonistic democracy is that closures will, in each case, reflect the differential power, knowledge, access, and expertise that Schumpeter describes as so inevitable to mass politics. A population caught up in the construction and deconstruction of their own identities and those of others, that views political participation as a groundless conflict without any possibility of attaining a common good, and resists or politicizes even those aspects of society into which citizens wish to retreat as a respite from contestation, is likely to be a politics that is unable to generate the minimal consensus necessary for action, and is thus susceptible to “leadership.” As Warren argues, “the generative capacities of democracy are also delicate, easily subverted by social and political context. When identities are politicized in patterns that leave few, if any, settled commonalities upon which to draw, then these generative capacities will work badly, if at all” (1996: 256). Agonism and the Place of Participation The agonistic emphasis on participation is implicit largely because the vision of democracy emerges negatively, in the critique of liberalism and deliberative democracy. The concern is that individual participation has been marginalized in modern democratic society, as democracy becomes increasingly associated

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with elite rule, electoral sanction, and the protection of individual rights. This focus away from individual participation (and, by implication, from substantive political equality) is portrayed by Mouffe and others as a consequence of the misguided understanding of politics that animates liberal thought. Put more abstractly, the agonistic commitment to participation is produced by its rejection of the liberal vision. The critique is unquestionably accurate, as any review of post-war democracies or post-war political science will show. But it also seems evident that the minimization of participation in modern democracy is not merely caused by a false ontology, and adopting a proper grounding for political thought would not transform the structural and institutional challenges to increased participation in collective decision making. If governing is likely to take place in nation states, and any account of politics that takes seriously the historicity of politics must accept that situation, then democratic theory must accommodate the fact that complex, pluralistic societies of many, many millions will be governed by some group of elites. A more democratic process may offer more opportunities to influence these elites, and may contribute to regular turnover among the elites, but the brute fact of governance will not soon disappear. Nor should it, if we take seriously the claims of agonistic democracy. We need large scale political organizations to help channel, guide, and instigate the sort of conflicts that make a politics of struggle and revision possible. An agonistic politics will require social and political institutions to foster agonistic consciousness, and the challenge is to find structures with the capacity to do so, given the sedimented forms available to contemporary politics. The question at stake is whether or not we can discern any promising participatory opportunities appropriate to the agonistic vision. While it is clear agonism cannot simply adopt the traditional participatory model, a reimagined model of participation might offer promising possibilities. Warren’s (1996) analysis of participation under contemporary conditions offers a useful basis for this rethinking. He systematically analyzes the “political landscape” of contemporary democracy and global politics to “rethink what democratic participation can mean today within a political landscape beset by democratic paradoxes” (1996: 679). He claims that the complex reality of globalized politics, radical pluralism, and differentiated systems demands a reconsideration of political participation, both in its methods and locations. For my purposes, I want to draw out two portions of his argument: that democratic participation should take place wherever power and decision-making intersect, and that opportunities for such participation are shaped by institutional rules. The post-foundationalist distinction between politics and the political helps illuminate the importance of participatory politics, even absent strongly participatory institutions. If the daily experience of politics is shaped, constrained, and interpreted within the larger realm of the political, then the post-foundationalist understanding of participation in politics can and should be broader than that posed by traditional participatory democrats. The practices of politics are themselves responsive to the contingent grounds upon which

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the intelligibility of politics rests; an appropriate theory of participation must recognize this contingency and empower democratic citizens to engage both elements of the ontological difference at the basis of democratic politics.8 Active engagement in both the constituting of politics and politics itself should set the standard for agonistic participation. The relevant question, one Warren’s argument helps illuminate, is where and how does that participation take place? He claims that “Democracy matters where there is power in the face of conflict: individuals need equal power and voice where there are disagreements about what should be done, when something must be done” (1996: 688). Interpreting power more broadly to include both the ability to influence directly collective decisions (politics) and the ability to participate in the constitutive processes that shape the context for such decisions (the political) permits a post-foundationalist reading of democratic participation. Wherever power operates, citizens should engage it. Such an interpretation of participation need not lead to an all-encompassing vision of politics. Perhaps all social relations are potentially political, but recognition of that potential does not demand the politicization of all social relations. Warren offers a useful rubric to help with this distinction: “By “politics” I do not mean all social relations but rather those in which there is a need for collective action, under circumstances in which (1) there is disagreement about what to do and (2) one or more of the parties has the power to force the issue. Democracy ought to be conceived as a response to politics generally, rather than a way of organizing the state specifically” (Warren 1986: 687). An agonistic understanding of participation is congruent with such a model. If all aspects of social relations are politicized, instead of merely recognized as socially constituted and subject to conflict if circumstances warrant, the result is likely to be antagonistic conflict rather than agonistic respect. Agonistic participation should focus on selective politicization, where conflicts do (or should, in the case of hegemonic exclusions) exist and where collective actions need to be taken. Participation should not emphasize participatory institutions of governance but participatory opportunities throughout society, wherever conflicts are found. The role of agonistic institutions would be to better illuminate the various sites of potential social conflict, channel these conflicts into agonistic rather than antagonistic forms, and strengthen the capacity of citizens to insert themselves into such conflicts. This leads directly to Warren’s second contribution, increased scrutiny of the way the state shapes participatory opportunities beyond the realm of state politics. The obvious point to be made here is that “state resources can be used 8  Refer to the discussion in Chapter 1 for a full account, though Marchart’s description may be useful here: “It is this dislocation of the foundationalist horizon which leads, in political theory, to the development of the radical concept of the political as differentiated from politics – for, if no natural ground of society is available any more, we will have to come to terms with the contingent forms of society’s institution/destitution, which is the very concern of a philosophy of the political, as opposed to the traditional idea of political philosophy” (2007: 155).

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to construct democratic processes by setting the rules and equalizing the powers of participants” (1996, 691). Examples include rules for unionization, chartering non-profits, demonstrating (free-speech zones, for instance), voter registration, and campaigning. How these rules are written and enforced can encourage or discourage participation and empower or disempower citizens. But Warren’s analysis reaches beyond this sort of example to consider broader incentives for structuring participation: “While the function of law in structuring state venues of decision making is quite familiar, its role in structuring venues outside of the state deserves closer attention. Here the logic of using law to establish decisionmaking processes is far from exhausted in its democratic implications and is in fact evolving in new directions” (1996: 691). The existing institutions of the state exert an influence on citizen participation far beyond that of strictly political rules. If democratic theorists value participation, they must recognize the fundamental role the state plays in setting the terms of social life and political equality, far beyond mere institutional access. An agonistic theory of democratic participation is well-situated to articulate this insight. While it is easy to read agonists as emphasizing participation for its own sake, the analysis of the previous sections shows that direct participation cannot be central to its account of democracy. Instead, participation should serve as a means to the more important end of calling ongoing attention to the political character of seemingly natural social structures and enabling explicit contestation of social, political, and institutional norms. Given the deep-seated character of such norms and their constitutive element in the identities of citizens in contemporary democracy, such contestation will be prone to generate fruitless conflict or resolutions based on inequalities of power. Thus an agonistic theory of democratic institutions should emphasis how rules and laws are likely to encourage participation in conflicts over the exercise of collective power, in those realms where the exercise of power is most visible to citizens. It is not possible to build a theory of participatory institutions consistent with an agonistic ontology; it is entirely possible to foster participatory citizenship and engagement as a consequence of post-foundational insights into politics and power. Of course, designing institutions that foster local participation in collective decisions and support ongoing organization of citizens to contest both naturalized operations of power and one another would not suffice for a plausible theory of democracy. There would also need to be some connection between local organization/contestation and the decisions made at the level of the state. Fortunately, empirical evidence strongly supports a connection between participatory activity and political efficacy. In their review of the literature, Greenberg, Grunberg, and Daniel (1995) show a strong connection between workplace participation and the development of political skills necessary for effective engagement with the state. Gastil’s (2000) review of deliberative case studies shows that structured participation in political discussion spurred greater engagement in vertical politics. Other studies indicate that participants in community forums often develop greater sense of collective efficacy that

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translates into further political engagement to pursue common interests (Briand 1999, Sirianni and Friedland 2001). Jury experience appears to produce political engagement in the form of increased voting (Gastil, Dees, and Weiser 2002). I do not claim that such findings translate directly to an agonistic vision of participation. It is clear that the measures of participation common to the empirical literature involve an understanding of politics in which citizens develop skills in local contexts that help them exert pressure upon elected officials, either directly or collectively, a model informed by the interest group model of politics agonistic thinkers contest. Nonetheless, the evidence that commnuity and workplace participation generates skills and interest in politics is powerful , and it seems plausible that this model can be utilized in ways appropriate to post-foundational political theory. Moreover, some evidence suggests that the type of political culture most congruent with agonism may be best fostered by increasing the scale of participation rather than concentrating on local empowerment. Encouraging citizens to consider politics as a venue for creating meaning and contesting values captures one substantial goal of agonistic democracy, and given the current structure of mass democracy, that transformation requires subjects to shift their focus from selfinterest to expressive politics. Much of the research on participation demonstrates that engagement in politics tends to clarify self-interest, even if in a transformative fashion. Dryzek’s discussion of cognitivism represents one version of this claim. He asserts participatory structures are likely to transform preferences as individuals consider new information. Indeed, institutions might be designed to require that citizens submit their preferences to critique and discussion, which often leads to reconsideration of one’s own interests (Dryzek 1992). Some evidence supports the claim that deliberation leads to more authentic understanding of the interests of individuals and groups, as long as that deliberation takes place in a relatively small setting (Mansbridge 1980, Fishkin 1995). But agonistic democracy hopes to move citizens beyond interest politics, so such evidence strengthens the concerns of this chapter that democratic institutions designed to foreground participatory decision-making may not best suit an agonistic politics. Instead, recent evidence suggests large-scale elections encourage citizens to express their values and convictions better than direct participation. Fedderson, Gailmard, and Sandorini (2009) show it is increasingly likely that a voter will express moral preferences as the probability of their vote making a difference decreases: “The experimental results support the concept of bias toward unselfish outcomes in large elections: collective choices in elections systematically depart from individual preferences in the direction of moral considerations as pivot probabilities9 decline” (Fedderson, Gailmard, and Sandroni 2009: 188). When the prospects are low that a particular vote will tip an election, voters are freed to discount their immediate interest and express their values with little or no cost. The study also found an increasing likelihood of non-selfish voting as the value of 9  Pivot probability refers to the chance a particular vote will sway the outcome.

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the individual vote diminished; more interesting, the authors suggest that lowering the costs of non-selfish voting also “affect whether subjects perceive non-selfish voting as ethical in the first place” (Fedderson, Gailmard, and Sandroni 2009: 178). For agonistic democrats, this finding leads to two insights. First, if we accept that democratic transformations begin from the historical situation of existing democracies, then we must also accept that contemporary democratic culture largely structures participation according to interests. Even under the best of circumstances, direct participation tends to transform interests and decrease the range of conflict. But agonistic democracy needs to decrease the importance of interests in democratic participation and increase the range of democratic conflict. Voting in large elections may encourage this sort of outcome, at least if accompanied by a culture of organization and engagement. Voting, as currently structured, offers resources to support the creation of a more agonistic political culture. Second, elections in which expressive rather than instrumental preferences drive participation may have an effect on the way subjects perceive their own connection to politics.10 It is both a goal of and probable condition for agonistic citizenship that subjects come to perceive their own political identities as expressive or performative rather than (or at least as much as) instrumental. The possibility that large-scale elections might foster this approach already offers significant promise for a practical theory of agonistic democracy. While it may seem odd to proposes electoral mechanisms rather than participatory decision-making as more consistent with agonistic ideals, Mouffe’s brief discussion of parliaments in On the Political suggests a similar, if underdeveloped, recommendation. Mouffe raises the problem that unconstrained political conflict can destroy the very institutions needed to render antagonism amenable to democracy. Taming conflict so as to convert antagonism into agonism thus emerges as a central practical issue for democratic theory. As societies become more individualistic, the need for collective identifications intensifies; political engagement can provide this connection and will do so in undemocratic ways if better options are unavailable. We must recognize that “democratic politics needs to have a real purchase on people’s desires and fantasies and that, instead of opposing interests to sentiments and reason to passion, it should offer forms of identification conducive to democratic practices” (Mouffe 2005a: 28). Mouffe turns to the work of Canetti (1960) to begin to consider a possible solution to this problem, and suggests that a parliamentary system might offer promise. Canetti, on Mouffe’s reading, reveals that parliaments are not structures that elicit rational policy outcomes but channels through which the passions of the crowd are expressed in “a form of warfare that has renounced killing” (Mouffe 1995: 22). This interpretation of party politics is compelling, as it helps illuminate the manner 10  “as pivot probability declines … voters with relatively strong expressive preferences may continue to vote or switch from abstention to voting for the ethical option” (Fedderson, Gailmard, and Sandroni 2009: 188).

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in which agonistic citizenship can be expressed and fostered without demanding direct engagement of all; moreover, it reveals the need for structures between citizens and sovereignty to make agonistic politics sustainable. Mouffe indicates the importance of such institutions in her analysis of their absence: [Canetti] makes us grasp the important part played by the parliamentary system in the transformation of antagonism into agonism and in the construction of a we/ they compatible with democratic pluralism. When parliamentary institutions are destroyed or weakened, the possibility of an agonistic confrontation disappears and it is replaced by an antagonistic we/they. Think for instance of the case of Germany and the way in which, with the collapse of parliamentary politics, the Jews became an antagonistic “they.” This, I think, is something worth meditating on for left-wing opponents of parliamentary democracy! (1995: 23).

Agonistic democracy requires political institutions to avoid politics devolving into scapegoating and warfare, and the institutions best suited to this task are likely to be somewhat distanced from the crowds or masses whose sovereignty democracy is meant to express. Democratic institutions provide opportunities for affective identifications to be channeled toward agonistic respect rather than nihilistic opposition. Absent some such structuring function political participation will turn to antagonism and rent-seeking. Mouffe’s assertion that democratic institutions need to clarify the distinction between left and right illustrates this point in a slightly different way: if established parties do not offer agonistic alternatives, less democratic movements will offer alternatives that will mobilize the passions of disconnected citizens. Democratic politics requires “agonistic channels for the expressions of conflicts” (Mouffe 2005a: 68) and such channels are the province of institutional rather than direct democracy. Participation, Will-Formation, and Contestation I conclude that an agonistic culture of participation requires not participatory institutions but a participatory civil society that can guide collective decisionmaking by governing elites. In this section I want to suggest the contours of such institutions. I turn to Habermas, somewhat counter-intuitively, to show how an agonistic citizenry can shape state outcomes without reducing accountability to intermittent electoral sanctions or constant direct control. Habermas’s account of the way democratic will-formation might guide administrative power, severed from his ontology of rational consensus, illustrates one plausible model for agonistic participation. 11 11  Readers may be rightfully skeptical of my use of Habermas to advance a postfoundational project. I suggest, however, that doing so is not an unwarranted or even particularly unusual move. Honig (2007: 11ff) draws on Habermas to defend her argument

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As Habermas’s emphasis shifted toward a conception of democracy as a deliberative process, he developed an account of how discourse between and among political actors and the public leads to consensual will and opinion formation. In its simplest form, deliberative democracy involves the use of public reason to elicit the common good of the community as determined through open and consensual discussion. The standard of the generalized or common interest serves to regulate the validity of reasons, so that strategic, cynical, or badly formed arguments are rejected. The outcomes of this deliberative process are weakly universal, in the sense that they represent what all participants want based on the use of reason within an environment free of distortions. It is important to note that neither Habermas nor most theorists of deliberative democracy claim that the outcome of deliberation reveals the true interests of society or that the actual outcome must be fully consensual (that is, unanimous); rather, the deliberative ideal allows us to test the actual outcomes of nominally democratic processes against a procedural standard. Moreover, Habermas assert that the ideal speech situation informing his model of discourse is not a transcendental standard but always already a part of the fabric of democratic culture. The standards put forth as theoretical in his discussions of communicative action are present within what Rawls might call the public culture of democracy: In my view, the moral point of view is already implicit in the socio-ontological constitution of the public practice of argumentation, comprising complex relations of mutual recognition that participants in rational discourse “must” accept (in the sense of weak transcendental necessity) (Habermas 1995: 127).

Within constitutional states, the moral point of view of communicative rationality is institutionalized and thus guides and directs the process of public opinion and will formation (Habermas 1994: 7). Thus we need not witness an actual dialogue between actual people or groups in order to generate valid norms. Instead, valid norms develop within the unstructured discourses of civil society and then constrain the decisions of the administrative core. The public exercise of political power, though not itself embodying an ideal speech situation, is guided by valid norms having the character of those which might emerge from discursive procedures: for a situated constitutionalism. Markell (2000: 40, 59) interprets Habermas’s constitutional patriotism as verging near to the terrain of Laclau (see Honig 2007: 13 for discussion of Markell’s interpretation). Mouffe herself compares Habermas and Rorty, arguing their similar unwillingness to “acknowledge the hegemonic dimension of discursive practices and the fact that power is at the very core of the constitution of identities” are what prevent them from recognizing the antagonistic dimension of politics (2005a: 89). But this blindness is not constitutive of Habermas’s analysis of will-formation, and extracting from his work some aspects that do not demand rationalist outcomes is not in tension with agonistic democracy. As I will suggest in Chapter 6, the distinctions between Mouffe, Connolly, and Rawls are similarly pliable when it comes to the pragmatics of situated institutions.

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the procedures and democratic presuppositions of democratic opinion- and willformation function as the most important sluices for the discursive rationalization of the decisions of an administration constrained by law and statute ... The power available to the administration ...emerges from a public use of reason and a communicative power which do not just monitor the exercise of political power in a belated way but more or less program it as well (Habermas 1994: 9).

This claim allows Habermas to argue that consensual norms reflect the generalized interests of society (and thus consensus and “universal” validity) without demanding unrealistic structures and institutions (1996: 296-310). Though Habermas has redescribed the process of the formation of norms and shifted the site of their generation to civil society, his own account has not explicitly transformed the underlying standards or expectations of the discursive model. Nonetheless, the admission of cultural and social grounds for collective will-formation and for the legitimation of administrative power opens an opportunity to deploy the model to advance agonistic democratic ideals. If Habermas advances “a conception of democracy that emphasizes the construction of public opinion through the contestation of discourses and its transmission to the state via communicative means, including rhetoric” (Dryzek 2002: 4), then the processes through which such transmission occurs need not be understood as oriented solely toward consensus and understanding. Whether the contestation of discourses produces deliberative convergence or agonistic divergence, the construction of public opinion emerges from democratic engagement, and the capacity of this construct to constrain administrative power does not rely on the resolution of contestation. An agonistic account of the public sphere would draw upon Dryzek’s interpretation to claim that “deliberation across differences is best conceptualized in terms of the contestation of discourses” (Dryzek 2002: 5). On this reading, even the deliberative outcomes Habermas describes can be understood as an adversarial process, and the framework of public opinion produced by this contest conceived as contingent thematizations of the popular will. To envision an agonistic engagement between discourses that does not orient toward understanding, while nevertheless sharing a commitment to similar ontopolitical premises that make the contest possible, is to envision a participatory public sphere amenable to agonistic aspirations.12 To institutionalize participation in this rethinking of the Habermasian model is to institutionalize a practice of 12  Brady captures this possibility when he describes Habermas’s updated vision of the public sphere: “Sites of spontaneous action and participation bordering upon the anarchic, these nodes in the public network feature lively discussions in which actors, faced with the constraints and opportunities presented by their concrete situation not only bundle their specific viewpoints into an influential political opinion, but also have the opportunity to discover their own individual potential as political actors” (2004: 346). Habermas constructs this space as the location in which validity and reason emerge, but this step is not integral to the description of opinion and will formation.

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unending contestation, where momentary crystallizations of public-opinion are recognized as contingent and thematizations of popular will always serial. Within this less formalistic model of discursive conflict, the force of norms derive not from an ideal of reasonable deliberation but from what Dallmayr has termed Habermas’s “modified universalism,” based upon historically shared commitments to a particular vision of deliberation, participation, and fairness (Dallmayr 1989: 4). Habermas’s efforts to reconstruct liberal democracy and constitutionalism by articulating the ideals, assumptions, and necessary practices these ideals presume is, as he emphasizes, itself a post-metaphysical project. His theory is immanent and historical in much the same way as post-foundational political theories. To take a step further and claim that democratic legitimacy can only derive from such historically contingent traditions is not unfair, despite attempts to foreclose that reading. Take, for example, Benhabib’s claim that the universalizing character of discursive democracy distinguishes it from ethnocentric liberalism: As distinguished from certain kinds of Kantianism, I would like to acknowledge the historical and sociological specificity of the project of democracy while, against ethnocentric liberalism, I would like to insist that the practical rationality embodied in democratic institutions has a culture transcending validity claim (1996: 69, emphasis added).

One may just as easily decide not to so insist; absent the willful assertion of transcendence, the deliberative project as described by Habermas and Benhabib can rest easily on post-foundational contingent grounds. Put differently, the model of democratic will and opinion formation under the conditions of contemporary deliberation already presumes an historically specific and politically contingent cultural situation, as the quote above demonstrates. An agonistic account of democratic participation requires a constellation of shared norms and commitments in order to make contestation possible without lapsing into violent conflict; the account of norms and implicit ideals drawn from Habermas offers a useful vision of how these norms might emerge and how they might plausibly persist despite the trenchant disputes an agonistic inflection of these norms produce. Shorn of the aspiration to consensus and understanding, the deliberative conception of opinion and will formation suggested by Habermas provides a helpful model for agonistic institutions. Habermas’s theory shows how local participation and organizing might plausibly constrain collective decision-making at the level of state administration, providing a mechanism by which democratic citizens guide and constrain administrative power. An agonistic political culture would constrain administrative power in similar ways, without the convergence on a particular rational answer, and without the concomitant illusion that the actions of the administrative core are rational rather than provisional. I thus conclude this chapter with the assertion that the institutions of agonistic democracy are not populist but organized, not participatory but associational, and thus decentered

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and empowered within larger institutions designed to exert democratic authority.13 What remains unclear is the mechanism by which participatory practices are encouraged and collective decisions legitimized. In the next chapter, I turn to representation to explore how various models might work with an agonistic political culture.

13  Connolly gestures toward a similar conception of democratic politics in a discussion of idealist and realist conceptions of citizenship: “These two contending dimensions of politics can be embodied in the same political subject: the citizen as participant in the representational politics of the state and as activist in social movements that interrogate previous patterns of settlement in the state and other social institutions” (1995: 101).

