Politics in the Times of Indignation: The Crisis of Representative Democracy 9781350080768, 9781350080799, 9781350080775

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Introduction: A Taxonomy of Idiocy in Politics
Part One: Who Does Politics?
Chapter 1: Old and New Political Subjects
Praise and scorn for the political class
Politics of the many and politics of the few
The role of experts in a democracy
Chapter 2: The End of Political Parties?
The age of containers
Ambiguities of disintermediation
Political parties after the end of political parties
Chapter 3: Politics of Recognition
From redistribution to recognition
The ‘who’ also matters
A new equity
Chapter 4: Right to Decide?
Who decides what?
The constitutional paradox
Transnational self-determination
Part Two: The Political Condition
Chapter 5: Political Time
The uncertainty of politics
Too soon or too late
On success and failure in politics
Chapter 6: Political Discourse
Rhetoric and ideologies under suspicion
Doing things with words
Truth and lies in the extra-political sense
Chapter 7: Politics of Emotions
Rationalists and sentimentalists
Emotional–populist disorder
Chapter 8: The Importance of Reaching Agreement
The dramatization of antagonism
Principles and compromises
The weight of campaigns on governments
The political culture in relationship with ‘others’
Chapter 9: Democratic Disappointment
The bewilderment of Leviathan
What if democracy were like that?
A regime of negativity
What can we expect in a democracy?
Part Three: Politics in Hard Times
Chapter 10: The Age of Limits
The limitation of knowledge as a resource of government: The cognitive competence of politics
The limitation of power as a government resource: Another political authority
The limits of money as a resource of government: Politics in the midst of austerity
The new tasks of politics
Chapter 11: Politics after Indignation
From revolution to indignation
Democratic tension
Ballot boxes and dreams
Democratic deception
Indignation is not enough
Chapter 12: Democracy without Politics
An intermittent citizenry
The ideology of the negative sovereign
Involuntary de-politicization
The great rift
A defence of indirect democracy
Part Four: Some Platitudes
Chapter 13: Democracies of Representative Proximity and Distance
The desire for disintermediation
Direct democracy
In praise of political distance
Paradoxes of democratic self-determination
The representability of society
Chapter 14: How Much Transparency Do Our Democracies Require and Tolerate?
The observation society
The disadvantages of being observed
Transparency or publicity?
The private lives of politicians
From the power of the word to the power of vision: Ocular democracy
Chapter 15: The Importance and the Limits of Moralizing Politics
The time for public ethics
Paying attention to values
The weakness of politics
Chapter 16: What Remains of the Left and Right
Is reality right-wing?
The market: An invention of the left
Political cultures of the right and left
Governmental credibility
The challenge of being in the opposition
A small theory of political ties
Part Five: The Future of Politics
Chapter 17: What Is This Thing Called Governance?
What crisis?
Politics as a field of innovation
From government to governance: A concept for the renovation of politics
A new political culture to govern the global knowledge society
Chapter 18: Politics as an Intelligent Activity
The strategic deficit of politics
The excessive personalization of politics
Intelligence of people or of systems?
The sovereign that learns
Bibliography
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Index

Citation preview

Politics in the Times of Indignation

Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy encourages a sustained dialogue between the most important intellectual currents in recent European philosophy—including phenomenology, deconstruction, hermeneutics—and key political theories and concepts, both classical and modern. In doing so, it not only sheds new light on today’s shifting political realities but also explores the previously neglected consequences of the two disciplines. Series editor: Michael Marder Other volumes in the series include: Medialogies: Inflationary Media and the Crisis of Reality, David R. Castillo and William Egginton Democracy and Its Others, Jeffrey H. Epstein The Democracy of Knowledge, Daniel Innerarity (translated by Sandra Kingery) The Voice of Conscience: A Political Genealogy of Western Ethical Experience, Mika Ojakangas The Politics of Nihilism, edited by Nitzan Lebovic and Roy Ben-Shai On Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Martin Heidegger (edited by Peter Trawny, Marcia Cavalcante Schuback and Michael Marder, translated by Andrew J. Mitchell) Deconstructing Zionism, Michael Marder and Santiago Zabala Heidegger on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marcia Sa Cavalcante Schuback, Michael Marder and Peter Trawny The Metaphysics of Terror, Rasmus Ugilt The Negative Revolution, Artemy Magun The Voice of Conscience, Mika Ojakangas Contemporary Democracy and the Sacred, Jon Wittrock

Politics in the Times of Indignation The Crisis of Representative Democracy Daniel Innerarity Translated by Sandra Kingery