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Chapter 6

Populism, Representation, and the Popular Will This chapter investigates the potential place of representation in agonistic theories of democracy. I argue that the models of the representation developed by democratic theorists sympathetic to the concerns of post-foundational political thought, particularly the “politics of presence,” do not provide a vision of institutional representation appropriate for agonistic democracy. If, as Laclau and others show, popular politics in any form can only express the connection of collectivities through empty signifiers, then the standard structures of democratic representation will enable the politically powerful to shape the content of popular demands while maintaining the appearance of responsiveness. I then turn to the Urbinati’s notion of “representivity,” and show how this understanding of representation may offer a useful strategy to manage the representative quandary of agonistic democracy. By shifting the conception of representation from a method to transmit popular will to a process by which social judgment is formed, Urbinati suggests a form of representation that can shape sovereign power without demanding the production of a unified popular will. I conclude that agonistic democrats need not reject institutional representation if its function is reconceived in a manner consistent with post-foundational insights into the co-constitutive character of state and society, and that agonistic suspicions of representation derive from the tendency to accept uncritically a standard model of representation their own theoretical insights should instead transform. Ultimately, I assert that a representative politics serves an invaluable role in maintaining the empty place of power essential to the agonistic ethos and suggest that representation should not be considered a mere imperfect substitute for direct participation but the central way in which democratic contestation is set in motion within an agonistic framework of democracy. Post-foundational Democracy and Representation Post-foundational thinkers approach representative democracy with some trepidation. This suspicion generally takes one of two forms. The first version critiques representation for its inability to reflect adequately the proliferation of differences found in any democratic society. Given the fluid character of subjectivity and ongoing contestation about the meaning of citizenship appropriate to a democratic society, it will be difficult for a representative body to consistently reflect a popular will which is by definition contingent. This first sort of objection

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to representation identifies an unavoidable disjunction between representatives and the represented, which follows from post-foundational insights into subjectivity and the generation of meaning. For many democratic theorists who take these concerns seriously the proper response to this critique is to adopt a modified version of mirror representation, which, following Phillips (1995), we might call “the politics of presence.” The second type of critique concentrates on the operation of power in democratic society. Theorists taking this approach demonstrate that relations of representation are always already relationships of power and manipulation; given the sedimentations of power in social life and the privileged position occupied by those deemed to be representative of the population as a whole, the decisions of representatives will in most cases shape and define the will of the people rather than reflect it. Or, to be more accurate, the “will of the people” is a symbolic artifact constructed in concert by representatives and represented, where the representatives exercise far more influence than those they “make present.” A related critique might cede the ability of representatives to accurately follow the will of the people but demonstrate how that will can only be democratically formed by direct participation, activity, and conflict. If the democratic public already engages in such will formation, representation is unnecessary. If the public is not so engaged, then the will to which representatives give voice must have been constituted by undemocratic relations of power. Representation is at best problematic for post-foundational theories of democracy. While many democratic theorists view representation as an imperfect but acceptable alternative to a more perfect but less plausible institutional arrangement, agonistic approaches view representation as either fundamentally flawed or actively undemocratic. The first category of objection, that representatives cannot perform their function due to the contingent and complex character of identity, leads to calls for radical changes in representation to make it less inadequate. The second type of objection leads to the outright rejection of representative democracy as little more than a method of manipulation and control. In this section I explore each approach. Representation and Presence Traditional accounts of representation tend to posit a model based on a pure politics of ideas, in which representatives discern the range of ideas in a given society and implement legislation based on those preferences. If elections reliably select representatives accountable to the diverse interests of a society, it makes no difference who makes those decisions; simple demographic proportionality becomes unnecessary. In this case, only ‘what’ is being represented matters, not ‘who’ is doing the representing. If the fundamental conditions for this type of democracy are met, it should be relatively simple to test the level of legitimacy in a democracy based on a politics of ideas. One could merely observe whether or not certain views and interests are consistently left unaddressed, and if those views

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correlate with minority or marginalized groups, then the inadequacy of a politics of ideas is evident. Advocates of presence in political representation argue that when a government severs the speaker from the ideas spoken, the output of decisions will favor those in historical positions of privilege, whether due to ignorance, intent, or institutional inertia (Williams 1998, Mansbridge 1999, Hawkesworth 2003). Only the physical and political presence of institutionally excluded groups may expose that privilege and possibly counteract it. The notion implies that a legislative body including many different groups will produce very different outcomes than one that does not, and that the policy outcomes of such legislative bodies are more representative than those of less diverse legislatures. Insuring adequate advocacy for those perspectives and interests which do not receive regular attention from majority representatives might occur through reserving seats for members of certain marginalized minorities or groups, drawing district lines likely to produce representatives of the groups in question, or protecting the seats of existing minority representatives. Pitkin classified this form as mirror representation, where the legislature should reflect the demographic profile of the population. Mirror representation has been largely rejected, but contemporary theorists have addressed the most significant objections to descriptive representation and reformulated it as the politics of presence (Young 1990, Guinier 1994, Kymlicka 1995, Mansbridge 1999, Bickford 1999, Young 2001). The question of which groups deserve protected representation leads to an obvious objection. Because an infinite number of ‘groups’ might exist in any given society, it seems impossible and impractical to guarantee representation to them all. Phillips and Young suggest an analysis of the historical and political circumstances of groups asking for representation might address this concern (Phillips 1995, Young 2001). Such analysis should reveal those groups systematically excluded from positions of power, and those groups that continue to be represented inadequately. Once it is determined that a group’s perspectives are not being represented adequately and that they are in a position of disadvantage because of their historical context, some form of presence is warranted. If a group is in a dominant position, it is safe to assume that group is either already represented adequately without protected seats, or that they do not need the same level of aggressive advocacy that disadvantaged groups need. In fact it is possible, as Dovi (2009) suggests, that such privileged groups may need to be actively excluded from representation in order to better balance their power against the marginalized. Objections to descriptive representation tend toward one of two positions: rejected as unnecessary and dangerous, or justified as a remedy to current and past injustices. Pitkin (1967), for example, rejects descriptive representation on the grounds that representatives should advance and defend the interests of their constituents; shared personal characteristics are at best unnecessary to such an activity and at worst undermine the effort to hold representatives accountable. Representatives should be judged solely by their effectiveness, and a focus on identity distracts from such judgment. Others argue that descriptive representation

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leads to balkanization and division within democratic societies, and thus undermines the social cohesion required for functioning democratic rule.1 Theorists advocating descriptive representation generally advance it as a solution to the problem of continuing under-representation of minority interests or perspectives, and view this exclusion as central to the functioning of historically constituted democratic institutions (Phillips 1995, Williams 1998, Mansbridge 1999). On this account the rules, traditions, perspectives, and processes of representation tend to reinforce patterns of group injustice in ways that cannot be overcome by standard methods of accountability. Only changing the membership of representative bodies and the distribution of power within them can ameliorate past and present injustices. Moreover, to the extent group identity is itself an artifact of political negotiations and relations of power, direct participation in representative governance offers the best hope for social equality between groups currently constituted as unequals.2 Posed in these terms, the debate about descriptive representation cannot be resolved directly without engaging a series of persistent normative conflicts. The empirical literature on descriptive representation offers few clues to resolve the normative debate about the politics of presence. Researchers concerned with institutional design approach the question of presence as a practical issue, assessing the extent to which presence is necessary to maintain symbolic legitimacy (Tolleson-Rinehart 1992, Rosenthal 1995, Lawless 2004, SchwindtBayer and Mishler 2005, Marschall and Ruhil 2007), increase efficacy among nonmajority voters (Howell and Fagan 1988, Hansen 1997, Sapiro and Conover 1997, Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001), and avoid majority tyranny or the exclusion of minority interests (Guinier 1994, Dodson 1998, Bratton and Haynie 1999, Dovi 2002, Preuhs 2006). Empirical studies tend to assume variation between the demographic constitution of a population and the body representing it reveals a problem of under representation. This literature generally adopts one of two approaches, either examining how an increase in non-majority legislators changes the policy concerns of the body (Thomas 1991, Thomas and Welch 1991, Berman and O’Connor 1993, Whitby 1998, Burrell 1998, Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler 2005, Meier, Gonzalez-Juenke, Wrinkle, and Polinard 2005, Wängnerud 2005, Preuhs 2006, Marschall and Ruhil 2007, Kittilson 2008) or how the increase in the 1  This fear guides the reasoning of the majority in Shaw v. Reno (1993), in which the United States Supreme Court limited the ability of states to construct majority-minority districts as a means to increase minority representation. Justice O’Connor wrote, “Racial classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers. Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matter... .” 2  It should be noted that advocates of the constructivist position are themselves conflicted about the wisdom of group representation, with some theorists concerned that adopting group representation might fix or freeze identities at one point in time instead of encouraging fluidity and transformation. Young provides an excellent overview of this conundrum, and offers a compelling solution, with her concept of “differentiated relationship” (2001: 121-53).

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presence of underrepresented groups affects the behavioral norms of institutions and politicians (Kathlene 1994, Thomas 1994, Richardson and Freeman 1995, Reingold 1996, Rosenthal 1998, Reingold 2000, Fox and Lawless 2004). While the empirical literature does not demonstrate the universal efficacy of mirror representation in practice, it does offer some strong suggestion that a properly designed representative scheme might yield more democratic outcomes, at least if democracy is associated with the proportional representation of relatively fixed interests present in the polity. Theorists of presence attempt to develop such guidelines. The conditions of democratic legitimacy need not require perfect demographic proportionality; presence is sufficient when the percentage of group members in the legislature assures their concerns must be accommodated in order to generate any binding outcome. Approximately half of the population is composed of women, for example, but this proportion is not reflected in the legislature. It is also relatively clear that women’s perspectives have been overlooked or misrepresented by male dominated legislatures. However, advocates of presence do not suggest that it is necessary that half of all representatives be women in order to correct this problem. Phillips argues that a minimum level of presence is required in order to represent those perspectives, and that the effective threshold might be far lower than that found in the broader constituency (Phillips 1995: 67, see also Kymlicka 1995: 145-7). The threshold of effective presence delineates the number required to insure sufficient political leverage within the institution to demand serious consideration of the group’s views and interests.3 Hawkesworth’s study of race-gendering in the U.S. Congress confirms empirically the theoretical insight captured by threshold presence. She shows that the institutional practices of Congress mitigate against the ability of minority women to achieve their stated legislative objectives; more dramatically, her research indicates minority women are rarely able to influence legislation, even when armed with superior data and arguments and even when self-consciously presenting themselves according to the social norms of the institution. She concludes that: The theory of race-gendering also has implications concerning the possibility of substantive representation of minority interests, for it suggests that there are forces working against the legislative success of Congresswomen of color not fully accounted for by majority or minority party membership, subcommittee or

3  While the appropriate threshold for adequate representation might be lower than demographic proportionality, certain groups may require representation that is disproportionately great in comparison to their percentage of the population. Native Americans make up approximately one percent of the U.S. population. Holding one percent of the legislative body would not be sufficient to represent and protect their interests. In this case, a politics of presence would require either a significantly higher percentage of representatives in order to transmit those perspectives effectively or the right to some sort of veto power over issues directly affecting this population (Young 1999: Chapter 6).

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Hawkesworth’s article provides exactly the sort of evidence necessary to demonstrate the current proportion of minority women is too low to render their representation effective. The matter of presence is complicated by looking at the way groups are constituted and function in society. Groups are rarely if ever concretely defined or cleanly demarcated from each other. Groups function relationally and identities are often in flux. They also overlap with each other, especially with relation to political goals and objectives (Bickford 1999). This objection undermines justifications of descriptive representation based on demographic proportionality but is not detrimental to a politics of presence. First, the intersectionality of identity allows single individuals to reflect multiple perspectives, and thus multiple groups. An African-American woman could fulfill the presence requirement for both women and African-Americans. Second, group politics are likely to operate differently when access becomes protected by law. Presumably if their seats were protected these representatives would feel free to pursue alternative agendas and would have adequate political leverage to do so. Third, without the demand for simplistic demographic quotas, the concern that descriptive representation might encourage balkanization or undermine social unity diminishes. Addressing precisely this issue, Kymlicka offers a valuable distinction between demands for self-government and demands for group recognition. The former is a call for separation and does threaten social cohesion. The latter, by contrast, invokes group difference in order to demand more complete inclusion (Kymlicka 1995: 192, Phillips 1995: 125). Where presence operates to insure the integration of ideas and interests of marginalized groups it mitigates against the demand for self-government and separation. It should be apparent how an agonistic account of democratic citizenship might lead to an endorsement of a politics of presence. If direct participation is not possible in mass societies, even under agonistic assumptions, then a turn to representation in its classic mode as the least bad substitute for direct self-rule becomes attractive. A version of representation that takes seriously the constituted character of identity and interests and attempts to make explicit the multitude of differences produced by the operations of power and discourse might represent the best practical alternative. Moreover, if the function of representative institutions is to somehow foster contestation between the multiplicity of positions characteristic of agonistic pluralism, representative structures that insure the inclusion of a wide range of identities might be more likely to produce this outcome. Identities are products of the contingent operations of history and hegemony; the views of collective identities might capture the depth and breadth of pluralism, and designing institutional bodies that demand their presence could encourage both the transformation of identities and the generation of more inclusive outcomes. To the extent a major objective of a politics of presence is to highlight the “necessary injustices” produced by any legislative decision, insuring that members of the

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afflicted groups have a direct voice renders such injustices more visible, and thus more likely to foster agonistic contestation over the terms of identity involved, the interpretation of values used to justify the decision, and the contours of its implementation. Certainly a legislature that is compelled to constitute itself according the terms advocated by theorists of presence would be one that in its own deliberations would demonstrate greater conflict, especially if Phillips’ suggestion of threshold presence were taken seriously. 4 Unfortunately, as I show in the next section, such a conclusion is undermined by the deeper critique of representation implied by agonistic approaches to democracy, at least insofar as representation is seen as a mechanism to generate legitimate collective decisions, understood to reflect in some general way the (admittedly variable and volatile) interests and preferences of citizens selecting such representatives. Representation and Hegemony An agonistic account of democratic politics cannot simply accept as given the current terrain of differences and plurality and then attempt to account for these all politically. The problem with this view is that plurality, difference, and the meanings these differences take on are themselves products of a political process. To understand more thoroughly this process I turn to Laclau’s analysis of populism and representation. In this section I review the relationship between difference, identity, hegemony, and democratic possibilities and then discuss how representation functions within the articulation of differences as a producer, rather than representative, of political identities. I then show that this understanding of 4  Which is not to say that agonism and presence would necessarily be congruent, even absent the concerns about representation articulated in the next section. Mouffe is quite critical of Young’s version of a politics of difference (1990), ultimately rejecting Young’s position as “a kind of Habermasian version of interest group pluralism” where “politics is still conceived as dealing with already constituted interests and identities” (1993: 86). Such an approach, she asserts, is incompatible with a politics that demands the transformation of subject positions and the articulation of a new hegemonic identity that enables contestation. Mouffe’s skepticism comes from her view that a politics of presence that works within already constituted identities can only serve as an initial step toward a properly contested politics, implying that such institutional approaches might be improvements over existing practices but must in turn be overcome if agonistic democracy is ever to emerge. I would suggest, however, that Mouffe’s analysis of Young’s claim is questionable. Young clearly describes identity as plural, multiple, and transformative, with multiple identities often present in conflict within single subjects. And while politics in Young’s account deals with already constituted interests, it is also always clear these interests are constituted, and thus subject to ongoing reconstitution. Much of Young’s argument focuses on the transformative character of difference in politics, employing presence to change the expectations, reactions, or assumptions larded into the prevailing and unspoken norms governing politics. Which is not to say that ultimately a politics of presence is sufficient for agonistic politics, but only that Mouffe’s objection to Young is not sufficient grounds for that rejection.

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the function of representation within the agonistic framework renders a politics of presence problematic. I should note at the outset that Laclau’s work is associated with the account of radical democracy from which agonistic democracy was distinguished in the first two chapters, and it might seem odd to turn to his work in order to analyze representative possibilities for agonism. However, Laclau’s work is also central to Mouffe’s intellectual lineage and informs some of Connolly’s thought, so it is quite possible to situate his theory as compatible with pluralist agonism. I do not plan to resolve this tension in the following. Instead I draw upon Laclau’s insights to help conceptualize potential representative claims for pluralist agonism, deploying his arguments as useful for that project. While a valuable interpretive debate might be latent in this appropriation, I will choose for the present to ignore it. Laclau’s central insight, presented in multiple forms from 1985 to the present, explains the way in which social meaning and identity emerges from and then regulates difference. A core claim of post-structuralism generally is that while the meaning of any concept may only be understood in relation to other, different, concepts, no single signifier ever anchors this potentially endless succession of meanings. As a result, meaning must be understood as potentially malleable and always subject to transformation; without a structuralist “master signifier” to anchor the series of differences and constrain newly emergent meanings the possible play of language is literally infinite. If difference produces meaning, and meaning in politics produces and regulates identities and interests, then without a political master signifier the possible identities present in any community should also be infinite. But it is abundantly clear that the play of meaning in political life is not infinite. In fact, to the extent politics is bound up in the play of identities within a social field, it seems evident that something anchors this chain of meanings. Laclau and Mouffe assert that the relative stability observed in political life results from the sense of community upon which politics relies. The theoretical question then becomes, how does a sense of community develop and sustain itself in the absence of a transcendent truth to bind and restrict the play of identities? Hegemony provides the answer. While social differences are, in principle, as infinitely malleable as the meaning of words, they are fixed into a “chain of equivalence” by the development of an “empty signifier.” The empty signifier may be understood as a concept that both lacks content and yet expresses the full totality of the community itself. The empty signifier is not empty literally, since to be a politically effective signifier it must express some identifiable particularity. But this particularity serves as the limit of signification within a community, the linchpin around which all other signifiers define themselves as similar and related. It also demarcates the exclusion of those signifiers that are external to the community but not in relations of difference with it. Hegemony thus describes “a type of political relation by which a particularity assumes the representation of an (impossible) universality entirely incommensurable with it” (Laclau 2001: 5). Thus the empty signifier functions as if it were a transcendent truth internally and

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as absolute difference externally, permitting the development of stable political identities within a community. Laclau describes this function as follows: The argument I have developed is that, at this point, there is a possibility that one difference, without ceasing to be a particular difference, assumes the representation of an incommensurable totality. In that way, its body is split between the particularity which it still is and the more universal signification of which it is the bearer. This operation of taking up, by a particularity, of an incommensurable universal signification is what I have called hegemony. And, given that this embodied totality or universality is, as we have seen, an impossible object, the hegemonic identity becomes something of the order of an empty signifier… (2005a: 70).

Politically, then, social identities depend for their coherence upon the fixing of the chain of equivalences around a unifying but empty signifier demarcating the boundaries of the community. Laclau’s analysis of populism illustrates the process by which political power emerges from and shapes political identities. He demonstrates that the emergence of populism depends upon the transformation of unmet democratic demands into empty signifiers linked in a chain of equivalence. Populist mobilization depends upon the emptiness of these signifiers to resist the collapse of the movement into particularistic and conflicting demands. This universalizing move requires the creation of an internal frontier within the population, with the “people” on one side and “power” on the other. Thus if populism’s “defining features are found in the prevalence of the logic of equivalence, the production of empty signifiers and the construction of political frontiers through the interpellation of the underdog, we understand immediately that the discourses grounded in this articulatory logic can start from any place in the socio-institutional structure ...” (Laclau 2005a: 44). The description of hegemony is, at one level, an empirical description of the inevitable and necessary closure of the range of meaning available in any particular community, a closure that is the condition of political action of any kind. But the character of this closure is never complete, since the very chain of equivalences that permits stable community both contains within it a proliferation of differences and produces inevitably an unmanageable surplus of meaning. How that surplus is articulated helps determines the type of regime that functions within any community. Since the play of meaning is, in fact, never actually shut down but simply constrained, the excess of meaning that inevitably develops will have differential political effects. The surplus may be excluded or repressed, with the likely consequence the generation of tensions, resistance, and paranoia. Or the surplus may be recognized and incorporated into political structures. Democratic regimes might utilize the surplus of meaning produced by hegemony to keep open the possibility of change and transformation, and it is this possibility for shifting the boundaries of community, identity, and meaning that distinguish democratic politics from others. A functioning democracy, then, requires both sufficient

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stability to maintain order over time and the capacity to accept and utilize its own surplus as a source for ongoing transformation. It is within this process of identity generation and transformation that the issue of representation, identity and difference must be understood. Representation on this account cannot simply reflect and aggregate identities. The process by which representation takes place changes the character of the chain of equivalences that generate and maintain the identities to be represented. Representation actually constitutes the totality of equivalences that allow differences to become identity within a seemingly stable community; in a very real sense the process of representing “the people” is also the process by which the empty signifier is taken over explicitly: “if the empty signifier is going to operate as a point of identification for all the links in the chain, it must actually represent them; it cannot become entirely autonomous from them” (Laclau 2005a: 162). This is not to say that there is no community of identity prior to representation, but that representation (understood broadly, not just institutionally) makes it possible for the empty signifier that provides coherence and closure to transform a group of related identities into a people. Without representation, the space between the unifying empty signifier and the particular identities which it links together is a “terrain of primary undecideability.” This undecideability permits no will, no collective action, no contract or aggregation. Only the emergence of representation allows for the possible transmission and, more fundamentally, generation, of some sort of popular will. Laclau writes, “Once some basic identifications have taken place, reasons can be given for particular decisions and choices, but the latter require as their starting point an identity which does not precede but results from the process of representation” (Laclau 2005a: 163). The process of representation then is always reciprocal, where representation gives coherence to identity by organizing and constituting it, and then validating the political character of this same identity. Representation does not simply generate and then validate a public will that it calls into being. Rather, the “task of the representative is, however, democratic, because without his intervention there would be no incorporation of those marginal sectors into the public sphere. But in that case his task would consist less in transmitting a will than providing a point of identification which would constitute as historical actors the sectors that he is addressing” (Laclau 2005a: 159). If this account is correct, then aggregative and deliberative models of representation cannot capture the essential function of representation. These classic models of representation presume the prior existence of a public will, or at least the existence of individual political wills subject to some sort of collection. Laclau’s account asserts that a people only becomes a people when it represents itself as such, and this process does not precede or structure political life but constitutes the possibility of the public deliberation that contract theorists place as foundational to democratic politics. To put it differently, public deliberation requires hegemony in order to make clear our common concerns and identities, and hegemony requires the establishment of an empty signifier to link us in a

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chain of equivalences. Empty signifiers are representations, and representatives mediate between the community’s particular demands and its constituted (but empty) totality. To quote Laclau once more, “Constructing a ‘people’ is not simply the application to a particular case of a general theory of representation which could be formalized at a more abstract level; it is, on the contrary, a paradigmatic case, because it is the one which reveals representation for what it is: the primary terrain of constitution of social objectivity” (Laclau 2005a: 163). Representation does not measure and communicate the pre-existing preferences of citizens, nor does it transform these preferences into an objective common good. It instead makes possible the fact of preferences and shapes the horizon within which identities and interests come to exist, while also generating the surplus of differences that cannot be represented at all. The “terrain of social objectivity” is the terrain of possible legible political identities, and the generation of this terrain is by definition arbitrary and exclusive. It is thus never possible to “represent” all interests and identities; one can only represent those identities which have been constituted as legible within the terrain of the objective. But the terrain upon which such constitutive representation occurs is not objective in any sense other than its appearance to those within the chain of equivalence. Hegemonic representation always emerges from and includes within it the operation of power, expressed in the inclusion and exclusion of identities. The way in which representation determines the constitutive outside and anchors the internal relations of identity can be understood as an exercise of power, if perhaps not intended in this way. “Consequently, the relation of representation (hegemony, articulation) involves power and exclusion: although the tendentially empty signifier stands in for the other elements in the chain of equivalence, it does so at their expense to the extent that it retains a ‘differential remainder’” (Thomassen 2005: 106). One way to understand agonistic approaches to democracy is to examine this problem of power operating as constitutive exclusion of difference as surplus, a surplus both necessarily expelled from community but also maintained within it as a condition of hegemony. Agonistic democracy privileges conflict precisely to highlight and render contingent what Connolly identifies as the “necessary injustices” of social order, and thus engage in a continuous shifting and negotiation of the apparently objective terrain of the social. In order to make progress toward a democratic social terrain in which citizens are open to the shifting character of exclusions and able to engage in subject formation appropriate to agonistic conflict, some sort of common identity has to be established. Agonistic citizenship requires “the construction of a common political identity that would create the conditions for the establishment of a new hegemony articulated through new egalitarian social relations, practices and institutions” (Connolly 1993: 86). Any model of political representation has to be compatible with both the emergence of a common symbolic and the everchanging possibilities for collective identifications that are generated within it. The comparison to antagonism is illustrative here. Mouffe assert that antagonistic relations express the desire for the negation of difference as opposed

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to mere adversarial conflict. Antagonism invokes the friend/enemy distinction, which happens “when the other, who was until then considered only under the mode of difference, begins to be perceived as negating our identity, as putting in question our very existence” (Mouffe 1993: 3). Antagonism threatens to undermine completely the stable relations of difference establish by hegemony; a democratic social order attempts to convert antagonism into agonism, a perception of difference as existential threat into difference as respectful conflict between social equals. Democracy, on this reading, must make possible the recognition and contestation of the operations of exclusion engendered by the necessary stabilization of hegemony. Thus for Laclau, democracy “is a type of regime which makes fully visible the contingent character of the hegemonic link” (Laclau 2001: 5). The question of democratic representation, then, goes something like this: is it possible to devise an approach to institutional representation that both permits collective decision-making and cultivates an attentiveness to the necessary exclusions that are the condition of such decisions? Furthermore, if representation constitutes both the identities it represents and the terrain upon which such representation occurs, is it possible for representation to constitute democratic subjects prone to agonistic conflict? In his analysis of populism, Laclau asserts that the question of “democracy, seen in its true universality, becomes that of the plurality of frameworks which make the emergence of a ‘people’ possible…” (2005a: 167). Applied to representation specifically, the question is how to develop a representative framework that recognizes and calls attention to its own hegemonic production. I assert there are two possible answers. First, if we accept the traditional understanding of representation, the answer is clearly no, and representation in its contemporary empirical forms must be rejected as insufficiently democratic. To take just one example, Mansbridge (2003) offers anticipatory representation as the most accurate model of how representation actually takes place, given the empirical data available on the practice of representation. Anticipatory representation involves representatives attempting to determine what constituents will desire to have been done at the time of the next election. This is an entrepreneurial form in which representatives are driven not by moral premises or commitments to positions but the desire to be re-elected. Such representatives need not share the preferences of their constituents, nor sincerely believe the positions they advocate. Anticipatory representation demands a significant amount of consultation with constituents, since only those representatives who “hear the people” (or at least guess correctly about future preferences when acting in unpopular ways) will be re-elected. If it works, anticipatory representatives will have accurately determined the future will of those they represent, leading to the best possible outcome for all. But, as Mansbridge notes, this model of representation is also prone to manipulation. It is unclear whether a politician’s communications with constituents are deliberative and informative or attempts to “educate” constituents in ways that transform their preferences to accord with those of the representative. Laclau’s

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analysis of hegemony reveals this tension to be false: representation is implicated in the constitution of subjective identities, and thus always has the character of “manipulation.” The context within which future voters will judge decisions of their representative is one constituted in part by those very actions. While this example alone is not sufficient to prove the point exhaustively, it is sufficient to demonstrate that standard approaches to representation are unlikely generate agonistic outcomes. The second approach rethinks representation’s function. Part of the problem with presence as a solution to the problems of exclusion derives from the reliance upon the standard conception of representation and the positing of stable categories of identity. But if agonistic democracy emerges from an account of subjectivity, identity, power, and meaning that is fundamentally different from the assumptions that animate classical theories of representation, then it may be necessary to reconsider the institutional function of representation in democratic politics. If agonistic theories of democracy prioritize the creation of conditions conducive to democratic subjectivity, and recognize that subjects and society constitute one another in an ongoing and contingent process, then any attempt to “fix” representative institutions by making them more inclusive or responsive is likely to fail. Instead, agonistic democrats need to propose a theory of representation appropriate to agonistic premises and plausible as an institutional imperative. Representational Possibilities for Agonistic Institutions Representation and Populism Laclau’s analysis of the phenomena of populism illustrates the ontological problem a participatory politics poses for the emancipatory vision of agonistic political theories. He demonstrates that the emergence of populism depends upon the transformation of unmet democratic demands into empty signifiers linked in a chain of equivalence. Populist mobilization depends upon the emptiness of these signifiers to resist the collapse of the movement into particularistic and conflicting demands. This universalizing move requires the creation of an internal frontier within the population, with the “people” on one side and “power” on the other. Thus if populism’s “defining features are found in the prevalence of the logic of equivalence, the production of empty signifiers and the construction of political frontiers through the interpellation of the underdog, we understand immediately that the discourses grounded in this articulatory logic can start from any place in the socio-institutional structure...” (2005b: 44). Laclau’s analysis implies that populism as an ontological mode of democratic politics has no inherent link to progressive or emancipatory politics. Further, Laclau shows that a populist politics is always anti-institutional:

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The problem for agonistic accounts of democracy posed by Laclau’s analysis are twofold: first, populism as an ontological basis for mass participatory politics cannot be assumed to be either democratic or emancipatory; second, the agonistic ethos of resistance and conflict tend to exacerbate the more dangerous tendencies of populism as he articulates it. Arditi identifies this issue quite nicely: “The problem is that, while the promise might merely disturb the more gentrified functioning of the democratic process, as in the case of populism as a politics in the rougher edges of democracy, when the underside [of populism] gets the upper hand democracy is ready to leave the political stage” (2005: 97). These practical issues make populist institutional practices problematic. But it is not clear that these outcomes are unavoidable. While a populist ontopolitical framework does not guarantee emancipatory outcomes, neither does any other grounding narrative. Absent a strong commitment to an emancipatory a priori, a commitment post-foundationalism rejects, no contingent foundation can insure positive results. And the danger that authoritarian, oppressive, or otherwise anti-democratic identities might gain sway is a peril endemic to any version of contestatory politics. It might be the case that a populist version of political institutions exacerbates this hazard, but it might also make it easier to constrain, precisely because it is likely to be so exposed. But there is a further, even more serious issue that the populist description of hegemonic politics poses for agonistic democracy. As demonstrated in Chapter 4, the prospects for an agonistic public sphere require institutional structures that insure no identity or coalition is able to occupy the locus of power and thus present its particular interests as those of the people in general. If the logic of populism tends toward such closure by shaping social conflict in ways that encourage exactly this overcoming of the mediated relationship between popular conflict and democratic power, then it is not suitable to an agonistic theory of democracy. Rummens argues that Laclau’s populism entails exactly this danger: If successful, the populist movement that has emerged and challenged the current power structure will replace the current hegemonic project with its own exclusionary project. The upshot of this analysis is that the political struggle between the populist movement and the people in power is characterized as a vertical and diachronic process of transmigration, whereby hegemonic forces are replaced by other hegemonic forces and exclusionary identifications of the people are replaced by other similarly exclusionary ones. Consequently,

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Laclau explicitly rejects Lefort’s use of the idea of the empty place of power (2009: 381, emphasis in original).

Rummens’s interpretation is sensible. If populism depends upon the construction of empty chains of signifiers that then become identified with a charismatic figure or unifying idea that expresses the general sense of unmet demands without specifying the content of the project, and if conflict is always serial in nature, with newly arriving hegemonic forces replacing previous ones, then populism is almost entirely defined by the attempt to occupy the locus of power. Rummens concludes that populist politics is the enemy of democracy, since it expresses “a hegemonic political project which attempts to close the empty locus of power and, thus, to subvert the basic power structure of liberal democracy” (2009: 388). Fortunately for the prospects of a populist vision of representation, Rummens has offered a misplaced critique. There are two plausible responses to his assertion that populist politics is antagonistic to democracy and averse to representation. First, the description of populist conflict posed by Rummens invokes relations of exclusion and externality rather than agonism. It is true that populist conflict with a political project committed to its exclusion is likely to generate the kind of struggle for dominance and transmigration he describes. But these are precisely not the type of conflicts that are found in an agonistic politics. Insofar as agonism involves a hegemonic project, it is an inclusive one. If “the people in power” have erected an exclusionary hegemony, then democratic engagement is already not possible. Agonistic democracy is not a theory of revolution, and it does not describe a strategy through which to transform an exclusive order into an inclusive one. Agonistic democracy is appropriate where resources are already present for its development; it is a situated theory of democracy appropriate for those societies that already include symbolic, cultural, and normative resources amenable to the establishment of the sort of inclusive hegemony Mouffe promotes. Second, Laclau does, in fact, endorse Lefort’s vision of democratic emptiness. While the mechanism through which populist struggles for hegemony take place are not themselves democratic, not all hegemonies are similarly exclusive and not all populist politics attempts to identify a project with popular power. Moreover, Laclau explicitly endorses Lefort’s assertion that democracy must maintain an empty place of power. He argues that Lefort’s notion “must be supplemented by the following statement: democracy requires the constant and active production of that emptiness” (2001: 12). Democracy is sustained by the tension between universal and particular and democratic culture requires that the symbolic identifications that link the population are never identified with any of the many particular projects and identities that make up a pluralist society. Within a democratic social order, hegemonic contestation is not about identifying the particular with the universal but contestation over the multiple interpretations of the more general and seemingly universal values that enable agonistic conflict. This claim means, further, that “1) relations of representation

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are constitutive of democracy; and 2) that the function of the representative cannot be purely passive, transmitting a will constituted elsewhere, but that it has to play an active role in the constitution of that will” (Laclau 2001: 13). He concludes that this process by which representation constitutes a will that does not exist prior to its representation makes democratic action possible without allowing it to collapse into universalism. The partiality of the constituted will of representation will always be apparent in its incompleteness and will provoke resistance to its claim of representation. That said, it is also clear that while Laclau’s description of democratic hegemony is meant to maintain Lefort’s principle of emptiness, his analysis of the operations of populism does seem at odds with this commitment. I suggest that the confusion derives from the different contexts within which populist and democratic hegemony arise. Under conditions that are not democratic in the sense described by Lefort, hegemonic conflict will be about establishing exclusivity for one’s project. As Mouffe argues, the circumstances of latemodern consensual democracy have exactly this character, as power is associated with a particular interpretation of democratic values portrayed as beyond dispute. Under those conditions, resistance is likely to take the form of the sort of populism Rummens emphasizes, and it is true that such populism aims to destroy liberal democracy. But if, instead, the institutions of democracy and the culture of public engagement come to embody an agonistic ethos, then the democratic values upon which unity can persist are by definition open to reinterpretation. As a result the hegemonic contestation that takes place through coalitions, collectivities, and representation will not succumb to the exclusivist impulse that distinguishes populism from democratic contestation. It is through representation that this conflict is aggregated into an expression of will, though this will never becomes universalized, and the incomplete and contested character of the representative process is always apparent within a democratic hegemony. For citizens, access to representation becomes access to public legitimacy, which can provide conditions for pluralizing identities and offers incentives to resist temptation toward unity. Näsström, drawing upon Lefort in a way similar to Laclau, suggests that placing representation at the center of the social, triggers a process of circularity between society and its political institutions. Representation is not a synonym for election. A representative politics may in fact take different forms ... All that is required is that there is institutionalization of conflict, and that the institution in question prevents individuals and groups from incorporating power for their own ends (2006: 334).

Here we see the connection between hegemonic contestation, the symbolic emptiness of power, and the constitutive role played by representation as it mediates between these poles. How this happens in representative democracy is still unclear, and I turn to Urbinati’s work in the next section for clarification.

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Representation and Representivity In Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (2006), Urbinati tries to develop an understanding of democracy untethered to the classical notion of preference aggregation or trusteeship. She instead focuses on the way representation operates as an indirect and ongoing mode of sovereignty permitting citizens to shape popular judgments about political issues in ways that constrain the operations of administrative power. Representation is not an imperfect mechanism by which direct participation of individuals is replaced by an elected institution, but a means by which participation can occur in mass society, democratically connecting institutional forms of sovereignty to popular sources of sovereignty. She writes that a “democratic theory of representation compels us to go beyond the intermittent and discrete series of electoral instants (sovereign as the authorizing will) and investigate the continuum of influences and power created and recreated by political judgment and the way this diversified power relates to representative institutions” (Urbinati 2006: 15-16). Such an approach to representation focuses attention of the indirect and continuing co-constitution of representative sovereignty by intermittently engaged citizens; what makes representation democratic on her account is the capacity for representatives to translate (or crystallize) sovereign judgment, as she asserts judgment (though not will) can be represented. Thus “approaching representation and participation from the perspective of judgment rather than the will makes us fully appreciate the worth of indirectness in democratic politics” (Urbinati 2006: 16). A representative does not serve as a substitute for popular sovereignty but a dynamic link through which society constitutes and expresses sovereign judgments. If Urbinati’s assertion that we should view representation not as a link between sovereign and governed but as a means to expressing sovereign judgment is accepted, certain useful insights follow. First, representation is not a discrete activity of legislators but a constitutive aspect of democratic society: representation “designates a form of political process that is structured in terms of the circularity between institutions and society, and is not confined to deliberation and decision in the assembly” (Urbinati 2006: 24). Second, representative politics binds together the democratic multitude in a way that demonstrates the inaccuracy of the atomistic metaphor. Members of a democratic society are not discrete agents seeking the best compromise outcome of their independent preferences. Democratic citizens are already associated in ways that presume (and constitute) their commonality on a range of values and issues. Thus, a “representational politics renders democratic society an intricate fabric of meanings and interpretations of citizen’s beliefs and opinions about what their interests are…” (Urbinati 2006: 30). This integrating force between society and assembly is expressed in Urbinati’s phrase “representivity.” Representivity reveals the manner in which a democratized citizenry transcends simple candidate selection and instead considers how social opinion is shaped and transmitted. The core democratic experience of representivity is not voting but advocacy, by which democratic judgments emerge. Thus a democratically

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legitimate action of a representative sovereign reflects not the authorization of election but the expression of adequately rendered opinion, formed in regular discursive dialogue between institution and society. The argument here is not simply about legitimation but generation. Representation generates the democratic social order whose judgment it then expresses. As Urbinati writes, representation is “the means by which a multitude of concrete individuals overcome their irreducible singularity and converge into common platforms and intents” (Urbinati 2006: 35). Representivity, understood as an ongoing process by which representative institutions alternate between expressing social differences and transcending them, makes possible the combination of conflict and unity necessary to express democratic will. Here again the similarity to Laclau is evident. For Urbinati the challenge of representation “is to nourish the relationship between social conflict and the unifying process of politics so as to ensure that neither succumbs to the pressure of the other” (Urbinati 2006: 35). In this conflictual, reciprocal, relational, and dynamic account of representation, we see a model for representation that provides a plausible framework within which to address the concerns of agonistic democrats. If representation is a mediated relation between situated citizens and representatives, where that situated character is itself a product and object of representative politics, then it may be possible to envision a version of representation that is compatible with the institutional requirements of agonistic democracy Representation, Assemblages, and the Empty Space of Politics For agonistic democracy there is no such thing as “the people” but only various collectivities and coalitions of identities in conflict. Insofar as democratic institutions act in the name of a people, they must re-present this fractured social as unified; the modern form of self-rule must be representative in this sense because representation is the only plausible technology to produce popular rule. But this representation is always a fiction and always constructs the collective identity it will seem to embody. Representation both produces a seemingly collective outcome and makes visible in the process the impossibility of this apparent unity. Thus if it is to be compatible with agonism, representation must undermine the fiction of the popular will, consistent with the need to generate policy outcomes not entirely disconnected from the conflicts out of which they emerge and into which they immediately are returned. Representation therefore must express the constitutive gap between an agonistic public sphere and institutional power, preserving space for an ethos of democracy to emerge. Agonism cannot claim that the “people govern” since there is never a people and democracy does not govern but provides the context for mediated conflict. Agonistic democracy replaces the ideal that participation and representation produce legitimate expressions of popular sovereignty with the ideal of democratic institutions creating a stable context within which conflicts over access to sovereign power (which is never popular power but always

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institutional power) deployed to achieve contingently defined ends based on negotiations between coalitions of citizens; these outcomes are always partial, revisable, and contested, as any concrete expression of policy will always favor some perspectives and interests over others. Because the exercise of democratic power is never popular power but always reflects the partiality and mediations of ongoing conflict, the administrative proclamations of institutions are always revisable and always subject to skepticism. These contingent products of democratic politics, which likely express some process of “representing” the state of conflict at any given moment must be kept theoretically and institutionally separate from the structures of power that enable democratic citizenship. And the contestability of policy outcomes understood not as expression of popular will but ongoing negotiations between adversarial coalitions will maintain the energy of an agonistic ethos. Urbinati offers an interpretation of the practice of representation that does not presume pre-existing interests, is open to (and indeed part of) the process of identity formation, articulates an integrative framework within which social conflict can proceed, and explicitly separates the generation of popular judgment from the expression of administrative authority, thus delinking the fiction of a general will from the ideal of popular sovereignty. The notion of representivity thus offers an account of the function of representation that can be rendered consistent with agonistic objectives. If representation is not a substitute for participation, is not a method to determine the “real” will of the people, and is not the place where the people are represented in their unity, then it can instead function as the process through which contending identities are made visible and through which policy judgments might emerge. Such an interpretation of the democratic function of representation takes advantage of three institutional shortcomings, which on this account are not shortcomings at all. The first flaw of representation is that it never adequately makes the people present. Representatives are always mediators of the public and thus their actions always fail to recreate the actions the full population would take, were they given the opportunity to decide. For agonistic democracy the regular gap between what representatives do and what their constituencies would do were they able to act directly is not a flaw of representation but a virtue of democratic separation. If the process by which the empty space of power comes to be contingently occupied is a representational process, then the inadequacy of representation to achieve its eponymous purpose makes the gap between sovereignty and those exercising it immediately visible. Interpreting representation in this manner allows the institutions of representation to serve explicitly as “a device of separation, the means by which a democratic society reproduces and transforms itself” (Näsström 2006: 335). Second, democratic theorists often express concerns that the asymmetry in power between constituencies and their representatives will allow the latter undue influence over the preferences and perceptions of the former. Given their superior access to information, significant advantages in time, and actual access to law-

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making power, the process of communication between politician and voter inevitable involves an element of coercive influence. For Mansbridge (2003), this asymmetry is democratic if representatives follow deliberative norms meant to minimize the impact of influence on voter. This formative relationship is legitimate if the “criteria of nonmanipulation, interest clarification and retrospectively approvable transformation that justify unequal access to influence are being met or at least approached” (Mansbridge 2003: 520). If the actions of representatives are intended not to pursue the will of the people or advance their interests but to transform them in such a way that they view their own interests as defined by the actions of their delegates, then manipulation has occurred rather than representation. However, without a clear account of these criteria, a robust theory of citizen deliberation, and a transparent description of constituent interests, it is never possible to resolve the manipulation/education tension in representation. For an agonistic theory of democracy these issues are largely unimportant. Since agonistic democracy does not presume the presence of interests apart from the constitution of political and social relations and does not aspire to produce a deliberative consensus, the inevitable ambiguity between education, manipulation, and representation is not a bug but a feature. It is only in the process of representation that interests, identities, coalitional compromises emerge. Citizen interests are constituted through the process of representation and in response to its coercive proclamations. If the particular citizen lacks a pre- or extra-political will, then the demos also has no pre- or extra-political will. There are only representations of it, and the concept of representivity describes the way the shifting identities and coalitions within historically situated community crystallize in the act of representation, and just as quickly call into being the opposition to the concrete proclamation of a “sovereign will.” This understanding of representation is consistent with the ideal suggested but not further developed by Mouffe (1993: 96-7) that the representation of interests needs to be rethought to recognize that all subjects are constituted within their situated communities and participate in multiple sites of identification. Third, the combination of uncertainty over the legitimacy of representation and its constitutive character tends to generate partisanship and conflict. If representatives simply translated the existing will of the population, then policy outcomes would be accepted. If the process of deliberation between representatives and constituencies produced legitimate, unambiguously non-manipulated conclusions, few would dissent. But the combination of an unavoidably evident gap between representative outcomes and the public sphere combined with the inevitable experience of coercion and influence in the constitution of constituency identity make conflict certain. Such ongoing dissent and dissatisfaction poses problems of governability for a vision of democracy based on consensus. But for agonistic democrats the fact that representation generates its own resistance and undermines its own authority is an institutional virtue. If agonistic democracy demands that the contestation between ultimately irreconcilable interests and identities be kept visible, and that this conflict be endured without inciting antagonistic exclusion, then representative structures (severed from the telos

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of re-presentation and delinked from the idea that it directly expresses popular sovereignty) offer a powerful institutional context for agonistic politics. Once the agon produces resolvable but impermanent and challengeable outcomes in the deployment of state authority, where these outcomes are not identified with the expression of the “people’s will” but the best option available given the context of judgment produced by representivity, it becomes more likely that citizens can engage political conflict without the need to establish dominance and obtain final victory. Partisan coalitions engaged to shape policy, if actively but contingently constituted within the ongoing process of representation, serve two functions: they dissipate antagonism into agonism and they provide the mechanism through which policy outcomes can be justified. Connolly’s description of “majority assemblages” provides an example of how agonistic representivity might express the democratic commitment to sustain contestation while also proposing conditional policy outcomes produced by administrative authority. Connolly discusses majority assemblages as a model for achieving economic equality without presuming a consensus amongst citizens or homogeneity of values. How, the critics with whom he is engaged might ask, can economic equality be obtained democratically if the citizenry is riven by conflict and cultural multiplicity? The solution, developed within the context of rhizomatic pluralism, involves the creation of a unity of demands based on a diversity of motivations, enabled by the shared experience of contingency: “cultural generalization of the experience of contingency and interdependence in what you are, while it need not become universal understanding through which all identities are lived, forms a superior cultural basis for the formation of majority assemblages in pursuit of economic equality” (1995: 95). Connolly’s claim is that an ethos of agonistic respect, which highlights the interdependent and relational aspects of identity while also calling attention to its contingently situated genealogy, is likely to lower the boundaries that prevent adversarial constituencies from working together to pursue policies that matter to them all, despite their deep divisions. When difference produces antagonism and otherness, such cooperation is forestalled. When difference emerges against an ever-changing constellation of meaning within which the dependencies of situated but not necessarily compatible identities are easier to discern, the possibility of cooperation increase. Connolly makes it clear that the pursuit of shared goals does not require common values, common interests, common justifications, or even commitment to a temporary common coalition; the desire for policies that would increase economic equality, in this case, will have multiple and contested justifications. But an agonistic ethos makes it more likely that the existential threats of difference experienced under a consensus orientation give way to openness to others who, on this aspect of existence, share an objective. Put differently, Connolly believes that a democratic culture of reciprocity in which subjects become more attuned to the co-constitution and dependence upon which the meaning of social life is erected will make it possible to generate assemblages of difference that work effectively to advance political goals without succumbing to universalism or fragmentation.

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It is not guaranteed that such an outcome will occur. As Connolly notes, an assemblage could pursue exclusive ends or the multiplicity of assemblages might produce a stagnant politics. But, he argues, “it is important to call attention to the affirmative possibilities of assemblages that foster cultural variety and economic equality together, doing so to trim the sails of unitarian idealists – those unconscious carriers of fragmentation and nihilism – who pretend that democratic action through the state is impossible unless it is undergirded by singularity” (1995: 97). The implication of Connolly’s argument is that democratic action through the state is possible, if that state shares a culture with an adequately developed ethos of agonistic reciprocity and contains institutional channels by which majority assemblages can shape its use of power. While Connolly recognizes that the establishment of such assemblages is “tricky,” he also indicates that this version of democratic action is compatible with, and perhaps best expressed through, representative institutions. One of the challenges of post-foundational political theory is the inability to offer a vision of politics that posits a clean slate. Any prescription for political forms has to take seriously the already existing structures and traditions within which politics already takes place and out of which any transformation must proceed. So where might the institutional resources be found to expand and nurture an agonistic ethos of the sort Connolly desires? Two possibilities are most relevant to our discussion of representation, one to do with culture and one with sites of politics. Progress toward democratic goals is possible (and Connolly is not shy about using the word, despite its teleological associations), when there is greater awareness of the contingency and dependence out of which pluralism arises and by which it is sustained. Since these are ontological facts describing the generation of meaning and thus the production of subjectivity in post-foundational societies, it is possible to make them more visible through cultural enactments. Once “a larger number of constituencies come to terms with the relational character and element of contingency in what they are,” and thus understand the impossibility of establishing a single, complete, consensual boundary of legitimate identities, then reciprocity and responsiveness can emerge as the primary mode of interaction between citizens (Connolly 1995: 188). The resistance to normalization, the embrace of difference and interdependence, the rejection of a unified community, are products of collective work of cultural reinterpretation and political enactments. There are sites available in representative democracies for this negotiation and transformation to take place. Collective assemblages “enable action in concert through the locality, the regional assembly, and the state without intensifying the monistic pressure for the perversificiation of diversity … ” (Connolly 1995: 96). The transformation of subjectivity and the cultivation of an agonistic ethos needs sites through which collective actions can become real in order to maintain and extend the process through which majority assemblages, and others, come together to make the promise of radical pluralism real. Without this range of sites for acting, assemblages might lack a sustaining motivation and the promise of agonistic respect could be overwhelmed.