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Daniel Innerarity, 2019 Daniel Innerarity has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-8076-8 ePDF: 978-1-3500-8077-5 eBook: 978-1-3500-8078-2 Series: Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

To José  André s Torres Mora, social-democratic and republican companion, with whom I have never differed on fundamentals. I would have liked to write that dedication that someone addressed to their teacher, ‘to whom I owe the little I know about the subject’, which left it unclear who was more incompetent: the teacher who was being praised or the humble student. In this case, there is no involuntary slight or fake humility because we – the two of us and humanity as a whole – do, in fact, know almost nothing about politics, which is one of humanity’s most enigmatic mysteries and perhaps the most inexact profession in the world. ‘The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.’ Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia & 34

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Contents Introduction: A Taxonomy of Idiocy in Politics 1 Part One  Who Does Politics? 1

Old and New Political Subjects 9 Praise and scorn for the political class 10 Politics of the many and politics of the few 13 The role of experts in a democracy 16

2

The End of Political Parties? 19 The age of containers 20 Ambiguities of disintermediation 25 Political parties after the end of political parties 26

3

Politics of Recognition 29 From redistribution to recognition 30 The ‘who’ also matters 32 A new equity 35

4

Right to Decide? 39 Who decides what? 39 The constitutional paradox 41 Transnational self-determination 45

Part Two  The Political Condition 5

Political Time 51 The uncertainty of politics 52 Too soon or too late 56 On success and failure in politics 60

6

Political Discourse 64 Rhetoric and ideologies under suspicion 64 Doing things with words 67 Truth and lies in the extra-political sense 71

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Contents

  7 Politics of Emotions 75 Rationalists and sentimentalists 76 Emotional–populist disorder 78   8 The Importance of Reaching Agreement 83 The dramatization of antagonism 84 Principles and compromises 86 The weight of campaigns on governments 89 The political culture in relationship with ‘others’ 91   9 Democratic Disappointment 92 The bewilderment of Leviathan 94 What if democracy were like that? 96 A regime of negativity 99 What can we expect in a democracy? 103 Part Three  Politics in Hard Times 10 The Age of Limits 109 The limitation of knowledge as a resource of government: The cognitive competence of politics 112 The limitation of power as a government resource: Another political authority 114 The limits of money as a resource of government: Politics in the midst of austerity 117 The new tasks of politics 125 11 Politics after Indignation 127 From revolution to indignation 128 Democratic tension 131 Ballot boxes and dreams 133 Democratic deception 136 Indignation is not enough 138 12 Democracy without Politics 141 An intermittent citizenry 142 The ideology of the negative sovereign 146 Involuntary de-politicization 149

Contents

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The great rift 151 A defence of indirect democracy 153 Part Four  Some Platitudes 13 Democracies of Representative Proximity and Distance 159 The desire for disintermediation 160 Direct democracy 162 In praise of political distance 165 Paradoxes of democratic self-determination 168 The representability of society 173 14 How Much Transparency Do Our Democracies Require and Tolerate? 178 The observation society 178 The disadvantages of being observed 180 Transparency or publicity? 182 The private lives of politicians 184 From the power of the word to the power of vision: Ocular democracy 187 15 The Importance and the Limits of Moralizing Politics 190 The time for public ethics 191 Paying attention to values 194 The weakness of politics 196 16 What Remains of the Left and Right 200 Is reality right-wing? 200 The market: An invention of the left 203 Political cultures of the right and left 209 Governmental credibility 211 The challenge of being in the opposition 213 A small theory of political ties 216 Part Five  The Future of Politics 17 What Is This Thing Called Governance? 221 What crisis? 221 Politics as a field of innovation 223

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Contents

From government to governance: A concept for the renovation of politics 224 A new political culture to govern the global knowledge society 227 18 Politics as an Intelligent Activity 229 The strategic deficit of politics 231 The excessive personalization of politics 232 Intelligence of people or of systems? 235 The sovereign that learns 239 Bibliography 243 Index256