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It is telling, finally, that in his summary of the various elements that constitute a fully pluralized political, Connolly describes neither majority assemblages or collective assemblages but “a politics of representational assemblages through which general policies are processed through the state” (1995: xxi, emphasis in original). Such representative assemblages bring together the processes of subject formation, social critique, and political movements to crystallize policy preferences that are then processed by the state. Much like the processes of representivity described by Urbinati, assemblages do not define or enact policy; rather, they generate the constrained range of options and methods that might be seen as legitimate outcomes given the constellation of identities and contending assemblages upon which policy acts. It is not implausible to suggest that the institutions of representation, from the local to national level, mobilize pluralized subjects to engage collective projects of contestation that create the context within which administrative authority can legitimately act. Representative assemblages thus function similarly to the process of will and opinion formation proposed in Chapter 5 as a possible iteration of agonistic participation. Agonism and Contemporary Dilemmas of Representation Such an approach to representation actually mirrors recent trends in political science research, which have begun to focus on the consequences of increasing complexity, diversity, and globalization on electoral representation, newly emerging forms of non-electoral representation, and questions of constituency definition. Representation cannot be confined to a traditional model by which a clearly demarcated population selects through formal processes a representative who makes authorized claims on their behalf. The “claims of elected officials to act in the name of the people are increasingly segmented by issues and subject to broad contestation and deliberation by actors and entities that likewise make representative claims” (Urbinati and Warren 2008: 391). In response to the pressures of diversity within democratic politics, democratic theorists and empirical scholars have begun to take seriously the sort of claims post-foundational thinkers have long proposed. Two issues in particular help support the assertion that existing practices of representation might support the emergence of a more agonistic politics: the rise of self-authorized representatives and the recognition of the dynamic, claim-based character of much of contemporary representative politics. Self-authorized representatives come in a variety of forms and have always been a part of democratic societies. Any political order that observes freedom of speech and assembly is likely to generate a multiplicity of actors who claim to represent various groups and speak for various constituencies in opposition to or in place of formal institutions. Nor is the problem of under- or mis-representation of groups and interests that spurs the emergence of self-authorizing representatives a new phenomenon. But the increasing acceptance of the idea that all identities and interests have an affirmative right to be represented politically, the multiplication of identities

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and interests able to make such claims, and the ongoing problems of inadequate substantive representation under even the most progressive circumstances tends to encourage more and potentially more legitimate claims that representation occurs outside the formal channels of politics. In their review of recent research on the topic, Urbinati and Warren write: So representation of this kind can be targeted and issue-specific; it can be flexible and respond to emerging issues, and particularly to constituencies that are not territorially anchored. The collectivities representatives seek to influence are increasingly diverse: not only governments and power holders but also public discourse and culture, as well as powerful market actors like corporations. These kinds of representatives can and do function beyond borders (2008: 404).

Self-authorizing representatives thus fill a significant void between the standard model of electoral representation that demands aggregation of constituency interests and the reality of difference that permeates the sphere of the political. Where institutional representation fails, and it inevitably must, self-authorizing representatives help to constitute an alternative method through which the marginalized (or, to be fair, the powerful who fear the loss of privilege) might pursue their public agenda. In many cases the representative function is initiated by the representative rather than the constituency, as when social justice groups attempt to “provide compensatory representation for disadvantaged members of their constituencies” and engage interest politics in a ways that contribute to “offsetting the mobilization of bias in politics and public opinion” (Strolovitch 2007: 124). Whether initiated from below or mobilized from above, the existence of seemingly legitimate but self-authorized and non-elective representation demonstrate how the gap between the real diversity of society and the sovereign claims of its institutions incites political engagement to contest the operation of power. For traditional democratic theory it is a challenge “to understand the nature of these representative claims and to assess which of them count as contributions to democracy and in what way” (Urbinati and Warren 2008: 404). But for agonistic thinkers the contribution should be clear: self-authorizing representatives (even the inadequate and illegitimate) serve a powerful function both by highlighting the separation between institutions and the people they claim to embody, and by vividly illustrating the multiple forms representative politics might take. Moreover, since self-authorizing representatives advance the claims of groups that perceive or are perceived to have suffered a failure of inclusion by the democratic state, their actions are inherently agonistic: such advocacy takes an adversarial position while also demanding to be included within the demos. As the legitimacy of formal representation based on territorial constituency weakens (Dalton 2004) and competing forms of representation gain greater purchase, the processes by which representative authority is produced become increasingly evident as a constituted relationship. If electoral mechanisms offer just one, and not always the most effective, means through which collectivities express their political preferences, and if alternative structures of representation

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impact sovereign outcomes, then it becomes clear that the relationship between constituency and representative is dynamic, culturally situated, and contestable. Representatives derive their authority from the claim they make to perform the function of the role they assert is theirs (Saward 2010). In the case of an election the claim has a basis in the counting of ballots; in the case of an activist group the claim has a basis in the mediating role the organization plays or the advocacy it pursues on behalf of constituencies; in the case of values or norms (such as human rights or the environment or social justice) the claim has a basis in advocacy of issues and interventions into the dominant discourse. The act of representing in all such cases involves the making of claims to represent a group or position based on the performance of the representative function rather than the authorization of the constituency: The world of political representation is a world of claim-making rather than fact-adducing. Note that, seen in this light, no would-be representative can fully achieve ‘representation’, or be fully representative. Facts may be facts, but claims are contestable and contested; there is no claim to be representative of a certain group that does not leave space for its contestation or rejection by the would-be audience or constituency, or by other political actors. To argue in this way is to stress the performative side of political representation (Saward 2006: 302).

If the process of representation is claim based and performative, and the sites of representation are pluralized across borders and communities, then it becomes more obvious to citizens that the relationship between political action and political identity is a constitutive one. The mobilization of collectivities by and for political action, often called into being by a representative (self-authorized or formally appointed), makes visible the constitution of identity through representation, instead of representation just being layered on top of identity. Moreover, by clarifying contending identities and crystallizing their relationship to other constituencies engaged in the articulation of political demands, claims create the conditions for dissent and contestation within and against the formal institutions of society: Representative claims can activate and empower recipients or observers, even if that is not the intention of the makers. Recipients or audiences are ‘on the map’ by being invoked in representative claims, even if an initial effect of a claim is a silencing one. One needs an identity as a prior condition of being silenced by a claim to represent one. Once established, that very identity can be a basis of dissent. (Saward 2006: 304).

An agonistic public sphere requires politicized identities that recognize their interdependence while engaging in adversarial strife. If the experience of being represented is one of becoming constituted as a subject within a politically mobilized collectivity, from within a larger assemblage of interdependent but

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conflictual constituencies, representative claims can help cultivate an awareness of the contingency of difference while lending credence to its lived reality. The act of representing is a discursive one, and its impacts constitute and empower those for whom representatives claim to speak. Understood broadly to encompass the full range of dynamics and factors that make the people visible in the diversity of their demands and contending values, representation is itself an agonistic framework. Insofar as sovereign power exercised by democratic institutions is responsive to both formal and informal representative claims, the agonistic framework of representation generates meaningful constraints on the exercise of this power. To the extent the challenge of post-foundational democracy “is to show that, while the people are not ruling in person, they are somehow ruling anyway” (Näsström 2006: 232), an explicitly agonistic interpretation of representation provides the resources for such an outcome, without demanding the wholesale rejection of representative democracy or massive institutional reform. Agonistic possibilities are built into representative practice, and these tendencies are increasingly visible in a globalized and pluralized world. Establishing an ethos of agonistic democracy in the public cultures of representative states would go a long way toward transforming democratic practices without fundamentally reconstructing democratic institutional forms.

Chapter 7

Political Liberalism, Contingency, and Agonistic Pluralism Agonistic democrats emphasize their critical engagement with democratic theory, posing agonism as an alternative vision highlighting the deficiencies of dominant approaches. While they imply a vibrant democratic society should be participatory and decentralized, it turns out that the models of participation implicit in their alternative vision of democracy are unlikely to produce agonistic outcomes. While they are suspicious of representation, it is possible that a properly articulated representative structure coupled with an appropriate cultural ethos might produce some of the conditions necessary for democratic governance consistent with agonistic insights. Though open to participation and skeptical of representation, post-foundational theorists of all sorts reserve their most sustained critique for liberalism.1 In this chapter, I argue that a properly conceived version of liberalism offers an account of political institutions capable of supporting an agonistic ethos. If liberalism is understood to be specifically situated within a particular historical context, if it can accommodate agonistic rather than merely reasonable pluralism, if it can permit the contestation of its essential assumptions, and if it can provide opportunities to channel the democratic energies of public engagement and representivity into contingent policy outcomes, then it might provide a viable institutional framework for agonism in mass democracies. In the first section I evaluate the possibilities and challenges for an agonistic version of liberalism. In particular I rehearse the agonistic critique of Rawlsian liberalism, identifying where his approach offers promising resources and where it needs to be revised to support agonistic politics. In the second section I reconstruct the argument of Political Liberalism in order to demonstrate how a version of liberalism explicitly situated as contingent and shorn of a commitment to producing stability is compatible with an agonistic politics. I conclude that a modified political liberalism in which the contingency of our common political commitments is highlighted and their 1  More precisely, deliberative democrats have probably generated from agonism a greater volume of detailed objections than liberal theories. However, deliberative democracy as an institutional option for implementing agonism is not viable, since the explicitly articulated assumptions of deliberative democrats are incompatible with agonistic democracy in ways that those of participatory, representative, and liberal democrats are not. Deliberative democrats must presume the possibility of consensus and must view institutional design as a method to encourage such convergence.

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ongoing reconstruction as guiding principles for political life open to contested interpretations captures the institutional aspirations of pluralist agonism. Situating Agonistic Liberalism A post-foundational politics is always a situated and contextual politics. Its institutions must be cognizant of the specificity of the society in which they operate. The specificity of modern democracy is the legitimation of conflict; the institutions of pluralist democracy are expected to manage the clash of values, interests, identities, and ideologies a free society encourages. Agonistic democrats critique existing liberal democracy not because of its fundamental commitments but because of its tendency to constrain the results of these commitments by emphasizing the importance of consensus and ignoring the constitutive role of norms in shaping the realm of legitimate disagreement. In fact, “far from jeopardizing democracy, agonistic confrontation is the very condition of its existence. Modern democracy’s specificity lies in the recognition and legitimation of conflict and the refusal to suppress it by imposing an authoritarian order” (Mouffe 2005a: 30). If the liberal democratic commitment to legitimate conflict could be preserved while expanding the range of pluralism and eliciting greater degrees of contestation over fundamental principles, it should be possible to use liberal institutional forms to support agonistic politics. I claim that political liberalism can serve this function. To the extent political liberalism is derived from existing commitments in a specific sort of democratic society, it articulates a strategy for institutional transformation also appropriate to agonism. Mouffe’s ambiguous engagement with liberal democratic principles and institutions demonstrates the potential alliance between agonism and political liberalism. Though criticism of liberal politics sounds the dominant motif in her work, a persistent counterpoint of affirmation plays below. Mouffe regularly announces the potential democratic possibilities of liberal democracy and suggests a transformation of such regimes is possible. Such a position is hardly surprising for a theorist committed to an embedded understanding of politics and identity, as pluralist agonism tends to be. The prospects for agonism must come from re-forming rather than re-founding institutions, making the transformational aspirations of agonistic democracy dependent upon the political opportunities afforded by existing structures. Liberalism presents the most promising candidate for this project. “What an agonistic approach certainly disavows is the possibility of an act of radical refoundations that would institute a new social order from scratch. But a number of very important socio-economic and political transformations, with radical implications, are possible within the context of liberal democratic institutions” (Mouffe 2005a: 33). These transformations depend upon a deeply shared commitment to the values upon which democratic politics depends, particularly a

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shared commitment to equality and liberty.2 Like the political liberalism of Rawls, Mouffe’s vision of agonistic democracy situates itself within the specificity of political values characteristic of western democracies, values justified by no further argument than their historical emergence within that tradition. Mouffe envisions agonistic democracy emerging as these historical values are transformed and interpretations of them actively contested, while Rawls hopes to extract a dominant interpretation and use it to reconstruct the comprehensive doctrines of citizens so that they share similar commitments. Both theories depend upon the institutional presence of similar norms and principles, but differ in their respective projects of reconstruction. Rawls attempts to ascertain the “very great values” that are essential to establish the coherence of a democratic project, values that are necessary to democratic functions but contingent in their emergence. He hopes to remove these values from dispute so they might serve to anchor the play of pluralist politics, and thus over time earn moral status within a diversity of contesting doctrines. Mouffe offers a similar prescription, with the important difference that the articulation of democratic principles also be susceptible to contestation. She hopes to relax the imposition of specific content to the common values of democracy, apart from the boundaries of interpretation implicit in the historical emergence of the principles. Agonistic liberalism permits contending interpretations of the values shared by the public culture, constrained only by the limits of coherence. Rawls proposes that such disputation be confined to the implementation of accepted principles and to the distribution of resources, demanding fealty to established interpretations as a condition of an overlapping consensus on political principles, which he believes necessary for stability. Mouffe suggests such a consensus will always be false, and always require coercion to maintain. By slackening the expectation of consensus and instead positing a modus vivendi expressing an always contingent but likely stable agreement to accept the legitimacy of opponents, a more agonistic liberalism can emerge from Rawlsian premises. Mouffe critiques liberal democracy not because of its principles but the restricted interpretations of those principles. Current versions of liberal democracy represent sedimentations of power that obscure the contingent nature of their own interpretations of the political order. Every social order is the product of hegemonic contestations, and every social order is susceptible to transformation once the contingency of the current hegemony is made evident. “The fact that their contingent character is not recognized today is due to the absence of counterhegemonic projects. But we should not fall again into the trap of believing that their transformation requires a total rejection of the liberal democratic 2  “Therefore the elaboration of a liberal democratic political philosophy should deal with the specific values of the liberal democratic regime … Those are the principles of equality and liberty for all; they constitute the political common good which is distinctive of such a regime. However, there will always be competing interpretations of the principles of liberty and equality, the type of social relations where they should apply, and their mode of institutionalization” (Mouffe 1993: 114).

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framework” (Mouffe 2005a: 33). Political liberalism articulates the mechanism of liberal sedimentation in an explicit, intentional form. Rawls describes the operation of a hegemonic process, in which a particular interpretation of shared cultural signifiers attain concrete meaning; the hegemonic interpretation then transforms the values and identities of citizens living within it. The political conception of justice shapes subjectivity through the decentralized operations of hegemonic power, both by providing the benefit of social order and imposing sanctions upon the unreasonable. By making the operation of liberal hegemony transparent, political liberalism opens itself to counter-hegemonic articulations to challenge its dominance, and thus offers an account of liberalism more open to agonistic transformation than most other variants. Pluralist agonism recognizes the necessity of hegemony, and admits the unavoidable operation of power in the constitution of subjectivity. It does not propose to liberate citizens from such influences but to make their operation more accessible. The analysis of political liberalism reveals how hegemony operates in liberal democracy, and thus shows itself amenable to hegemonic contestation. As Mouffe notes, it is not the liberal democratic framework that inhibits agonistic politics but the absence of counter-hegemonic practices. A liberalism in which the commitment to an overlapping consensus gives way to hegemonic contestation over the interpretation of shared values would be a liberalism amenable to an agonistic ethos. Hegemonic contestation requires some shared basis upon which the conflict takes place if it is not to descend into antagonism and undermine the political compromises that make agonism possible. There must, Mouffe recognizes, be a “we” established to enable “us” to propose variant interpretations of hegemonic values.3 What political liberalism gets wrong is not the need for situated foundations, which are the condition for non-antagonistic politics. What political liberalism gets wrong is its insistence that the contingency of these foundations be obscured. But the insistence on “solving” the problem of contingency is not essential to the theory of political liberalism, and permitting contingency to re-emerge within political liberalism does not undermine the integrity of the structure. An agonistic consensus on contested common values can produce a shared commitment to democratic politics. A consensus on values, even contested ones, produces limits on the parameters of difference. As Rawls makes explicit, sometimes unintentionally, establishing conditions under which pluralist political conflict can take place demands exclusion. In the case of political liberalism this exclusion is extensive, as any moral conception unable to affirm the particular interpretation of the 3  “Consensus is needed on the institutions constitutive of democracy and on the ‘ethico-political’ values informing the political association – liberty and equality for all – but there will always be disagreement concerning their meaning and the way they should be implemented. In a pluralist democracy such disagreements are not only legitimate but necessary” (Mouffe 2005a: 31).

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“very great values” of liberal democracy will be defined as unreasonable. Mouffe rejects exclusion of the “unreasonable,” since the parameters defining reason inappropriately subsume pluralism to stability. But she does not oppose all exclusion in principle: Any thinking on the political involves recognizing the limits of pluralism. Antagonistic principles of legitimacy cannot coexist within the same political association; there cannot be pluralism at that level without the political reality of the state automatically disappearing. But in a liberal democratic regime, this does not exclude there being cultural, religious, and moral pluralism at another level, as well as a plurality of different parties (Mouffe 1993: 131).

Boundaries make pluralism possible, and boundaries define the range of conflicts that can be engaged agonistically rather than antagonistically. Mouffe and Rawls both endorse the exclusion of political principles and identities that endanger the functioning of pluralist democracy; they disagree only about the criteria and extent of that exclusion. Rawls defines the boundaries of exclusion narrowly, demanding conformity to the substantive content of his political conception of justice in order to establish reasonableness. Mouffe prefers a broader boundary which includes a range of interpretations of and approaches to the foundational principles of liberty and equality. Rawlsian pluralism is structured to confine the range of interpretations of the very great principles so conflict occurs only on the implementation of these principles, while Mouffe structures pluralism to include ongoing conflict about the meaning and implementation of democratic values. In Mouffe’s terms, Rawls establishes a hegemonic interpretation of liberty and equality within which political conflict takes place, while Mouffe envisions institutionalized production of counter-hegemonic interpretations contesting the shared ontopolitical grounds of liberal democratic values.4 Moreover, Mouffe’s agonism and Rawls’s political liberalism distinguish between political and comprehensive pluralism, and both posit the necessity of basic unity on the justifications for the former. Like Rawls, Mouffe distinguishes between pluralism at the moral, religious, or cultural level (what Rawls calls 4  Though in some ways Mouffe is as prescriptive as Rawls. Her discussion of “the problem posed by the integration of a religion like Islam” because it does not accept the distinctions between religion and politics necessary for democratic pluralism to function shows the real bite of her distinctions. A comprehensive doctrine that cannot affirm at least some kind of interpretation the most basic liberal principles risks undermining “the essence of modern democracy.” Such doctrines will either be excluded from an agonistic polity or required to modify their beliefs; Mouffe suggests, in fact, that “the relegation of religion to the private sphere, which we now have to make Muslims accept,” is a possible condition for Islam to enter legitimately into democratic political participation (Mouffe 1993: 132). Adversarial agonism, on this account, is far from the relativism of post-modern democrats, and more restrictive than even some foundational accounts of liberalism.

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comprehensive doctrines) and pluralism at the political level (which Rawls calls the political conception of justice). She expects fealty to common “principles of legitimacy” within which incommensurable identities and doctrines can compete without becoming enemies. Like Rawls, Mouffe asserts the need for consensus on basic principles, asserting that what “we should aim for in a modern democracy is the political creation of a unity through common identification with a particular interpretation of its political principles, a specific understanding of citizenship” (Mouffe 1993: 115). She extends the embrace of pluralism further than Rawls, but still accepts that democratic agonism entails unity on the conception of political values governing the engagement of pluralist positions. This is a version of the political conception of justice one step removed: instead of hegemonic convergence on the interpretation of liberal values grounding politics, an acceptance of identification with multiple interpretations of the object of hegemonic contestation grounds adversarial conflict. In fact, adversarial agonism provides a contingent foundation for pluralist conflict more likely to generate stability than Rawls’s more constrained pluralism, as the limitations of reason he proposes will leave excluded identities no alternative to silence or violence. An agonistic political liberalism is thus not only plausible, but also better provides the conditions for stability with which Rawls was so concerned. In the following section I demonstrate precisely how this agonistic liberalism can be derived for Rawls’s work, consistent with post-foundational premises and agonistic aspirations. The Agonistic Account of Political Liberalism5 To assess the prospects for a rehabilitated or transformed agonistic liberalism would require an analysis of the ways in which liberalism is situated and how the problems of depoliticization emerge from the contingent foundations liberal theory posits. I suggest that the situated liberalism developed by Rawls provides precisely the right case for such an analysis, as his political liberalism is explicitly located in the particular traditions and culture of western democracy. It thus takes context seriously in a way that may be promising for agonistic transformation. Moreover, when pluralist agonists discuss liberalism they tend to focus on Rawls. Connolly, for example, describes the more problematic elements common to liberalism in a way that unambiguously identifies it with Rawlsianism: liberalisms founded upon the idea that (1) secularism provides a neutral matrix in which American politics is practiced, (2) the state can be neutral with respect to divergent conceptions of the good life, (3) when people pretend to 5  Portions of the following sections first appeared in 1999 as “Unjust Context: The Priority of Stability in Rawls’s Contextualized Theory of Justice,” American Journal of Political Science 43(1), pp. 213-32. Used with permission of Blackwell Publishing.

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judge behind a “veil of ignorance” they will almost always recapitulate the basic ingredients of the liberal welfare state, or (4) “the individual” provides an unquestionable basis of fundamental rights all convert a series of deeply contestable faiths into the pretense of neutral or necessary foundation of common judgment (1995: 123).

Similarly, Mouffe’s critiques of liberalism have tended to focus on Rawls, with extended discussions of his work found in The Return of the Political (1993) and The Democratic Paradox (2000). Honig’s work returns repeatedly to Rawls, and his theory serves as the primary example of depoliticization in Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (1993). In all of these examples Rawlsian liberalism is taken to task for its failure to recognize the importance of context, the relationship between power and identity, the limits of reason, or the contestability of liberal principles. These critiques are accurate, but not unmanageable. I suggest that Rawls’s theory of political liberalism need not be yoked to a foundational conception of reason nor must it suppress the dissent that a particular vision of liberalism necessarily provokes. It is Rawls’s commitment to stability, not his unwillingness to consider the contingency of foundations, that makes political liberalism averse to conflict and eager to disguise the operations of social power. But that commitment to stability is not essential to the structure of political liberalism, and showing how stability shapes and deforms Rawls’s attempts to situate his theory illustrates the source of the theory’s internal contradictions while exposing resources to rehabilitate it as a political model for agonistic society. Rawls attempted to “contextualize” his theory of justice in his later work. Rawls shifted the foundations of his revised theory from abstract rationality to the traditions of contemporary democratic societies. He thus situated his theory of political liberalism within a particular historical community. By moving to contextual foundations, however, stability replaces justice as the primary objective of the theory. Stability is attained by deriving a “political conception of justice” from the intuitions and convictions of a given society; this political conception then shapes and transforms the moral and philosophical doctrines of the society to conform to the political conception. Rawls’s move reveals a misunderstanding of the relationship between social context and political contestation, taking a dynamic political process as a fixed and unchanging social fact. While offering a solution to the communitarian-liberal debate, Rawls’s revised theory ignores the implications entailed by situating it within an evolving historical horizon. I argue that while political liberalism offers a viable account of a situated liberalism, Rawls’s revised theory maintains its aversion to the conflicts which are an essential part of democratic politics. It is, however, susceptible to rehabilitation if the impulse to reify social context and constrain pluralism is mitigated. A version of political liberalism that retains the commitment to a political conception of justice and pluralism of incompatible comprehensive doctrines, while relaxing its insistence that public order requires a consensus rather than a modus vivendi, offers a promising candidate for agonistic outcomes.

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Contextualized Liberalism Rawls’s contextualization of his theory of justice appeared in direct response to the accusations of the communitarian arguments of the 1980’s. They claimed that Rawls’s theory presupposes a dubiously metaphysical or ahistorical conception of the person. They asserted such foundations are not truly representative of real human beings and, as a result, the principles of Rawls’s theory of justice cannot be applied to real people existing in real communities. MacIntyre expressed this argument in perhaps its most cogent form: “I take it not only that a rational agent in some such situation as that of the veil of ignorance would indeed choose some such principles of justice as Rawls claims, but also that it is only a rational agent in such a situation who would choose such principles” (1981: 247, emphasis in original). Communitarians claimed Rawls’s theory is radically detached from lived human experience; consequentially, it is not only susceptible to all the traditional criticisms of Kantianism but also empirically false, unable to account for the role of community in shaping identity, and reliant upon a rarified notion of pure rational autonomy that is ultimately useless for most questions of practical reason. Moore summarizes the communitarian objection well: “they ask, why should we take seriously a moral or political theory which is built on a conception of the person abstracted from all ends, aims, and beliefs, all those things which we think are central to personal identity” (1990: 461-2)? Rawls revised theory addressed these criticisms. Rawls explicitly redefined the task of political theory, asserting that the “aims of political philosophy depend on the society it addresses” (1987: 1). The aim of political philosophy in a modern democratic society is to determine “how is it possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines”(1993: 4). This statement implies two distinct aims: first, to formulate and present a political conception of justice which “can articulate and order in a principled way the political ideals and values of a democratic regime,” and, second, to formulate this conception in such a way “that there is some hope of its gaining the support of an overlapping consensus” (1987: 1). The first is amenable to agonistic politics, while the second is problematic. Rawls derived a political conception of justice and an appropriate political conception of the person to accompany it from both the broad social and historical conditions present in democratic society and the corresponding fundamental intuitions implicit within the traditions that accompany these particular conditions. The product of this derivation must be “a political conception of justice congenial to our most firmly held convictions” (1993: 8). He assumed that these traditions manifest “not only some public understanding of, but also some allegiance to, democratic ideals and values ...” (1987: 2). The historical conditions of democratic society include certain facts which cannot be ignored, the most important of which is “the fact of reasonable pluralism,” which is “a permanent feature of the public culture of democracy” (1993: 36). Rawls took these historical facts as the necessary conditions of any discussion of politics or justice. He derived his political conceptions

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of justice and the person from these historical facts. It is in this sense that he began to assert foundations for his theory that are identifiably contingent: political liberalism founds itself upon a shared socially-situated condition. Such an appeal “enables him to defend his conception of justice against ... communitarian attacks with a style of argument they would have to respect insofar as it takes seriously the shared values, beliefs, and traditions of our society” (Hampton 1989: 799). Whether true or not for individual comprehensive moral conceptions, the modern democratic tradition has historically viewed citizens as essentially free and equal (Rawls 1993: 18-19). The assumption that citizens are free and equal is not a statement concerning actual facts about individuals; rather, it proposes a representative conception of the person that is both essential to any argument about the political implications of the democratic tradition and entailed by the development of a political conception of justice appropriate to the historical traditions of democracy (1993: 29-35). A political conception of justice precedes any type of consensus among comprehensive doctrines, and represents, in fact, a “free-standing conception that articulates the very great values applicable to the special domain of the political” (1989: 234; cf. 1993: 36 and following). A political conception of justice is explicitly contextual in that it attempts to articulate “a view of politics and of political institutions which would be most just and appropriate when we take into account the five general facts [of the political and social world in which we live]” (1989: 241).6 Such a political conception of justice is also a moral conception, but a moral conception limited strictly to the basic structure of society (1993: 240). A political conception of justice is moral and free-standing in the sense that it attempts to “formulate a coherent view of the very great (moral) values applying to the political relationship” (1993: 250). Presumably, most citizens in most modern democratic societies share these values, at least insofar as they live in a society which values democracy, claims Mouffe (2000, 2005) and Connolly (1995, 2005) also accept. Wrenched a bit from Rawls’s vernacular, the experience of living in a social order formed and sustained by a broadly shared ethos will tend to produce subjects who affirm this ethos. One might be confused by Rawls’s use of the phrase “very great values” and his claim that a strictly political conception of justice attains moral status. This confusion arises from the common tendency to identify value claims with teleological or universal injunctions, particularly in liberal theory. But political liberalism does not presume a robust association of value claims with universal truths, nor does Rawls’s 6  The five general facts are: (1) the fact of [reasonable] pluralism; (2) only oppressive use of state power can maintain the common affirmation of one comprehensive doctrine; (3) an enduring and secure democratic regime must be willingly and freely supported by at least a substantial majority of its politically active citizens; (4) the political culture of democracy contains implicit fundamental intuitive ideas from which it is possible to work up a political conception of justice; (5) modern conditions render it extremely unlikely that reasonable persons can exercise their powers of reason so that all arrive at the same conclusion (cf. 1993: 234-5, 238).

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theory require such an understanding of the terms. The “very great values” are intended to “govern the basic framework of social life ... and specify the fundamental terms of political and social cooperation” (1993: 244). They are the values required to maintain an ordered society consistent with the assumptions about the nature of political relationships common to modern democratic societies. The “very great values,” then, primarily encompass the essential constitutional values which modern democratic societies likely affirm. The claim that the political conception is moral operates at a slightly different level. The political conception is moral insofar as it is compatible with and likely to become part of citizens’ individual and differing comprehensive doctrines (religious, philosophical, or moral); however, it is not itself a comprehensive doctrine. Rawls claimed living in a just society regulated by the “very great values” is in itself advantageous and that this sense that a just society is a good in itself becomes part of individual moral doctrines (1993: 160); subjects are transformed by the social context within which the live. A political conception is moral insofar as individuals affirm and incorporate it as an essential aspect of their larger and more encompassing moral perspectives and identities. The idea of an overlapping consensus merely explains how a political conception of justice has “the capacity to generate its own support” (1993: 234). An overlapping consensus occurs when “a diversity of conflicting comprehensive doctrines endorse the same political conception ...” (1989: 246; cf. 1993: 15). Each comprehensive doctrine is able to affirm the political conception in its own distinct manner, either because the comprehensive doctrine coincides at some point with the political conception or because the doctrine’s adherents gradually modify it to incorporate the political conception (1993: 160). While Rawls would never have used such language, his description of the cultivation of a political conception of justice resonates with the account of identity formation central to agonism insofar as it identifies the dynamic ways that social expectations and experiences shape subjective beliefs. The contingent element of Rawls’s implicit moralism is further illustrated by the claim that the political conception need not be affirmed as a deep theory of the good but merely as an incidental part of otherwise comprehensive views. As Rawls claimed, “The fact that those who affirm the political conception start from within their own comprehensive view, and hence begin from different premises and grounds, does not make their affirmation any less religious, philosophical or moral, as the case may be” (1993: 11). An overlapping consensus reflects the process through which a non-comprehensive and strictly public conception of justice comes to provide resources for political stability based in a diversity of contested doctrines. The important point to emphasize is that an overlapping consensus does not reflect a mere modus vivendi accommodation of interests between conflicting groups. Rather, the various moral, religious, and philosophical positions common to a modern democratic society come to affirm, within their own traditions and consistent with their own principles, the non-comprehensive political conception. The justifications of the political conception may vary greatly between comprehensive doctrines and may even contradict one another.

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Nevertheless, in an overlapping consensus, each subject endorses the political conception based on deep commitments of identity that may be incompatible with others who similarly endorse the political conception. Thus the stability of political liberalism founds itself upon deep, and deeply contingent, foundations. It is important to note, however, that there is no reason these competing doctrines need to reconcile their differences with one another in order to affirm the political conception, nor does the political conception require more than a modus vivendi to function; Rawls’s commitment to consensus demonstrates his fear of disorder. But moral consensus rather than agonistic alliance is not an institutional requirement of the political conception. This synopsis illustrates how Rawls situated his version of liberalism. The conception of the person no longer arises from the rarified workings of a pure Kantian rationality, and the principles of justice no longer derive from an artificial Archimedean point. His political conception of the person emerges within the traditions and political culture of modern liberal democratic society. His understanding of the person as free and equal no longer requires metaphysical assumptions accepting the all-encompassing capacities of rationality; rather, the political conception of free and equal persons embodies the implicit understanding of the person gleaned from the institutions and traditions of modern liberal democratic society. Any metaphysics present in the theory play only a supporting role, dictated by the common metaphysical presumptions of the public culture of this same society. The theory demands no free-standing rational agency and even the standards of evidence and modes of reason considered relevant are based upon “publicly shared methods of inquiry and ways of reasoning...” (1980: 537; cf. 1993: 62, 225). The original position becomes a heuristic device of representation used only to reveal more clearly the self-understanding of modern liberal democratic subjects (1993: 22-28). In short, Rawls justified his theory in precisely those terms which communitarian critics demanded: “Justice as fairness is substantive ... in the sense that it springs from and belongs to the tradition of liberal thought and the larger community of political culture of democratic societies. It fails then to be properly formal and truly universal . . .” (1995: 179). No less an adversary than MacIntyre recognized this significant shift: Liberals have ... been reluctant to recognize that their appeal is not to some tradition-independent rationality as such. Yet increasingly there have been liberal thinkers who, for one reason or another, have acknowledged that their theory and practice are after all that of one more contingently grounded and founded tradition ... Even this, however can be recognized without any inconsistency and has gradually been recognized by liberal writers such as Rawls, Rorty, and Stout (1988: 345-6).

The revised Rawls bridged the gap between communitarian and liberal theories, creating in Political Liberalism a sort of philosophical hybrid derived from the political and historical context of modern democratic societies. It also created

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the possibility of a situated liberalism open to agonistic contestation about the meaning of these shared principles and the application of necessary but contingent political values. The Priority of Stability over Justice Rawls’s understanding of justice remained relatively constant despite the shifting foundations of his theory; the theoretical content of justice retains its substance but the justification shifts radically. Rawlsian justice consists of three components: liberty, distribution, and stability.7 The first two are the standards by which a given society is deemed just or unjust while the third indicates the necessary for just distribution to occur. That Rawls’s original definition of justice is concerned primarily with distribution may be seen in an early statement of the theory: “[I]nstitutions are just when no arbitrary distinctions are made between persons in assigning of basic rights and duties and when the rules determine a proper balance between competing claims to the advantages of social life” (1971: 5). Justice is evaluated according to the degree to which the resolution of claims to social benefits is balanced, fair, and without arbitrary bias. Rawls’s objective in the original presentation of his theory was to determine how this proper balance is developed and maintained; he attempted to present “an account of certain distributive principles for the basic structure of society” (1971: 10), principles which would help construct these basic structures. When Rawls shifted the theory of justice to contextual foundations these principles were rearranged, and the importance of stability was given priority (1993: xvi, 35, 133, 141). Rawls posited certain basic facts about modern democratic societies as given and appealed to an already existing allegiance to democratic ideals and values realized in current institutions to justify the theory. Rather than the pursuit of a just society, the impetus for discerning a political conception of justice became the establishment of stability within a pluralist democracy. Rawls assumed that a stable society requires the presence of a commonly-held and widelyaffirmed doctrine upon which politics may be based. But a pluralistic society is one in which no comprehensive conception or moral doctrine is capable of achieving exclusive acceptance. Rawls argued that a society can only exist peacefully if a political conception of justice can be endorsed by a majority of citizens: “Such a society can be well-ordered by a political conception of justice so long as, first, citizens who affirm reasonable but opposing comprehensive doctrines belong to an overlapping consensus ... and second, unreasonable comprehensive doctrines ... do not gain enough currency to undermine society’s essential justice” (1993: 39). With all openly metaphysical or universal foundations removed, the priority of justice now rests squarely on the need for political stability, and stability derives from the situated history of a potentially just society. 7  I will concentrate primarily on distribution and order in discussing Rawls’s definition of justice.

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In a very real sense, the Rawls of Political Liberalism returned to the traditional question of social contract theory, namely, how to create a stable society in such a way that the participants all agree or should agree to participate. The problem is that consent need not accompany stability and a consensual society need not be stable; social contract doctrine attempts to solve both questions together. The error in A Theory of Justice, Rawls explained, was that his theory of justice was not capable of generating stability insofar as it required the universal acceptance of a comprehensive doctrine, an acceptance which he considered impossible under the conditions of reasonable pluralism (1993: xvi). “Yet the problem of stability is fundamental to political philosophy and an inconsistency of this kind is bound to require basic readjustments” (1993: xvii). Rawls turned to the political conception of justice in order to address this problem. The assumption he made, and upon which the rest of the revised theory relies, is this: “we suppose a constitutional democracy to be reasonably just and workable, and worth defending” (1993: 39). Given the implications of this assumption he then attempted to develop a “conception of justice for specifying the fair terms of social cooperation” (1993:3). The question of justice is not “what is just” but “how, given the existing conditions of modern democratic society, can we get people to agree to cooperate with one another over time.” The unintended consequence of this shift in emphasis is that Rawls jettisoned justice as a substantive question, viewing it as a source of potential conflict and instability.8 If we accept the premise that our current social context and settled convictions are “just,” then political liberalism will permit us to live together in security and tolerance by supplying a political conception of this justice which will “put in order our considered convictions of justice at all levels of generality, from the most general to the most particular” (1993: 45). Since he assumed constitutional democracy to be just, he foresaw no objection to “removing from the political agenda the most divisive issues, serious contention about which must undermine the bases of social cooperation” (1993: 157). Insuring cooperation and stability becomes the first and only goal of the political conception of justice; social division and possibly war define the alternatives (1993: 161). Nowhere is the imperative to stability more apparent than in Rawls’s account of reasonable pluralism. Reasonable pluralism is “always a feature of the culture of a free democratic regime” (1993: xviii). The fact that pluralism is reasonable rather than simple must be taken for granted (1993: xviii). Reasonable entails willingness to both propose general principles of cooperation to which all can agree and accept the burdens of judgment, namely, toleration of disagreement (1993: 49-50, 56-7). According to Political Liberalism a fundamental feature of democratic regimes is the presence of many doctrines, all of which must be reasonable given Rawls’s definition. The objective of a political conception of 8  As Goerner writes, Rawls “abandons all of the questioning, wondering, and thus subversive potential that has remained a part of the tradition [of political philosophy] since it got Socrates killed” (1993: 718).

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justice is to develop principles which all doctrines willingly affirm without direct state coercion. This position leads to the further assumption that stability requires citizens to internalize an effective sense of justice making them generally willing to comply with just institutions. At this point the argument begins to look circular and coercive, at least for a theory of politics that does not explicitly incorporate the constitution of subjectivity and identity as an element of its approach. How does an effective sense of justice develop? Citizens “who grow up under just institutions (as the political conception defines them) acquire a normally sufficient sense of justice so that they generally comply with those institutions” (1993: 141). This process is not necessarily circular or coercive, but begins to appear so when juxtaposed to Rawls’s discussion of both the development of reasonable doctrines and the formative influences of the social world. Reasonable doctrines evolve over time until they come to conform to the demands of a political conception of justice (1993: 59, 160). Furthermore, reasonable doctrines and our conceptions of ourselves in relation to these doctrines will be formed by the political conception of justice derived from the settled convictions of that society: “Think, then, of the principles of justice as designed to form the social world in which our character and our conception of ourselves as persons, as well as our comprehensive views and their conceptions of the good, are first acquired ...” (1993: 41). Political liberalism relies on the formative influences of society, a society formed by principles of justice supposedly derived from it, to shape and mold the comprehensive doctrines of the members of that society; citizens’ doctrines become reasonable because they are formed by a conception of justice that defines for them the boundaries of reasonableness. Rather than a fact of democratic regimes, reasonable pluralism represents the end result of the implementation of Political Liberalism. This account of the development and internalization of political convictions is not a flaw for agonistic theorists who assume that some such process is always involved in the constitution of agency. But it is a problem for a liberal theorist who associates liberty with autonomy. Aside from its apparent circularity, how does the theory of political liberalism give priority to the question of stability? Rawls assumed that simple pluralism cannot support a stable democratic regime, presumably because the possibility of real and contentious disagreement would undermine the management of society. To avoid this problem Rawls attempted to discern the “most firmly held convictions” of the public culture of contemporary democracy and derive from these the overarching principles they hold in common in order to develop the political conception of justice. Such a conception must reflect the contextualpolitical moment from which it is derived and exclude those aspects of particular convictions which may not be shared by all. Then, in order to develop a stable regime, this political conception must shape and form the basic structures of the society. The political conception, now permeating the political and coercive institutions of society, will form and shape the doctrines of people in such a way that their doctrines become reasonable; that is, they affirm a political conception which is by definition reasonable. The formation of reasonable doctrines leads

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the regime to be “willingly and freely supported by at least a substantial majority of its politically active citizens” (1993: 38). Finally, those citizens who somehow resist socialization and continue to promote “unreasonable” doctrines which fail to affirm the political conception must be contained “like war and disease” (1993: 64, note 19), perhaps through medical or psychiatric treatment.9 In any case, the imperative of stability requires that a political conception of justice allow dissent only within its own terms: no “reasonable” fundamentally subversive challenge to the established order seems possible. Note the three assumptions necessary to reach this conclusion: justice is settled, pluralism is a static fact, and reason can legitimately define the limits of diversity. Agonistic democrats reject all three. Note also that none of these assumptions is mandated by the underlying structure of Rawls’s theory of political liberalism; as a contextualized and situated approach meant to derive and clarify shared interpretations of liberal and democratic values, the theory works just as well without the insistence on the priority of stability or the reasonableness of pluralism. It does pose a greater likelihood of internal conflict since the interpretations of commonly affirmed values will be contested and the public demands of a more expansive pluralism might not always be amenable to reconciliation, but those are issues agonistic democrats hope to foster rather than repress. Stability for the Wrong Reasons In the “Introduction to the Paperback Edition” of Political Liberalism (1996), Rawls attempted to preclude the sort of objection offered above. He claimed that the stability with which the revised theory is concerned involves not mere social order but stability for the “right reasons” (1996: xxxix), since the theory is directed toward the establishment not of social stability per se, but only stability that can be affirmed by those within the society for reasons which they find appropriate within their particular comprehensive doctrines. “Stability for the right reasons” cannot satisfy only liberal comprehensive doctrines but must appeal to nonliberal conceptions as well: “The point is that not all reasonable comprehensive doctrines are liberal comprehensive doctrines; so the question is whether they can still be compatible for the right reasons with a liberal political conception” (1996: xxxix). The right reasons to endorse the stability of the political conception must be free, uncoerced, and wholehearted, which means that those affirming 9  Rawls (1993: 185) is surprisingly blunt here, making the inability to recognize and accommodate “reasonable” demands a medical problem. Connolly has alluded to this tendency as common trait of liberalism: “Thus, for instance, madness as unreason or (in a more contemporary vein) severe abnormality is doubly entangled with the identity of the rational agent and the normal individual; it helps to constitute practical reason and normality by providing a set of abnormal conducts and ‘vehement passions’ against which each is defined, but it also threatens them by embodying characteristics that would destabilize the normal if they were to proliferate” (1991: 67).