Introduction: A Taxonomy of Idiocy in Politics

In classical Greece, the ‘idiotes’ was one who did not participate in public affairs and preferred to dedicate himself only to his private interests. Pericles lamented that Athens contained people who were indifferent, idiots, who did not care about things that should concern us all. There are some excellent books that have examined the legitimacy of this description today. I do not know what strange association has made this word come to describe people with little talent, when the opposite seems to be true: the brightest people are those who do things their own way and even try to destroy that which is public, while the political system has become full of people whose intelligence we do not particularly value, with greater or lesser cause, depending on the case. If we were to carry out a quick taxonomy of idiocy in politics nowadays, we should begin, without a doubt, with those who want to destroy it (or ‘arrest’ it, as the current buzzword has it). That which is public is dismantled; markets have more power than voters; decisions that affect us are adopted without democratic criteria; there are no institutions that articulate political responsibility. Powerful economic agents or tricksters in the media are very interested, for obvious reasons, in not having politics work well or at all (and they certainly find politicians who are very predisposed to collaborating in its destruction). This is the crudest threat against the possibility of human beings living a politically organized life, in other words, with the criteria that politics tries to introduce in a society that would otherwise be in the hands of the most powerful: democracy, legitimacy, equality, justice. There is a second type of the political idiot, which includes all those who have an indifferent attitude towards politics. Of course those who are passive are free to be passive (and I am free to believe that their life is less successful). Not being bothered is one of the most important freedoms, and any suppression of a freedom must be justified with good reasons. I would only like to remind them that if they want to be left alone they have not chosen the best way to achieve it. ‘The person who wishes not to be troubled by politics and to be left alone finds himself the unwitting ally of those to whom politics is a troublesome obstacle

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to their well-meant intentions to leave nothing alone’ (Crick 1962, 12). It is very common for there to be an implicit alliance between those who lose interest in politics and those who aspire to power but reject the uncomfortable formalities of politics. In the end, what we have is the same as always but camouflaged: people who exercise power, but act as if they do not have it, claiming that they are not politicians. There are those who owe their political power to the rejection of politics. In 1958, many of the French supported de Gaulle because they were convinced that he would free France from politicians; Berlusconi’s power was also largely due to knowing how to attract those who hated politicians. The examples of this singular operation will continue increasing to the extent to which there are people prepared to give in to the charms of anti-politics. There is a third meaning for the term, perhaps less evident but very current, and I am particularly interested in pointing this one out because it tends to go unnoticed. I am referring to those who pay attention to politics but do so with a sense, not of a responsible citizen, but rather of the external observer or infuriated client and end up destroying the conditions in which a truly political life can be developed. At least since the economic crisis of 2008 made the serious defects of our political systems visible and made the injustices they caused more unbearable, we live in times of indignation. I am not going to waste time in lending credence to this sentiment and reviewing the list of circumstances that justify our profound discomfort. I think it is more productive at this time to point out the extent to which certain expressions of our indignation may lead us to conclusions that represent the opposite of what we want to defend. As José Andrés Torres Mora notes, we may be making an incorrect diagnosis of the situation as if the origin of our problems were the strength of politics and not its weakness. Democratic regeneration should be handled differently depending on whether our problem is that we need to defend ourselves in the face of excessive political power or if the problem is that other non-democratic powers are systematically interested in making politics irrelevant. I believe our therapy fails to hit the mark because our diagnosis is flawed. In principle, I agree with all the proposed measures to limit the arbitrariness of power, but I do not agree with those who believe that this is the central problem of our democracies at a time when our greatest threat consists of politics becoming non-essential. With this threat, I am referring to quite concrete powers that are trying to neutralize it, but also to the breakdown of political logic in the face of other invasive logics, such as those based on economics or the media, which attempt to colonize the public space. We should resist adopting

Introduction: A Taxonomy of Idiocy in Politics

3

political decisions with economic criteria or because the media has put them on the agenda. That would endanger the impartiality that should preside over the democratic struggle. I am also referring to the involuntary idiot who depoliticizes without knowing it, probably against his or her own intentions. It could be that times of indignation are also moments of particular disorientation and that is why we pay more attention to corruption than to bad politics; we demand the greatest transparency and fail to ask ourselves if we are looking where we need to or at what they let us see, simultaneously becoming mere spectators; we criticize the special legal protections afforded politicians (which are probably excessive) without realizing that they protect our representatives in the face of pressures they confront beyond the pressure of representing us; we tighten the rules against conflicts of interest and make so-called ‘revolving doors’ more difficult and in this way we help pack the political system with public servants; we celebrate the open and participatory nature of the internet, but then we complain that no one can control it; many types of protest can expand the existing disconnect between citizens and politics, making citizens’ positions more rigid, increasing people’s dissatisfaction and disillusionment and simplifying political affairs or the nature of responsibilities by looking for simple slogans and scapegoats. I do not know the extent to which we can address the crisis that so irritates us; let us at least try to not let them distract us. Indignation ensnarls everything with clichés: the political class is our greatest problem, there’s too many of them, political parties are finished, kick them all out, it doesn’t matter who does it, they don’t make the right decisions or they make them too late, all they do all day is talk, let’s not play on emotions, there’s no left- and right-wing anymore, they’re incapable of coming to an agreement, they could but they don’t want to, they don’t represent us, they don’t listen to us, the more transparency the better, it all comes down to a lack of ethics. The problem with these recriminations is that, while they are not completely false, neither are they fully true. This book attempts to calibrate their degree of truth in order to help us understand the nature of politics and criticize its weakness in the most accurate way possible. The goal of ‘explaining’ politics – as the title of the book declares – must confront two possible objections. In the first place, it does not reconstitute a vertical relationship, as if there were those who know about this and those who do not. In the following pages, I passionately defend the idea that politics is for everyone and that there are no unquestionable experts in a democracy (which is not incompatible with our mutually helping each other to fight perplexity from