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the political conception must not be “simply going along with it in view of the balance of political and social forces” (1996: xl). Thus, a society endorsing the political conception exhibits stability for the right reasons because its stability reflects an overlapping consensus rather than a balance of power negotiated between incompatible interests. Although comprehensive doctrines may differ in fundamental ways, they endorse the political conception for the right reasons (free decisions made on the basis of substantive comprehensive commitments) instead of the wrong ones (attempts to avoid conflict by acceding to a less than perfect modus vivendi). His clarification does not refute the argument that Rawls’s stability (even for the “right reasons”) relies for effectiveness upon the reshaping and/or exclusion of those doctrines which do not conform to the Rawlsian conception of reasonableness. Even his clarification of the centrality of stability presumes the fundamental reasonableness of all doctrines asked to affirm the political conception: “The problem of Political Liberalism is to work out a political conception of political justice for a constitutional democratic regime that a plurality of reasonable doctrines, liberal and non-liberal, may freely endorse, and so freely live by and come to understand its virtues” (1996: xl). Clearly, stability for the “right reasons” presumes reasonable pluralism, a pluralism in which comprehensive doctrines hostile to liberal understandings of reasonableness have already been tamed. But reasonable pluralism actually results from the adoption of the political conception. Simple pluralism is not and cannot be assumed to be reasonable until after the influence of a well-ordered society has done its work; if agonistic democrats are correct, pluralism will never be reconcilable through reason or socialization as the antagonistic element of politics is constitutive of the pluralism it attempts to regulate. Rawls answered objections to the potentially coercive function of an overlapping consensus by presuming a society in which an overlapping consensus has already done its work. It is precisely this sleight of hand that Mouffe (2000: 18-31) describes in her rejection of reasonable pluralism as a basis for democratic institutions. Rawls’s “Introduction” does clarify why stability consistently undermines his attempts to develop a contextualized liberal theory appropriate to a modern democracy. In the “Introduction,” he explained that Political Liberalism “looks for the most reasonable basis of social unity available to citizens of a modem democratic society” (1996: xli). The statement is revealing. Stability, on Rawls’s account, requires social unity. Yet modern democracy is characterized fundamentally by social dissension and political conflict. Rawls, however, posed the lack of social unity as a problem to overcome. He insisted that the goal of political theory is to avoid the kind of conflict which “raises the stakes of politics and may lead to distrust and turmoil that undermines constitutional government” (1993: 228). His political conception of justice does exactly this, minimizing direct coercion and relying instead upon the formative influences of culture and society. Despite his claims to have developed a non-metaphysical and contextual theory appropriate for a modern democracy, Rawls’s tactic perfected a long-

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term strategy of the social contract tradition, namely, to gain control over the constitution of social reason and then get people to internalize these interpretations as the fundamental principles of their own beliefs. Rawls, like his predecessors, understood the limitations of active and direct coercion. How much better to foster self-regulation, controlling conflict and dissent by obliging citizens to internalize the regime’s political reason by appealing to and then transforming their most deeply held convictions? And to do so publicly in such a manner that citizens are aware of and accept these influences (1993: 68). It is no surprise that Rawls proudly suggested that “a well-ordered society may lack ideological, or false, consciousness” (1993: 68-9, note 21). Political liberalism makes such phenomena impossible, except for those unfortunate (but clinically treatable) few who are unable to reason correctly. Of course, the same factors that political liberalism deploys to foster self-control and consensus might also be deployed to foster an ethos of generosity and reciprocity within which these more fundamental conflicts might be engaged without destroying the possibility of democratic stability. And the willingness of the citizens of liberal societies to affirm their common values, even as they recognize their constitutive function, represents an opportunity to foster comfort with contingency without demanding a radical transformation of the social order. Agonistic democrats also rely on the formative influences of culture and society to generate a democratic ethos. Political Liberalism describes conflict over basic principles as a danger to the democratic order; agonistic theorists view conflict over basic principles as the fundamental expression of democratic order. If political liberalism can be interpreted to accommodate this more extensive contestation, it might provide a valuable framework within which an agonistic ethos might operate. This is entirely possible, since the elevation of stability represents a secondary claim by Rawls rather than a fundamental assertion of the theory. The mechanics of political liberalism are designed to build a framework of values based on a shared history and amenable to peaceful adjudication of the conflicts of reasonable pluralism. Extending the limits of conflict to include contestation of the interpretation of shared values and relaxing the assumption that pluralism is always reasonable does not undermine the contextualization of liberalism Rawls pursued; they simply make its long-term stability less certain. Contingency, Stability, and Political Liberalism Rawls’s objective in contextualizing liberalism was, at least in part, to locate a particular kind of justice within a particular kind of society to supply the theory with foundations attentive to the specificity and singularity of a given context. I argue that the priority of stability in Rawls’s revised theory ultimately undermines his claim to have developed a theory appropriate to a modern democracy. Because it does not recognize the practical and philosophical implications of the loss of a common doctrine for democratic theory, the theory proposes a political conception that is inconsistent with liberal principles. This central problem is rooted in two

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major flaws of the theory: (1) it fails to distinguish between justice and legal order, and (2) it prevents the continuing evolution of conceptions of justice. Both problems can be resolved by adopting explicitly agonistic assumptions about democracy and society; in other words, the flaws of political liberalism can be resolved by agonistic democracy, and the structure of political liberalism can in turn provide a framework for agonistic politics. Order, in Rawls understanding, seems coextensive with law, or at least with the “constitutional essentials” which regulate a society justly. This means that the contextual justice of Rawls ignores the potential tension between justice and law. For Rawls the goal of law is not to approach or interrogate the meaning of justice but to correctly apply clear knowledge to particular transgressions of political stability, reestablishing an ordered equilibrium. Honig points to this tendency in A Theory of Justice when she writes, “This is the task Rawls assigns to political theory: to isolate the right vantage point, to establish the right setting, to facilitate the identification of right resolutions, to dissolve the remainders of politics rather than engage them” (1993: 127). Rawls’s contextual theory simply extends and perfects this tendency. That political liberalism concentrates on stability to the point of all but excluding questions of justice is a symptom of Rawls’s inadequate articulation of the relationship of context to justice. His understanding of context is inadequate because it fails to recognize its malleable and relational character. Rawls simply shifted his theoretical foundations from a transparent and accessible rationality to a context which is fixed and fully accessible to reason. The same tendency towards closure can be seen in Rawls’s references to “settled convictions,” “fundamental intuitions,” and the “implicit” conception of justice always already present in modern democratic society. So while Rawls recognized the importance of context and the limitations it imposes upon the applicability of his theory, he at the same time took the particular context of modern democratic society as neither malleable nor relational but final and absolute. Rawls got things half right. He saw that the possibility always exists to reshape the context of reality that structures political possibilities, but once his goals have been accomplished, any further development is prohibited.10 Context, as post-foundational thinkers demonstrate, cannot properly be taken as fixed. Political liberalism recognizes the contingency of political foundations, and then proposes to obscure that insight by naturalizing the current foundational narrative of liberalism. Such reification of contingency is not merely an epistemological mistake. A theory which relies upon a fixed context must assume that all following contexts are (or can be made to be) identical; therefore, no matter how diverse the content of the absolutized foundation used as a standard, the theory must assume into existence a homogenous tradition. The possibility that

10  Neal makes a similar point when he writes, “Rawls ... is using a conventional ‘fundamental intuitive idea’ (or ‘basic norm’ in Larmore’s vernacular) in an uncharacteristic way, as a tool of reconstruction” (1994: 91).

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such conflicts may not be easily pacified, or that new, incommensurable forms of difference might arise, is ignored or suppressed. Rawls might respond that he is aware of the contingent character of political foundations and that his theory takes this into account. By abstracting from a constantly changing cultural context those aspects of modem democratic society which are fundamental to the ideal and then using these to develop a regulative political conception of justice to better manage that society according to its own standards of justice, Rawls might claim to utilize the relational character of context in order to improve it. Such an argument is vaguely present in the following: philosophy looks to the standing conditions of human life, and how these affect the burdens of reason. Political philosophy must take into account the five general facts we noted, among them the fact that free institutions encourage a diversity of comprehensive doctrines ... A political conception so arrived at is not political in the wrong way but suitably adapted to the public political culture that its own principles shape and sustain (Rawls 1989: 251).

A political conception is drawn from the standing conditions of modern democratic society and that political conception then shapes and sustains this very culture. Rawls’s claim that the political conception of justice uses political power appropriately rests on the claim that pluralism is a contextual fact. His premises, however, presume that pluralism is a fact of context but not itself within social context. This account of pluralism is perfectly appropriate for A Theory of Justice, which does not claim to take context seriously. But when the theory shifts to contextual foundations, the approach to pluralism must change as well. Interests, in a contextual theory, both form expectations and are themselves formed by state actions (Mathiowetz 2008). This means that interests and beliefs are not political conditions but part of a process in which the state, and any conceptions it puts forth, is a participant rather than merely a referee. Once we realize that the political conception of justice both arises from and in turn delimits the terms of political debate, then our understanding of the relationship between pluralism and liberalism must change. As long as pluralism remains an autonomous fact, as Rawls treated it in Political Liberalism, no danger is posed to liberal principles by attempts to reduce conflicts between these interests. But if pluralism is a process, then attempts to reduce or eliminate conflict must be seen as expressions of political positions within the debate rather than neutral positions regulating the process. The implication is that the political conception of justice does not meet the criteria Rawls sets forth, since the political conception of justice is itself both a participant in and regulator of political debate. A liberal theory appropriate to the conditions of a modern democratic society cannot take such a position and expect to be accepted or endorsed peacefully. An agonistic understanding of pluralism, by contrast, can account for both the generative and regulative elements of liberal institutions and democratic culture, since for any post-foundational theory such

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iterative generation of social context, subjectivity, and identifications unavoidably shape political life. Why is this point important for democratic theory? Because justifications of democratic practice change depending on how we understand the generation of interests and political positions. Rawls recognized the political nature of his move to control the evolving shape of social context. What he failed to recognize is the fact that the “standing conditions of human life” within modern democratic society are themselves subject to contestation. Rawls attempted to preclude the politicization of his originally posited contextual conditions by claiming a non-political status for them. Yet recognition of the relational character of context should lead a theorist committed to democracy and pluralism to exactly the opposite conclusion: the formation and modification of the background conditions of politics should be a primary object of democratic debate.11 If we value democracy because we no longer find ourselves able to affirm a substantive comprehensive conception of the good, then democratic practice is justified by the fact that it allows us to engage in political conflict without either imposing one view or lapsing into violence. The institutions appropriate to these conditions regulate conflict without striving for the ultimate reconciliation of interests. The insights that led to the revision of Rawls’s theory should and can lead a step further to the adoption of agonistic principles, which provide possibility of deep disagreement and ongoing contestation of the terms of pluralism without demanding the exclusion of the “unreasonable” positions any such order generates. Put differently, a political liberalism that does not prioritize stability, recognizes the constitutive function of social and political power, and accepts that the range of pluralism to which institutional rules apply will always exceed the capacity of those rules to accommodate them, would be a political liberalism within which an agonistic ethos might flourish. On the agonistic account of democratic principles any final resolution of interests and establishment of institutional principles actually undermines democracy. By obscuring the political quality of his foundational understanding of context, Rawls portrayed his construction of social reality as inevitable. Rawls’s contextualized theory avoids politics to preserve order, constrains conflict in order to establish stability, and restricts pluralism to minimize antagonism. The recognition that we share no common doctrine except the fundamental intuition that no common doctrine can ever gain widespread acceptance instead demands recognition of the underlying indeterminacy of modern democratic politics. Any conception of the political realm appropriate to such conditions must be one that accepts and institutionalizes this indeterminacy. Any attempt to take certain subjects or practices “off the table” violates Rawls’s fundamental insight into modern democratic societies, namely, that no common doctrine licensing such a 11  Laclau summarizes this insight: “But if there is no ultimate ground, political argument increases in importance because ... it itself constructs, to a certain extent, the social reality” (1988: 79).

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removal can achieve legitimate acceptance. The central point is that Rawls’s own argument leads, when properly explicated, to a post-foundational and agonistic interpretation of democratic theory. Rethinking Stability The problems of Rawls’s revised theory, in the end, seem to arise from an insufficient understanding of the contingency of political foundations and of the constitutive character of social reality. Rawls hoped to transform a theory that was previously abstract and unconnected to human reality by founding it unambiguously on the existing institutions, structures, and assumptions of liberal democracy. Unfortunately, in his desire to establish unambiguous foundations, Rawls reified this context arbitrarily, adopting a particular point in time with limited perspectives and possibilities as the universal standard against which the justice of society will be evaluated forever. Taking a particular interpretation of a particular context and making it unchallengeable (at least within the hegemony of its own “reason”12) reveals an attempt to derive certainty from contingency, clarity in the face of ambiguity. Political Liberalism neither needs nor encourages robust debate about fundamental political issues; we will all know how such fundamental claims should be resolved because the framework of society is transparent and our settled convictions clear. In fact, Rawls claimed in a footnote of his “Reply to Habermas” that, “The conception of political justice can no more be voted on than can the axioms, principles, and rules of inference of mathematics or logic” (1995: 144, note 22). We need merely apply it at the appropriate level of generality and dispense with the danger of anarchy that accompanies subversive political questions. It is difficult to see what role democratic participation would have in such a politics. And insofar as democracy presumes an engaged and active citizenry, Rawls’s political liberalism makes healthy democratic practice an unlikely outcome.13 Nevertheless, these flaws are not fatal, nor are they essential to the model of political liberalism. It is possible to face up to the contingency Rawls almost perceived and generate liberal outcomes much like those Rawls proposed. An agonistic political liberalism is a real possibility.

12  Rawls goes so far as to claim that, “No sensible view can possibly get by without the reasonable and the rational as I use them” (1995: 138). 13  Alejandro even makes the argument that the inevitable result of Rawls’s new theory is an apolitical and undemocratic citizenry: “Rawlsian politics, however, is so concerned with the exclusion of divisive issues that might threaten the stability of a well-ordered society, and so interested in excluding any contingencies that might impair the orderly application of the principles of justice, that it might engender a passive citizenry, one that might be willing to silence their criticism rather than risking the instability of political order” (1996: 21).

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Moreover, adopting an agonistic theoretical framework solves the two major problems the emphasis on stability creates within political liberalism. First, while political liberalism cannot distinguish between the criteria of justice used to evaluate the law and the legal order that shapes those same criteria, an agonistic account of democracy avoids this problem. Because agonistic democrats recognize the constitutive and evolving relationship between legal norms, cultural power, and social values, they also recognize that any polity’s standards of justice are imbricated with institutional and social factors within which it derives its authority. That the production of norms against which law should be evaluated are not quarantined from one another is a major flaw for liberalism, as it opens the possibility of non-neutral political standards. For agonistic democrats, such segregation of practice and principle is conceptually impossible and the attempt to overcome this impossibility obscures the partiality of any norm. Since highlighting and engaging this reciprocal process is a central tenet of agonism, an agonistic liberalism need not solve this apparent problem. Second, political liberalism is meant to constrain the continuing evolution of conceptions of justice in order to generate stability over time, which in turn removes from the realm of the political the capacity of citizens to both generate their own conceptions of the good and the capacity of society to exercise autonomy over its own governing principles. Obviously such a result is problematic for liberal theory. But if the emphasis on a well-ordered society is relaxed and the political conception is envisioned as an ongoing product of contested interpretations of the cultural values of liberalism, then political liberalism becomes less confining. The language of hegemony is valuable here. Rawlsian liberalism proposes a hegemonic production of a single interpretation of the very great values of the liberal tradition, and then uses this hegemony to constrain drift of the conception over time. Agonistic democrats accept the necessity of hegemonic narratives, but also work to reveal their contingent and situated status. If the political conception is viewed not as a tool of reconstruction to maintain liberal stability but instead as the site of hegemonic contestation over the meaning of liberal values, then the problem of domination is relaxed. A contested hegemony plays the same role as the political conception, providing the background assumptions necessary for political activity to occur, while also making the possibility of change to those assumptions a meaningful democratic possibility. Though willing to reconstruct his theory to accommodate contextual foundations, Rawls failed to appreciate how significantly a shift to contingent grounds impacts the generation of agency and norms, and thus was unable to see that his apparent solution to the challenge of communitarian criticism created new possibilities for domination, control, and exclusion. However, these dangers come not from the structure of political liberalism but the impulse to reify the political conception of justice and obscure the persistent and transformative influence of history, culture, and political conflict. An agonistic approach to political liberalism, one that highlights the contestability of the political

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conception, its status as an artifact of political conflict, and its constitutive role in the production of the very subjects from which it emerges, is an approach to political liberalism that can retain its inclusive structure without expelling the threats to stability contained within it.

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Chapter 8

Liberalism, Agonism, and Democracy An explicitly contingent liberalism situated within the shared but contestable ontopolitical foundations of contemporary pluralist democracy satisfies the objectives of pluralist agonism. While the agonism of resistance expresses wariness about all institutions, a contingent liberalism offers a political environment most open to the critical concerns of oppositional and expressive agonists. This concluding chapter argues that a theory of agonistic political liberalism is not only viable as a version of agonistic institutions but also capable of satisfying the central objectives of most agonistic approaches and refuting the most likely objections to the pairing. The first section demonstrates that an agonistic political liberalism, combined with an engaged public sphere and institutions of representation oriented toward shaping the context of policy judgments, is compatible with each variant of agonistic democracy. The second section articulates the advantages of an agonistic political liberalism by addressing some significant objections to agonistic democracy and the possibility of an agonistic liberalism. First, adopting a liberal framework helps resolve a common criticism of agonism, that it either produces anarchy and violence or implicitly imposes universal standards to avoid this outcome. Second, political liberalism, shorn of the imperative to well-ordered stability, offers significant resources for its own substantial transformation; to the extent democratic theorists worry that political liberalism is a conservative doctrine designed to prevent radical change, the adoption of agonistic practices and embrace of contingency render it open to alteration and even its own overcoming by even deeper democratic practices. Finally, as a post-foundational theory of democracy, agonism must acknowledge the limitations of the situated context of the political. This imperative means that, for better or worse, the dominant possibilities for democratic politics will be situated within a liberal horizon. Even if an agonistic politics is one that aspires to move beyond liberal structures, it must recognize that contemporary resources are primarily liberal democratic in character. Situating agonism as a version of political liberalism, with the advantages I have described, offers the most promising articulation of a meaningful agonistic political practice. Political Liberalism and the Varieties of Agonism An agonistic version of political liberalism fulfills the institutional requirements discussed in Chapter 4. It provides the norms and rules necessary to foster a contestatory politics without risking a collapse into antagonistic violence. It embeds the social practices of pluralistic challenge in the public culture and encourages

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the production of counter-hegemonic interpretations of shared values. It identifies explicitly the sedimented practices that constitute the rules, norms, and strategies governing social life, and offers avenues by which these sedimentations can be reconfigured. It supplies a grammar to govern the institutional statements that shape subjectivity, interests, and identities, and makes this grammar visible in contests over the interpretation of values.1 It draws upon the contingent circumstances of an historically situated society to construct the institutional expectations of politics. To the extent that shared principles of liberal democracy, drawn from the situated traditions of a particular society, and expressed in institutional statements open to counter-hegemonic contestations describe the core of agonistic politics, these elements serve a constituting function similar to any other “hard” institutions and are as liable to codification. An agonistic liberalism provides the framework of hard institutions and soft practices needed to establish a context for adversarial politics. An agonistic political liberalism also draws upon Rawls’s work in ways consistent with a post-foundational vision of institutional structures. Postfoundational institutions must be situated. Political liberalism is contextualized. Post-foundational institutions must be partial and exclusive. Political liberalism is appropriate only for democratic societies and not universally applicable. Postfoundational democracy must recognize the constitutive function of power. Political liberalism attempts, explicitly and transparently, to reconstruct norms and identities. This constitutive function can never be univocal, in order to insure a diversity of possible perspectives. Political liberalism, despite its focus on reasonableness, fosters multiple norms at multiple levels, with potentially contradictory moral justifications. Post-foundational democracy must exercise coercion without allowing this power to become identified with any particular agent or identity. Political liberalism makes the exercise of coercion dependent upon the evolving conception of justice, based on emerging and contingent social values; the political conception is an inherently plural product of collective reflection, and can never be expressed by any particular group or individual. All these elements of political liberalism are intensified and extended by an agonistic relaxation of the emphasis on stability and the increased focus on counterhegemonic interpretation. Relaxing Rawls’s insistence on stability and putting into play the hegemonic interpretations of constitutional principles generates a further, unintended benefit. 1  Mouffe references the grammar of liberalism explicitly, while explaining the basis for Rawls’s claim that the right deserves priority over the good: “To be consistent Rawls cannot derive it from any comprehensive doctrine. Is it, then, only an ‘intuitive idea’ that we all share? The communitarians would certainly object to such a view. So, what can it be? The answer is, of course, that it is one of the main features of liberal democracy understood as a distinctive political form of society; it is part of the ‘grammar’ of such a regime. But an answer along those lines is not available to Rawls because there is no place for such a constitutive role of the political in his theory” (2000: 25-6, emphasis added).

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Institutions tend toward equilibrium, and equilibrium represents a version of consensus. For agonistic democrats any apparent social or political consensus is presumptively unjust. As rational choice theories of institutions suggest, those whose interests are impacted adversely (or identities excluded) will work to disrupt any equilibrium, generating further change and institutional transformation. Political liberalism in its original formulation produces institutional equilibrium by constraining the interpretations of basic principles, establishing a narrow definition of reason, and reconstituting comprehensive moral doctrines to affirm these two commitments. The result is an equilibrium (the political conception of justice) that cannot be disrupted. If the aspiration to stability is decentered, then the processes by which people come to create and affirm a political conception becomes a dynamic practice that generates temporary equilibriums always in turn subject to further contestation. A partial consensus on the appropriate interpretation of democratic principles permits collective action, but this consensus is explicitly partial and elicits counter-hegemonic proposals. The failure of an institution to attain equilibrium exposes it to contestation and opens the social to reformulation, but it also risks the loss of boundaries and commonality that are the conditions of democratic politics. A political liberalism that produces a contestable but deeply situated equilibrium provides a strong foundation for adversarial politics. An agonistic political conception also provides a promising institutional solution to the dilemmas of participation identified in Chapter 5. An agonistic political culture needs partisan structures through which the often less clearly articulated demands of the population can be channeled. Without these channels democratic passions easily turn to populism, particularism, and violence. Rawlsian political liberalism denies the passions any avenues of expression, as they will be defined as unreasonable. It is precisely this sort of repression that agonistic theorists describe as depoliticization. But an agonistic version of political liberalism largely avoids the problem of depoliticization since it presents the values of democracy and the conception of justice governing the political at any moment as contingent, participatory, and renegotiable. The emergence of passionate opposition or the mobilization of partisan resistance demonstrate the health of agonistic liberalism, and its capacity to encourage such participation in the guise of counter-hegemonic contestation represents a mechanism by which will and opinion formation can shape and guide the context of political judgment exercised by the administrative state. If counter-hegemonic political conceptions emerge within political liberalism, they are also likely to provide the political culture necessary for representation to function in the ways demanded by agonistic democracy. The discursive and constitutive functions of political representation are accentuated by the agonistic format of a revised political liberalism. An agonistic version of political liberalism provides an institutional context amenable to all five variants of agonism. The agonisms of resistance obviously oppose institutional structures in principle, but some forms are more congenial to their practices than others. Oppositional agonists can endorse, if not embrace, this variant of liberalism insofar as the explicitly political character of the conception

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of justice highlights the tension between the exercise of administrative power and the uncertainty of democratic principles. There is always room within the public sphere for the emergence of new oppositional movements and new proposed hegemonic interpretations, unrestricted by the standards of reason. The absence of stable consensus at the core of governance diminishes the power of oligarchic forms, which at the very least must continually engage other political narratives and visibly work to constitute the political in ways that can be identified and resisted. The structures of participation and representivity form multiple channels for the emergence and spread of new demands that might coalesce into transformative movements. By relaxing the emphasis on stability, political liberalism becomes more compatible with expressive agonism in both its critical and perfectionist forms. The former critiques liberalism, and Rawls in particular, for creating conditions under which the sedimentations of power and identity are rendered invisible. An agonistic liberalism imposes no such depoliticizing demands on citizens, instead fostering a public culture of counter-interpretation and resistance to consensus. It offers an institutionally politicized liberalism. The latter worry that the restricted range of conceptions of the good available in consensual liberalism impede the innovative extension of identities and hamper the work of self-creation. By preserving the Rawlsian commitment to a plurality of incommensurable conceptions of the good but removing the restrictive conditions of reasonable pluralism, more symbolic space emerges for perfectionist politics. No institutional form can translate the agonism of resistance into a policy generating democratic sovereignty, but agonistic liberalism better accommodates the practices of these approaches and is more open to positive influence from their interventions. The three varieties of pluralist agonism are entirely compatible with a modified political liberalism. One of the challenges of constitutional agonism is to balance allegiance to democratic principles with widespread dissent from the particular version of those principles dominant at a particular time. To address the issue Tully invokes the guidance of reason in a way similar to Rawls’s usage in Political Liberalism. To the extent agonistic modifications provide alternative venues to maintain the boundaries of contestation and correct the dependence on “reasonable” pluralism, they also address the similar issue in constitutional agonism. Moreover, the process of “citizenisation” Tully invokes to explain subjects’ identification with democratic principles, which appears inconsistent with his vision of freedom and with post-foundational commitments, resembles very much the production of “reasonable pluralism” in Rawls’s work. If the constitution of identities and the reconstruction of comprehensive doctrines by the political conception are recognized as both products of counter-hegemonic contestation and as contingent forces amenable to intervention and resistance, citizenisation becomes less problematic. A modified political liberalism describes an ongoing negotiation of the status and meaning of basic principles, and thus provides the context within which democratic engagement might occur, without an inflexible, normalizing constitutional framework; it proposes, in other words,

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a living activity of contingent re-foundations bounded by common commitments to democratic values. That adversarial agonism is compatible with modified political liberalism should be evident from the extended discussion of Mouffe in the previous chapter. Nonetheless, it is important to demonstrate that these shifts can address her specific objections to Rawls’s contextualized theory. Mouffe critiqued Political Liberalism on three grounds, all of which are resolved. First, she distinguishes the “fact of pluralism” in Rawls’s usage from pluralism as the symbolic ordering the political. The former takes pluralism as a relatively fixed problem to manage, assuming that interests and identities are static and their relationships accessible to mapping. This vision of pluralism fails to address that “what is really at stake [in pluralism] is power and antagonism in their ineradicable character” (Mouffe 2000: 21). Pluralism manifests the eruption of the political within liberalism, and to treat it as a fact represents an attempt to tame it. But Rawls’s theory does not require pluralism to be interpreted in this way; it is only because of the commitment to stability that he insists pluralism should be constrained. Once contestation of the basic principles and political conception are permitted and the possibility of ambiguous policy outcomes accepted, an agonistic version of political liberalism can embrace symbolic pluralism as not merely a problem to be managed but a grounding principle for non-violent contestation. Second, Mouffe asserts that Political Liberalism refuses to acknowledge the contingently political character of its restrictions on pluralism. While accepting the necessity of exclusion in democratic politics, Mouffe insists the operation of power involved in making and enforcing these decisions should be clear. By associating the excluded with the unreasonable, Rawls implies these decisions reflect a moral basis external to the political, rendering challenges to exclusion illegitimate. By shifting the priority of stability, the constitutive function of the political conception of justice becomes more visible and the production of the boundaries of pluralism evident. Under such conditions attempts to moralize the moving frontier between acceptable and unacceptable doctrines will not succeed. Third, moralizing the fact of pluralism purges undecideability from politics. Rawls hopes to avoid conflict by reducing the range of plausible disagreement to a level easily satisfied through distributional solutions. These moves allow political liberalism to “solve the ‘paradox of liberalism’: how to eliminate its adversaries while remaining neutral” (Mouffe 2000: 31). The error in this approach, as should be evident, is the refusal to recognize the contingency at the base of social order, a contingency that will return as violence if unrecognized. Fortunately, correcting the first two errors corrects the third, as an agonistic political liberalism takes the undecidability of the political as its ontopolitical foundation and can avoid the moralizing tendency to which Rawls falls prey, without demanding major changes to his institutional recommendations. Responsive agonism may be the most congenial to a modified liberalism; given the resemblance of its political suggestions to those of contemporary liberalism,

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this is unsurprising. Connolly has become more direct about the role of liberal institutions in fostering a responsive ethos. In a recent interview, he remarked: We need a new liberalism, one that is militant in challenging forces that press for uniformity, pre-emptive wars, surveillance and inequality, and one that listens with sensitive ears to injuries, pressures, ideas and ideals struggling to attain presence in a crowded world. This would be a liberalism that draws upon a broader range of sources than those most familiar in Anglo-American philosophy. It will be exploratory in its practices, and it will compensate for the decline in guidance provided by its received conceptions of argument, principle, tolerance, and contract with cultivation of noble, presumptively generous sensibilities” (Connolly 2008b: 326).

This new liberalism is less dependent upon an ontologized account of its situated principles, instead open to multiple, more generous interpretations of these contingent values. It draws on insights from beyond the Rawlsian and analytic context. It creates opportunities to express perspectives and identities excluded by existing accounts of political principles or reason. A modified political liberalism that emphasizes contestation of received interpretations, incorporates insights from the Continental and post-structural traditions, and fosters a pluralism attentive to its own inevitable exclusions while mobilizing political passions is a version of liberalism that expresses these goals. Political liberalism also fits well with the more specific institutional claims advanced by Connolly. Absent the insistence that liberal values root themselves in a single, reasonable, interpretation of the democratic tradition, political liberalism sources its values from multiple, interconnected and interdependent doctrines. What links citizens of political liberalism is their affirmation of the values of liberty and equality, affirmations based on divergent and incompatible justifications and comprehensive doctrines shaped toward such affirmation by the experience of living in proximity to others. The pluralist symbolic both cultivates generosity toward competing interpretations of shared values and transforms those doctrines to become more open to otherness. A modified political liberalism thus bears a resemblance to the rhizomatic pluralism of Connolly, in which doctrines draw “from multiple sources rather than a single, exclusionary taproot. In rhizomatic pluralism the possibilities of collaboration around a particular issue increase as each constituency enhances the experience of contingency and the social implications of its own formation” (1995: 94). A rhizomatic pluralism and a political conception of justice attentive to its own contingency and constitutive function describe similar practices and inhabit similar metaphors. The Rawlsian political conception attempts to sink deep roots, but an agonistic political conception avoids that outcome. Further, a rhizomatic liberalism leads to a politics of majority assemblages, within a state “made up of intersecting and independent minorities of numerous types and sorts who occupy the same territorial space and who negotiate an ethos

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of engagement between themselves” (Connolly 2000: 92). These minorities come together and move apart in shifting alliances based on multiple motivations, ranging from self-interest, to moral beliefs, to affiliations of identity, and so on. These assemblages do not share a consensus or will, nor do they simply negotiate interests. They are, instead, an expression of the ever-shifting but interdependent operation of pluralism, situated within a symbolic attentive to undecideablity and contingency. This vision is compatible with political liberalism. For example, “some participating in the assemblage will find its dominant aims and priorities resonate deeply with their own identities, while others will connect in more attenuated ways” (Connolly 1995: 95); with little modification this description could be applied to the connection between comprehensive moral doctrines and the political conception of justice. The operations and vision of rhizomatic pluralism, and the generosity it cultivates in citizens, can be produced within the framework of an agonistic political liberalism. Political Liberalism as Agonism: A Defense In the first section I explained how a modified political liberalism could be consistent with the varieties of agonism. In this section I discuss how adopting political liberalism as the institutional framework for agonistic democracy is not merely plausible but advantageous to agonistic aspirations. I first address the common objection that agonism cannot defend its political premises without presuming grounds excluded by the theory, both examining and refuting this common objection to agonism and articulating how political liberalism strengthens the agonistic account. Second, I discuss how an agonistic political liberalism provides opportunities for social and political transformation that can foreseeably exceed liberalism itself. Once the conception of justice that makes conflict amongst adversaries possible is understood as itself a negotiated and continuously constructed product of hegemonic contestation rather than a final consensus used to arbitrate disputes, then the conditions exist for radical transformation of the public sphere within the practices of democratic engagement. I conclude that an agonistic democracy situated within and fostered by the liberal tradition offers a compelling account of agonistic politics consistent with both the analysis and ideals of pluralist agonism. Political Liberalism and the “Generic” Critique of Agonism Even a cursory review of the critiques of agonistic democracy would begin to make visible the contours of what might be called the generic objection to agonism. The challenge goes something like this. First, the critic expresses skepticism that democratic contestation can ever be unconstrained. How, the critic asks, can a politics of conflict ever produce any sort of action when consensus is illegitimate? Moreover, without some sort of orientation toward consensus,

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how can agonism forestall a plunge into Schmittian violence and chaos? In short, agonistic democracy cannot help but collapse into anarchy. Second, the critic adds, if agonism does invoke the presence of common norms, a mutual ethos, or shared values to explain why the clashes of democracy will not produce violent warfare, then agonism exposes itself as parasitic upon the very foundations it proscribes. Only by moralizing the political in precisely the ways it claims must be avoided can agonism respond to the first objection. Hence the generic critique: agonism is either a dangerously impractical invitation to anarchy or it is a radical pose dependent upon the normative accounts of more responsible democratic theories. Agonistic democracy should thus be seen as at best a provocative reminder that democratic engagement is never routine, and at worst an irresponsible pose adopted by radicals unwilling to go as far institutionally as their rhetoric would otherwise direct. Put succinctly, either agonistic democracy is just liberalism or deliberation in radical dress, or it is a dangerously undemocratic prescription for political conflict. Knops offers a particularly clear version of this objection, asserting that Mouffe’s theory “is reliant for its coherence on the notion of rational consensus, which at the same time constitutes the main target of her critique of deliberative democracy. While reliant on that notion, she is barred from using it because of her objections to it” (2007: 115). He begins by claiming Mouffe presumes a universal model of politics, namely that antagonism is constitutive of the political, and then points out that she offers reasons to justify this assertion. She thus “implies that she assumes that it is possible to establish such a universal model of politics through rational argument” (Knops 2007: 116). Knops next points out that Mouffe must invoke a shared adherence to common ethico-political principles in order to constrain the potential aggressiveness provoked by an unconstrained play of political differences, aggressiveness that is endemic to the political but also must be controlled if agonism is not to become antagonism. He then argues the Mouffe “owes an explanation of how there can be such a consensus in the first place, of what such a consensus might consist, why it should be privileged over other versions of the political – for example, oligarchy, or dictatorship – and how this might be justified without recourse to some form of rational argument” (2007: 116). Note in this quote the easy elision of shared principles to substantive consensus. Pointing out that Mouffe’s understanding of democracy privileges identification and contestation of relations of subordination, Knops makes the further assertion that the consensus on ethico-political values agonism presumes must be one produced by rational discussion, since “if that consensus is not to be biased against a particular group in society, it is difficult to see how the mechanism for reaching it can be other than a rational discussion” (2007: 117). Any non-rational methods for reaching consensus would perpetuate the existing relations of power and subordination that, Knops argues, the agonistic ethico-political framework is meant to avoid. Knops concludes that unless Mouffe accepts the possibility of rational consensus based on a public exchange of reasons, her account “is neither a theory of democracy (as opposed to a mere description of the domain of

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politics) nor a critical theory allowing for collective action against oppression and subordination” (2007:118). The argument Knops offers rests on a number of misreadings and impositions, but it does capture the type of objection an agonistic theory of institutions must address. How, if meaning is contingent, power inescapable, and politics fundamentally antagonistic, can any democratic institutions persist? Knops articulates systematically the structure of these objections. Explaining how his misdiagnosis emerges helps illuminate the institutional capacities and constraints of pluralist agonism, and bolsters the conclusion that political liberalism fits appropriately those capacities and constraints. The first error in the critique is to confuse a sociological description with a universalistic model. When Mouffe claims antagonism is ineradicable, she is not asserting a universal fact about politics but a particular claim about the condition of pluralism. When pluralism exists in a social order, antagonism will emerge absent some significant application of power to prevent it. But absent pluralism there is no occasion for conflict and thus no emergence of the political. Ultimately Mouffe’s assertion may be tautological (pluralism provokes antagonism, politics is the conflict between a plurality of positions, thus all politics is antagonistic), but it is not a universal claim about human beings or truth. Agonistic democracy takes this claim as a given in those societies for which democratic governance is possible and then describes implications of this observation for understanding the operation of power. Knops, on the other hand, views the project of theorizing as an axiomatic enterprise, where the concluding claim must derive from self-evident or rationally justified principles. Looking for such an axiom, he latches onto the ineradicability of antagonism and declares this to be such an assertion, and thus an example of Mouffe’s implicit appeal to rationality. But if one recognizes Mouffe’s position as particular to pluralistic societies, it needs no such rational justification, and thus does not artificially import a normative claim about deliberation. Knops’ second error is to misunderstand the status of the common values Mouffe claims permits agonistic engagement by adversaries. He sees a claim of common norms and adduces these norms must be generated synthetically in order to be democratically legitimate: only if we are governed by norms of our own choosing can we be free. If such norms are to be generated by democratic politics, they must be the product of a deliberative process oriented toward consensus, as the alternative is imposition by some sort of coercion. Knops fails to understand the central role of hegemony in the production of any values, consensual or otherwise imposed. He presumes Mouffe’s appeal to shared norms reflects an aspiration to escape arbitrary power, and that these norms thus implicitly embody a rational consensus. But Mouffe, like other post-foundational thinkers, refuses his assumption. All shared norms, all common values, all accepted principles carry within them the history of power and operate to perpetuate that power. The shared norms of liberal democracy, in her case equality and liberty, are not the product of uncoerced deliberation but the constituting of subjectivity and social order over time. We share these values not because we conclude they are best but because we

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find ourselves already committed to them as a product of our situated experience and identity. These values are not neutral, and their dominant interpretations express and perpetuate power. For Mouffe these values offer the possibility of contesting the very hegemony they undergird, and are thus a democratically preferably basis for hegemonic power, but even a more agonistic interpretation of these common norms will not escape the partiality of power. Knops assumes common values must be justified by their neutrality; Mouffe rejects this very possibility. A counter-hegemonic politics does not liberate people from power but simply changes the operation of it. Knops does not recognize that the hegemonic norms we share and that make a democratic agonism possible are particular to the ontopolitical situation of a particular society. Third, because Knops ignores the situated source of antagonism and the persistence of hegemony in the construction of meaning he misconceives the problem of subordination and oppression. The objective of agonistic democracy is not to eliminate all relations of domination and oppression; this sort of utopian aspiration leads precisely to the rationalist exclusions they are at pains to expose. Rather, the goal is to craft conditions under which these relations can be made visible, and thus contested. The common values that make agonism possible, and their dominant institutional interpretations, inevitably and explicitly favor some identities, interests, or other articulations of subjectivity over others. In fact, these values and their dominant interpretations act to shape subjectivity so that they are seen not as constructions but simply “the way things are.” Because Knops assumes the project of agonism is to eliminate these hegemonic relations of domination, he also assumes that Mouffe needs to establish an unbiased and objective set of criteria by which to identify and ameliorate these injustices. Hence his claim that her theory ultimately must rely on rationalist arguments. But agonism does not share this aspiration. Instead pluralist agonism accepts that the inevitability of injustice is the price of democratic plurality, and endeavors to identify practices that render these injustices amenable to contestation. Agonism hopes to set interpretation against interpretation, identity against identity, hegemonic claim against hegemonic claim, so that in the perpetual conflict between citizens the burden of domination shifts and moves. Where Knops sees unbiased consensus on rational principles eliminating domination, Mouffe sees an elaboration of hegemonic power so thorough as to make the injustices it produces not merely invisible but unthinkable. When Knops concludes that Mouffe’s agonism should be seen as an adjunct to deliberation, one that calls attention to “the erroneous projection of one party’s understandings onto another, constraining their meanings – it is fraught with the possibility of hegemony” (2007, 125), he is mistakenly subsuming agonism into deliberation by eliding the ontological distinctions between the two accounts. Deliberative democracy has faith that careful scrutiny of arguments, rational evaluation of principles, and deliberation oriented toward understanding will produce an unforced consensus shorn of power, domination, and manipulation. Its reconstruction of democratic principles is one that aspires to transcend the

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ambiguity of the everyday in order to resolve injustice. It takes this possibility as a real one, because its ontology is fundamentally committed to the universality of human nature. Agonistic democrats refuse any such commitments, asserting instead that the premises of social life are themselves products of humanity, and that the ontology within which our politics emerges is itself a product of political assertions. No standard can be found or created that can extract us from this process of meaning creation, and thus all political standards should be understood as both historically constraining (we cannot start anew) and subject to collective reconstruction (we can act upon our situation by rendering it visible). Nonetheless, Knops’s confusion is understandable—how is one to know what this process of contestation and reinterpretation looks like, absent some institutional suggestions consistent with the particularity of the history that makes agonism attractive? Political liberalism, modified as I suggested in the last chapter, helps clarify this question. Pluralist agonism requires some shared commitments without which the unavoidably contentious process of disputing hegemonic interpretations will descend into antagonism. Precisely because the clashes of politics are not oriented toward consensus, and precisely because democratic engagement always involves challenges with the potential to become explicitly violent (as all challenges are, at some level, hegemonic contestations), some institutional norms are needed to confine or limit the range of these battles. Agonism proposes that our situated context may provide governing norms that permit the procedures of contestation to occur, without those same norms becoming idealized or acquiring pseudotranscendent status. We begin from “our” norms, which contain within them some commitment to fundamental values (liberty/equality), but make the contest over the meaning and implementation of these norms a central aspect of institutional and political debate. Schmittian violence emerges when contestants cannot perceive a commonality sufficient to justify limitations of the tactics employed. But the commonality that permits these shared limits need not hold extra-political status. Put differently, the concern of critics of agonism seems to be that the barrier to violence can only be effective if it is itself uncontaminated by the conflicts it is meant to mediate, or can be sufficiently abstracted from these conflicts as to play a semi-transcendental role. If the boundaries of engagement are recognized as being themselves in play, then they will lack sufficient purchase to restrain politics. Thus the proposed dichotomy: either agonism will collapse into warfare, or agonism presupposes a hidden extra-political claim. Emphasizing the post-foundational elements from which agonism derives helps illustrate why this dichotomy can be plausibly refused. This is why the turn to Rawls (and, to a lesser extent, Habermas) is useful for agonistic democracy. Political liberalism details the way institutional and cultural structures shape and constrain political engagement without demanding an external anchor. Political liberalism is a situated reconstruction of the emergence of the values of liberal democracy and the operation of those values upon citizens. It is only the Rawlsian insistence upon a well-ordered society that makes political

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liberalism appear as a moralized account of democratic politics rather than a situated and contingent one. As I show in the previous chapter, the effectiveness of the situated norms of liberalism does not, ultimately, depend upon the semitranscendental status Rawls evokes. That these values are ours historically, and that they shape our identities and aspirations contingently, provides sufficient status to guide political action. Highlighting this contingency and inviting citizen engagement in conflicts over the interpretation and application of these values need not weaken their pragmatic significance. It is only dangerous to expose the contingency of our deeply shared ontopolitical premises if one of those premises suggests that legitimacy must be derived from criteria not subject to human agency. It is on this point that agonism captures better than many theories the central insights of democratic theory. To the extent democracy is identified with individual and collective autonomy from imposed authority, to the extent democracy is identified with individual and collective agency over the terms of social cooperation, and to the extent democracy is identified with the rights of individuals and collectives to challenge these authorities and those terms, an agonistic account of democracy as situated historically while engaged in ongoing reconstruction of the contingent but deeply shared values of liberal democracy represents a powerful vision. It shares with other post-metaphysical theorists, like Habermas and Rawls, an emphasis on the reconstructive aspects of democratic theory, designed to adduce from extant practices and necessary assumptions the best possible description of legitimate democratic politics. But it pushes these reconstructive projects further by demanding that the practices and institutions of democracy itself be engaged in this reconstruction rather than merely governed by it. Political Liberalism and Political Transformation Agonistic democracy emerged reactively, offered as an alternative vision of liberalism, deliberation, and democratic engagement. The emphasis of this work on critique, practices of identity, contestation of power, exposure of hegemonic interpretations, and so on depict a vision of democracy that is primarily procedural: democracy reflects practices that take place within the existing realm of the political. Agonism thus explicitly situates itself within existing institutional forms, not outside them. Unlike radical democracy, agonistic thinkers propose not a revolution but a reformation, urging that extant democratic resources be strengthened, democratic values reinterpreted, and hegemonic structures exposed and contested. To the extent agonism is transformative, it is transformative from within the horizon of politics from which it emerges. Agonism does not evoke sudden and rapid change in the character of social order. Over time agonism might lead, directly and indirectly, to dramatic reforms to, and even revolutionary redesign of, democratic institutions, but that change is inevitably slow. This makes agonism appear conservative when compared to radical democracy, as radical democracy takes as its goal the near term transformation and elimination of social

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and economic injustice. Agonism aspires to create a democratic social order that will lead to the amelioration or destruction of injustice, but recognizes that such injustices are embedded in the context of politics within which such work occurs and against which organization, mobilization, and resistance must take place. Agonism does not represent transformation, but it creates democratic conditions out of which real transformation might arise. To claim that liberalism in its Rawlsian variant represents the best path for agonism is not a capitulation to the narratives of liberalism and its inevitable injustices, nor an endorsement of chastened conservatism about social change. It is to recognize that transformative politics begins within existing politics, and that an effective strategy must identify the structures most amenable to that project. Agonism as a political practice demands both the common ontopolitical framework within which conflict can take place and an institutional framework open to this practice. Political liberalism offers both, without also requiring agonism to shed its skepticism about foundational or teleological claims. Agonism presupposes active engagement with the situated character of social life in order to grasp our own circumstances without demanding to be liberated from them. Political liberalism takes these circumstances as the frame from which a governing interpretation of justice emerges; as long as this conception remains open to further reinterpretation (as it can be once severed from the insistence on stability) political liberalism supports agonistic politics. The objections of Mouffe and others can be attributed to Rawls’s insistence that the governing interpretation of the political embody an overlapping consensus with deep roots in comprehensive moral doctrines, and which can be invoked to resolve contentious questions of democratic life. But as I demonstrated in the previous chapter, the political conception can also be understood as a relatively contingent modus vivendi, subject itself to debate when invoked to resolve conflict. For Rawls an overlapping consensus is necessary to forestall the sort of deeper public debate and passionate engagement that agonistic democrats hope to foster. Understanding the political conception as the negotiated but revisable shared interpretation of liberal democratic principles permits both the channeling of passionate conflict into agonistic engagement and the possibility that the governing interpretation can be itself an object of engagement. In fact, Mouffe makes the same distinction as Rawls between a political conception (“commitment to principles”) and substantive moral doctrines, as does Connolly when he describes the practices of contemporary democratic citizenship: They embrace their faith at one level, and recoil back upon it at another to come to terms with the obdurate fact that it does not convince millions of others. Sometimes their own commitment is punctuated with a residual element of uncertainty. That seems noble to me, but perhaps not necessary to deep pluralism. What is needed is pursuit of a bicameral orientation to citizenship and being, in which you embrace your creed as you bring it into the public realm; and then recoil back without deep resentment on its contestability to open up negotiating space with others (Schoolman 2008: 316).

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The agonistic practice so envisioned is strikingly similar to that proposed by Rawls: citizens hold their own moral doctrines as true and complete, while recognizing that the entrance of this doctrine into the public realm will expose your absolute in its partiality. The bicameralism Connolly describes mirrors the distinction between comprehensive doctrines and the political conception, with the difference that Connolly does not think that faith is incompatible with democratic negotiation. Rawls excludes the metaphysical because it undermines the overlapping consensus, which must be minimal in order to be consensual. An agonistic political liberalism maintains this model without the demand that the passions, ideals, and beliefs of citizens be confined to the private realm. Since the political conception is recognizably partial, understood as hegemonic, and an explicit subject of political engagement, the line between metaphysical and political need not be policed. What the political conception does, once generated, is provide a guiding framework within which democratic conflicts can be engaged openly, where a real possible result of that engagement is a revision of the negotiated interpretation that is the condition of agonistic encounters. Mouffe asserts that “a difficult balance has to be struck between, on the one hand, democracy understood as a set of procedures required to cope with plurality, and, on the other, democracy as the adherence to values which inform a particular mode of coexistence” (1993: 131). Political liberalism shorn of the imperative to consensus capture this balance by offering the framework through which democratic societies can manage plurality by articulating a shared understanding of liberal values, while also permitting this articulation to be contested and revised. Agonism thus forestalls the idea that any democratic institution can claim substantive legitimacy for its use of power—any act of government is an act of a particular identity or interest acting upon (not implementing) the collective. There are collectively binding decisions but no collective decisions; the institutional conditions of democratic agonism are much like those described by Dahl’s vision of polyarchy, where minorities rule and liberty is preserved by ensuring that no minority comes to dominate in the name of a fictionalized popular identity. Similarly, Connolly envisages a society “made up of intersecting and independent minorities of numerous types and sorts who occupy the same territorial space and who negotiate an ethos of engagement between themselves” (2000: 92). This is the structural argument for an agonistic liberalism—a competitive environment of plural identities and interests will tend to undercut any and all claims to overcome contingency, thus cultivating practices that make visible and contest hegemonic interpretations. If this can happen within an agonistic cultural order, within a shared symbolic framework (liberty/equality), exercised by citizens informed by an ethos of reciprocity and presumptive gratitude (which will, of course, require some material conditions to be maintained), it is likely to maximize inclusion and minimize domination. Under such circumstances the range of emancipatory visions and contested democratic norms is likely to be vast. Since the shared interpretation of common principles that permits agonistic participation is itself subject to the same regular challenge and renegotiation, the mechanism for significant

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democratic change resides at the heart of agonistic liberalism. And to the extent the experience of living in a society in which peaceful but passionate negotiation and renegotiation of the inherited values that bind people collectively is likely to shape subjectivity, as post-foundational thinkers and Rawlsian liberals all suggest, the possibilities for dramatic transformation to the ontopolitical grounds of that social order increase as citizens come to see both conflict and reciprocity as living norms of political life. There is room in this modus vivendi for radical visions of the future, and room for these visions to transform the temporary hegemony of the political conception of justice. While no political order, liberal or otherwise, can ever attain full transparency, consensus, or inclusion, an institutional commitment to negotiate and renegotiate terms of agreement that are themselves both the condition of further conflict and themselves subjects of this same conflict offers a vision of political life sufficiently capacious to render transformative change conceivable. Situated Liberalism: Agonism and the Limits of Contestation I began this book with a discussion of post-foundationalism and its implications for politics. Agonistic democracy, I claimed, offers the account of democratic politics best suited to post-foundational circumstances in which claims to have achieved a stable consensus to guide political action, whether rooted in truth, nature, identity, morality, rationality, or any other extra-contextual criteria, cannot be sustained. I also argued that the justification for democracy, agonistic or otherwise, does not derive from the recognition of post-foundational conditions; like any other hegemonic ideal democracy is a situated product of the history within which its dominant position emerged. That is not to say that convergence on some sort of democratic norms is unlikely, as absent massive coercion or uncommon homogeneity the radical pluralism post-foundationalism tends to provoke is also likely to undermine claims to authority based upon claims of truth. In the case of western societies with liberal democratic histories, however, the convergence of post-foundational pluralism and an historical framework that privileges the values of equality and liberty produces circumstances in which democratic institutions are the unavoidable default for politics. A commitment to liberalism also shapes these historical conditions, so attempts to articulate an appropriate vision of democratic politics that expresses these situated values and embraces a post-foundational account of meaning must also grapple with the powerful role liberalism plays in the interpretation of democratic values in western democracies. These constraints are neither optional nor binding. We find ourselves always already inhabiting a history of meaning, practice, and identity, and these elements of our being are not infinitely malleable. They may be transformed, reinterpreted, and eventually even overcome, but such work begins with recognition of our limitations. Marx, despite his otherwise universalistic commitments, captured these circumstances as clearly anything in Heidegger’s work, writing in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that “men make their own history, but not of their own free will;

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not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted.” The inherited circumstances of western democratic theory include the powerful presence of liberalism, and a viable theory aspiring to deepen democratic possibilities must grapple with this fact. This commitment to dealing with the world as we find it helps explain the recurrent frustration with agonism expressed by more radical critics. Because pluralist agonists focus on the situated possibilities inherent to the hegemonic interpretations and norms already in place and then try to expand these possibilities, they appear to those committed to the complete transformation of contemporary liberalism to be defending the status quo. Tally makes this argument in his review of Mouffe: The most damning critique of On the Political may be that it winds up reinforcing the status quo … Indeed, Mouffe’s agonistic politics does not seem very radical at all. Whenever Mouffe addresses practical matters, she uses the language of adversarial or agonistic politics, but evokes tame and familiar scenes. Mouffe argues for a pluralism that recognizes real differences, but that also ensures that everyone plays by the same rules. “Partisans” who really want to change the political landscape may not be allowed to participate (2007: 7-8).

Vázquez-Arroyo (2004) develops a similar critique of Connolly. There are two problems with this critique, and addressing each will help clarify why an agonistic pluralism is best cultivated within liberal institutional bounds. First, the critique underestimates the democratic capacities of liberalism, associating all liberal accounts with a broader indictment of capitalist rationality. Second, the critique fails to account for the situated character of politics, asserting a transformative radicalism that agonism rejects. Often the objection to liberalism offered by radical theorists represents an objection to an idea of liberalism imbricated with existing structures of inequality, a rationalistic account of individual interests, and the problems of global capitalism. Liberalism thus represents a constellation of problems against which democratic advocates position themselves. Dietz identifies this view of liberalism as an abstracted enemy of democracy: “The polemic that afflicts so many current studies of democracy and citizenship is most evident at the level of discourse on liberalism, where this complex and multifaceted historical phenomenon has become little more than an ideational enemy, or a suspect to be processed and called forth for ‘rebuke’” (1998: 116). But liberalism is as complex and pluralistic as any other major account of contemporary politics, and both its theoretical and historical specificity should not be elided. Some aspects of liberal politics contribute to visions of subjectivity that will generate resentment and oppression, but elements within these same theories might also be used to mitigate such pressures. Some versions of liberalism identify closely with capitalism and neo-liberal aspirations, but others endeavor to identify an economic order consistent with liberal values

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without offering any such privilege to markets or competition. Some versions of liberalism presuppose strong forms of rationality while others are attentive to the variety of ways different identities organize and prioritize their values and actions. There is no single liberalism, and democratic theory would do well to be attentive to the range of possibilities available within this plurality. Instead, liberalism “in much contemporary democratic theory, particularly post-structural and postfoundational work, is taken to embody the flaws of modernity generally and thus becomes the flaw that democratic theorizing is intended to overcome” (Dietz 1998: 117). But a theory of democracy that takes historicity seriously cannot reduce liberalism to polemic and the dominant mode of democratic institution to that which is to be overcome. That liberal democracy is in practice and theory flawed is beyond dispute, but if it also lacks any potential to nurture a more democratic and less flawed practice then there is little hope for post-foundational democratic theory. If only a rupture and overcoming can achieve democratic outcomes and democracy will ever be over the horizon of history, a democratic theory of institutions and engagement rather than resistance and aspiration is impossible. I hope to have shown by looking carefully at Rawlsian liberalism as a singular and situated example of a particular and historically viable form of liberalism that the more radical aspirations of democratic theory need not begin and end with the rejection of the dominant interpretation of democracy within and against which political action must engage. Agonistic theory can offer an account of democracy mindful of both the danger and the potential of the liberal hegemony. Agonism does not envision contestation extending “all the way” down, as it were. The ontopolitical foundations of agonistic democracy are contingent and revisable, but they cannot be the constant object of debate. If, as I have tried to argue, a post-foundational politics demands the recognition both of the contingency of foundations and the situated limits to the range of possible meanings found in any particular grounds of the political, then an agonistic politics must also be a bounded politics. Agonism works within historicity in order to expand the constellation of conceivable conflicts, without rejecting the tragic reality that limits to inclusion are endemic to politics. Hegemony can be productive or destructive, democratic or authoritarian, contested or univocal, but hegemony cannot be universal. Post-foundational politics embraces the inevitability of boundaries and limits, and then works to make those boundaries as wide as possible without turning debates into ontological conflicts, conflicts that cannot but be violent as they take place outside the grounds of shared ontopolitical premises. Calling perspectives that accept the contingent liberal principles of democratic politics legitimate may seem dangerous, as it implies that perspectives beyond this consensus are illicit and excluded. And it does so imply. But the language of legitimacy is unavoidable for post-foundational politics. “Contrary to the dialogic approach, the democratic debate is conceived as a real confrontation. Adversaries do fight – even fiercely – but according to a shared set of rules, and their positions, despite being ultimately irreconcilable, are accepted as legitimate perspectives” (Mouffe 2005a: 52). The condition of peaceful democratic agonism

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is a willingness to accept some set of principles, interpretations, or procedures as legitimate, even if that legitimacy is understood as subject to legitimate conflict itself. Pluralist agonism endeavors not to utterly transform the political in order to bring about a new democratic dawn. Instead, it aspires to deepen, extend, and intensify the democratic capacity for contestation and questioning already latent within the situated norms and hegemonic articulations of the political. At some point the confrontation between principles is so vast that the contest must be antagonistic, and enemies simply cannot recognize one another as legitimate. Political liberalism offers a set of principles and practices compatible with the type of “conflictual consensus” agonistic democrats advocate, while also highlighting the historically contingent yet also ontologically powerful status of these same principles. Post-foundationalism dictates democratic theorizing both pay close attention to the ontopolitical grounds of any proposed politics and propose ways to preserve the pluralism that inevitably follows from the recognition of contingency. A theory of agonistic democracy embedded within a modified version of political liberalism can support institutions capable of addressing both imperatives, and the institutions it supports are not remarkably different from those envisioned by liberal theory. The resources necessary for agonistic transformation are present in the political institutions, political culture, and political theory of contemporary democracy. The modified political liberalism proposed in this book is probably not the only institutional possibility for agonistic democracy, but its plausibility demonstrates that institutionalization is neither incompatible with agonistic principles nor impossible to develop within existing social norms. By situating liberalism explicitly within a post-foundational ontology, liberalism is transformed in significant ways and its practices opened up to greater contestation, generosity, and active re-constitution.

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Index

adversarial agonism 58, 61-2, 67, 75, 84, 161-2, 185 agency xvi, xix, 21, 24-5, 31-2, 37, 51, 70, 167, 170, 178, 192 aggregation xx, 46-8, 87, 140, 147, 154 agonism of resistance xv, xviii, 42, 76, 181, 184 agonistic democracy critics of xi-xii, 32, 35-9, 83-4, 187-91, 196-7 and Greeks 49, 53, 100 and institutions xiv, xviii-xxi, 79-101 and liberalism xiv-xvi, xx-xxi, 36-7, 157-98 overview of xiii-xiv, xvii-xviii, 21-39 and participation xix-xx, 105-29 and post-foundationalism xvi-xviii, 4-19, 21-30, 181-3 and public sphere xx-xxi, 46-7, 50, 59-62, 74, 84, 100-101, 106, 109, 125-9, 144, 148, 150, 155, 181, 184, 187 and radical democracy xv-xvi, xviii, 21-2, 31-9, 48, 83, 138, 192 and representation xx, 131-56 and sovereignty 75-8, 93-4 types of xviii, 42-69, 75-8, 181-7 and voting 123-5 agonistic respect xiii, 51, 64-8, 74, 112, 115, 121, 151-2 anarchy 24, 68, 70, 177, 181, 188 antagonism xiii, xvii, 19, 24, 26, 29-30, 58-66, 71-5, 83-4, 98, 124-5, 141-2, 151, 160, 176, 188-91 anti-foundationalism 5-9, 12 Arendt, H. 24, 42, 55

authority 16-17, 29-30, 55-6, 73-4, 98-101, 106-11, 129, 149-55, 178, 192, 195 autonomy xii, xvii-xix, 8, 28, 30-31, 43, 50, 108, 113, 164, 170, 178, 192 Badiou, A. xvi, 43, 45-7, 72 Barber, B. 106-8, 113-14 bicameralism 194 Baudrillard, J. 6, 9 Benhabib, S. 128 Breen, K. 62-3 Brown, W. 116 Butler, J. 4, 12, 16-17, 25 Canetti, E. 124-5 capitalism xii, 30, 110, 196 Chambers, S. 116 citizenship xxi, 25, 46, 49, 53, 60-62, 97-100, 105-6, 114-15, 122, 124, 129, 131, 136, 141, 149, 162, 193, 196 civil society 33, 86, 118, 125-7 communitarianism 162-8, 178 Connolly, W. xii-xvii, 14-16, 22-6, 34-8, 51-3, 64-70, 74-5, 83-5, 108, 111-12, 115, 119, 126, 141, 151-2, 162, 165, 171, 186-7, 193-6 constitutional agonism 54-8, 77, 184 consensus xi-xv, 4, 11, 17, 21, 24, 43-7, 54-7, 59, 61, 63-8, 73-6, 82, 88, 97-101, 106, 108, 111-13, 116, 125, 127-8, 150-51, 157-65, 173, 182-4, 187-91, 194-8 constituencies 16, 30, 32, 59, 64-7, 84, 100-101, 135, 149-56, 186 contestation xi-xv, xvii-xxi

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agonistic 21, 41-4, 49-50, 52-64, 69-77, 99, 137, 150-53, 168, 190-92 of exclusion 142, 145, of foundations 9-12, 15-18, 21-3 hegemonic xvi, 61, 137, 145-6, 159-62, 178, 182-4, 187, 191 of identity 25, 119, 136 of institutions 83, 89, 93-4, 96-101, 112, 155 and liberalism 157-68, 173, 176, 178, 183-6, 197-8 “the people, ” and 28-30 political xv, xxi, 16, 25, 33-5, 39, 52, 75, 81, 115, 119, 122, 155, 163 of radical democrats 48-9 and will-formation 127-8, 131, 146 contingency xi, xvii-xviii, xxi, 4-5, 12, 16, 26, 28-9, 33-4, 38, 45, 49, 51-2, 67-70, 83-6, 91-6, 100, 120-121, 151-2, 157-60, 173-4, 177, 181, 185-7, 191-2, 194, 197-8 critical responsiveness xi, 51, 65-8 Dahl, R. 30, 194 Da-sein 14-15, 24-5 deliberative democracy vii, xi, 41-2, 72, 119, 126, 157, 188, 190 Derrida, J. 6, 24, 84 Dietz, M. 196-7 difference xi, xv, xviii, 6-10, 19, 22-4, 31-6, 41-3, 49-55, 58, 62-74, 76-8, 108-15, 119, 121, 127, 131, 136-42, 148, 151-6, 159-60, 175, 196 Disch, L. 36 Dryzek, J. xii, 123, 127 emancipation xi, xvii, 5-7, 14, 22, 30-34, 42, 47, 62, 94, 105, 108 emancipatory apriorism xvi, 9-12 equilibrium 64, 89, 174, 182-3 ethico-political principles xiii-xiv, 51, 73, 160, 188 ethics 15, 51, 55, 65-6, 69, 81, 112, 124

ethos xi-xiii, xix, 9, 17-18, 34-7, 50-53, 63, 65-74, 76, 78, 82-5, 88-90, 93, 101, 107, 111-12, 115, 131, 144, 146, 148-53, 156, 157, 160, 165, 173, 176, 186, 188, 194 exclusion 18-19, 24, 27, 32, 38-9, 42-4, 49, 51, 54, 61, 69-72, 111, 134, 138, 141-5, 150, 160-61, 172, 176-8, 185 expressive agonism xviii, 48-55, 61, 63, 69-72, 74-7, 82, 181, 184 feminist theory 125 Fish, S. 5-6 Fossen, T. 42, 49-50 Foucault, M. 6, 24, 27, 55 foundationalism see post-foundationalism and anti-foundationalism foundation 3-4, 9-12, 16, 23, 30, 45, 54, 67, 79, 93-4, 99, 101, 108, 144, 162-3, 175, 183, 185 freedom xi, 7-10, 36, 54-8, 107-8, 113, 184 friend/enemy distinction 58-9, 75, 100, 115, 142 Gadamer, H-G. 6, 24 globalization 68, 85, 120, 153, 156 governance 35, 56, 62, 67, 71, 79, 82, 88, 91, 112, 120-21, 134, 157, 184 democratic 62, 79, 134, 189 self- 44, 58, 106-9, 118 workplace 110 Habermas, J. xiv, 56, 58, 63, 106, 125-8, 137, 177, 191-2 Hayek, F. 113-15 hegemony viii, xii-xii, xv-xviii, xx-xxi, 6, 15, 21, 27-39, 45, 52-3, 59-73, 91-2, 115, 126, 136-46, 159-62, 177-8, 182-4, 189-92, 194-8 Heidegger, M. xvii, 6, 12-15, 24, 68, 87-8, 195 Honig, B. xi, xvi, 29-30, 51-3, 70-75, 125, 163, 174 Horkheimer, M. 31

Index identity xv-xviii, 6, 7, 14, 17, 19, 24-6, 29-32, 34, 38, 42-3, 49, 51-2, 57, 59-61, 63-71, 73, 76-8, 79, 82, 91, 95, 97-9, 106-12, 115-16, 119, 132-44, 148-51, 155, 158, 163-7, 170-71, 182, 184, 187, 190, 192, 194-5 immanent naturalism 68 individualism 70, 113-14 inequality 9, 84, 186, 196 injustice 32, 42, 69, 111, 134, 190-93 justice xiv, xv, xxi, 23-4, 60, 62, 66, 69, 134, 154-5, 160-75, 177-8, 182-7, 193, 195 Knops, A. xi, 188-91 Laclau, E. 27, 94, 126, 131, 137-48, Lefort, C. xiii, 21, 23, 28, 99, 144-6 legitimacy 17, 25-9, 54-61, 66, 93, 97, 112-13, 116, 128, 132-5, 146, 150, 154, 159, 161-2, 192, 194, 197-8 liberalism xii, xiv, xx-xxi, 21-3, 32-6, 38, 41-2, 47, 49, 70, 72, 113, 128, 158, 160-63, 174-5, 178 agonistic xiv, xx-xxi, 115, 158-62, 178, 181-4, 194 political vii, xiv-xv, xx-xxi, 96, 101, 157-98 Lyotard, J-F. 6, 9, 23 MacIntyre, A. 164, 167 majority assemblages xx, 151-2, 186 Mansbridge, J. 116, 123, 133-4, 142, 150 Marchart, O. 5, 8-11, 15, 17, 94, 121 Marx, K. 30-31, 35, 107, 195 McManus, H. 24, 98 mirror representation, see presence, politics of modernity 28, 63, 197 morality 68, 195 Mouffe, C. xi-xv, 18-19, 22-23, 26-30, 33-6, 58-63, 71-5, 83-5, 90, 92, 94-5, 99, 115, 120, 124-6, 137-8, 141-2, 145-6, 150, 157-63, 165, 172, 185, 188-90, 193-4, 196-7

213

Näsström, S. 146, 149 neo-liberal 196 neutrality 50-51, 73, 190 Nietzsche, F. 49-53, 113 norms xii, xvi-xix, 15, 21, 27, 39, 43, 47, 55, 74, 79-82, 85, 87, 89-101, 122, 126-8, 135, 137, 149, 158-9, 178, 181-2, 188-98 normalization 51-2, 152 North, D. 87 ontic 10-11, 88 ontology 7-8, 14, 22, 36, 51, 120 agonistic 122 of antagonism 61 foundational/universal xiv, xvii, 125, 191 fundamental (Heideggerian) 14, 68 political 10, 191 post-foundational xvii, 31, 67, 69, 75, 198 social 16 weak 7-8, 12 ontopolitical xvii, 14-19, 22-6, 35, 96, 161, 181, 185, 192, 197-8 oppositional agonism xviii, 44-8, 54-5, 63, 69, 72, 74-7, 80-82, 102, 181, 183 oppression 9, 19, 24, 28, 38, 45, 48, 51, 62, 73, 189-90, 196 overlapping consensus xv, xxi, 159-60, 164-8, 172, 193-4 Owen, D. xvi, 49-53, 71, 95 participatory democracy xii, xix, 101, 105-19 Pateman, C. 30, 106-13, 118-19 perfectionism 42 Pierson, P. 87-9 Pitkin, H. 133 Pluralism agonistic v, xii, 58-63, 65-70, 74-7, 82-3, 90, 136, 151-2, 157-79, 185-7, 189, 195-6, 198 conventional/liberal xii, xiv, xvii-xviii, 8, 17, 19, 22-4, 33, 34, 36, 38-40, 64, 73, 90, 136-7, 158

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democratic xiv, xviii, 38, 74, 125, 161 post-foundational 38-40, 43-4, 48, 63, 193 radical 19, 41, 43, 65-6, 73, 81, 120, 152, 195 reasonable 157, 164-73, 184 rhizomatic 151-2, 186-7 pluralist agonism xv-xviii, xx, 42, 76, 84, 101-2, 138, 158, 160, 181, 184, 187-91, 198 police, the 9, 47-8, 85 polyarchy 194 populism xii, xx, 102, 114, 137-46, 183 post-foundationalism xvi-xvii, 3-19, 22-30, 35-8, 41-5, 54, 57-8, 63, 73-6, 80-81, 84, 87-8, 94, 96, 102, 105-6, 115-16, 122, 128, 131-2, 144, 152-8, 162, 174-7, 181-4, 189, 191, 195-8 post-modern xvi, 6, 8, 10, 12, 161 post-structuralism 10, 21, 31, 138 power vi-viii, xv-xx, 4, 6-7, 10, 12, 16-17, 19, 21-4, 27-39, 43-54, 57, 63, 65, 67-71, 74, 76-7, 79, 82-3, 85-9, 93, 96-9, 101, 105-6, 109-10, 113-15, 119-22, 125-8, 131-6, 139, 141, 143-9, 152, 154, 156, 159-60, 163, 172, 175-6, 178, 182-5, 188-90, 192, 194 administrative 125-8, 147, 183 empty place of xiii, 17, 28, 99, 131, 144-5, 148-53 hegemonic xiii, 6, 27, 38, 43, 53, 160, 190 majority 113 popular (democratic collective) 30, 47, 50, 76, 101, 113, 122, 144-5, 148 social xix-xx, 6, 70, 99, 163 sovereign/state 44, 46, 82, 85, 93, 98-9, 131, 148, 156, 165 preferences xx, 87-90, 97, 100, 107, 109-10, 116-18, 123-4, 132, 137, 141-2, 147, 149, 153-4 presence, politics of xx, 131-8, 143 Rancière, J. xvi, 9, 44-8, 70-75, 85

rational choice theory 25, 88-90, 183 rationality 21, 24, 61, 72, 89-90, 128, 148, 163, 167, 174, 189, 195-7 Rawls, J. xiv, xx-xxi, 56, 63, 90, 126, 159-79, 182-5, 191-4 reason 5, 7, 10, 21, 57-8, 68, 72, 78, 112, 124, 126-7, 161-5, 167, 171-7, 183-6 reciprocity xiv-xv, xviii, 42, 55, 73-7, 95-8, 101, 151-2, 173, 194-5 relativism 4, 161 representation xii, xx, 37, 102, 111, 114, 129, 131-6, 157, 167, 181-3 claim-based xx, 153-6 self-authorized 153-6 representivity xx, xxi, 131, 146-53, 157, 184 responsive agonism xviii, 63-70, 72-8, 85, 92, 185-6 rhizomatic pluralism 151, 186-7 rights 57, 66, 95, 108, 114-16, 119, 155, 163, 168, 192 Riker, W. 113-14 Rorty, R. 5-6, 126, 167 Rummens, S. 60, 144-6 Saward, M. 155 Schaap. A. xi-xii, 42, 85 Schmitt, C. 58-9 Schmittian 42, 58-9, 115, 188, 191 Schumpeter, J. 16, 116-19 Shaw v. Reno 134 social contract theory 29, 169, 173 sovereignty xii, xvii, 17, 29-30, 34, 42, 49, 62, 70, 76-8, 95, 100, 113, 125, 147-50, 184 stability xii, xiv-xv, xx-xxi, 3, 11, 14, 22, 33, 51, 55, 66-7, 69, 74, 79, 83, 90, 92-93, 97, 138-40, 157, 157-63, 166-79, 181-5, 193 state xii, 21, 23, 30, 32, 44-7, 50, 52, 73, 81-2, 85-6, 98-101, 107, 110-11, 117, 121-2, 125-31, 149-54, 161-5, 170, 175, 183, 186 subjectivity xvi-xvii, xx, 7, 13, 17, 21, 24-6, 38, 46, 49, 57, 66, 68, 74, 76, 98, 100, 119, 131-2, 143,

Index 152, 160, 170, 176, 182, 189-90, 195-6 teleology 12, 24, 29, 94, 152, 166, 193 telos xiv, 5, 12, 22, 37, 94, 150 Thomson, A. 81-2 tolerance 64, 67, 73, 169, 186 totalitarian 12, 29, 44, 112, 115 truth 5-16, 61-4, 94, 106-8, 138, 166, 189, 195 Tully, J. xii, xv, 54-60, 71-5, 95, 184 Urbinati, N. xx, 131, 146-54 violence xi, xv, xx-xxi, 9, 23-4, 27, 33, 39, 42-5, 52, 68-9, 72,

215

98, 162, 176, 181, 183, 185, 188, 191 voting 46, 111, 117, 122-4, 134, 147 Vázquez-Arroyo, A. xi, 32, 35-8, 83, 196 Warren, M. 23, 105, 115, 120-22, 153-4 White, S. xii, 7-9, 12, 63-6, 69, 84 Wolin, S. xi, 81, 84 workplace 30, 109-10, 118, 122-3 Young, I. 133-7 Žižek, S. 7, 18