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our own particular area of strength). I also insist on the idea that explaining is not a synonym for excusing. Only those who have fully understood the logic of politics and what it is able to provide us can avoid false expectations and, at the same time, formulate radical criticisms. I would like to help contribute to a greater understanding of politics because I believe that is the only way we can judge it with all the severity it deserves. Something seriously wrong is going on with politics, and the term ‘indignation’ that has recently been associated with it reflects this dramatically. Never before in history have there been so many ways in which people could gain access to, monitor and challenge the authorities, nor have they ever felt so frustrated regarding their inability to make politics something different. It is certainly true that the crisis we are living through is a complex process and the acceleration is so great that we still have not had enough time to fully understand it. Perhaps that is why times of indignation are also, and principally, times of confusion. Those who say that they understand everything may be much more intelligent than the rest of us, but most likely they are a danger to the public. It cannot be true that all the solutions that are proposed to overcome our political crises make sense, quite simply because they are different and even conflicting. There are reasonable solutions, but also frivolous and outlandish ones. To make matters worse, if we are sincere, we should recognize that it is not the case that people know exactly what politics should do; uncertainty has overtaken those who govern but also those who are governed; we can become indignant and even replace one group of leaders with another, since we have the last word, but we are not always right, nor do we enjoy any immunity against the bewilderment that the current world provokes in all of us. If aristocratic elitism is bad so is popular elitism. That is why the political crisis in which we find ourselves cannot be solved by putting the people in the place of those who govern, eliminating the representative dimension of democracy. It comes down to a question of all of us, society and the political system, managing the same uncertainty together. Hannah Arendt, in a context that is very distinct from the current one, claimed that ‘those who want to address politics today should begin with the prejudice that exists against it’ (Arendt 1993, 13). This task of renewing political categories that tries to support some and transform others is one that has engaged me for a number of years now (Innerarity 2010), and this book will try to synthesize that research. At a time of indignation, which questions and criticizes many things that we presumed to be peacefully shared, this book will

Introduction: A Taxonomy of Idiocy in Politics

5

attempt to give an overview of our ideas about politics, questioning whether we have hit the mark when it comes to defining its nature, who should do it, what are its possibilities and limits, whether some of our commonplaces are still valid and what we can expect of it. I hope to help ensure that the current indignation becomes not an unproductive venting but a force that strengthens politics and improves our democracies.

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Part One

Who Does Politics?

8

1

Old and New Political Subjects

Political transformations, whether revolutionary or evolutionary, modify three issues: subjects, themes and conditions. There are political changes that come from changing the subjects who are considered legitimized to be involved in politics, challenging the fact that politics is done by some and not by others, by a certain social class and not by everyone (democratic revolutions), by the state and not by civil society (a neoliberal twist). In other cases, this change takes place because there is a variation on the most important themes (political agenda) or in government priorities, in such a fashion that some issues stop being the most important and others find their way to the centre of public debate or government priorities. That is what happened with a certain weakening of the social issues that were articulated along a left–right axis or with the emergence of identity politics and the environmental question. We cannot guarantee that topics that have disappeared will not reappear or that subjects about which we argue so much today will stop arousing our passionate attention in the future. The third set of modifications has to do with a change in the conditions within which politics is carried out, because – as is the case today – time speeds up and spaces open up, because certain technologies (from the communications made possible by social networks or financial instruments) alter the rules of the game. In this way, the government, public issues, sovereignty and limitations become quite different from what we had previously understood them to be and, even more specifically, distinct from what this array of realities had allowed us to do. If we want to reflect on the place of politics in the world today, we should begin with the question about who should take part in politics, identifying old and new political subjects, clarifying whether it is something that should be carried out by the few or by everyone, by experts, or by what we call the people, which is so hard to define, in a space that is no longer as clearly structured by social classes or mobilized by political parties. The most reasonable response would be that politics must be done by all those subjects, but this affirmation

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still does not tell us how these different types of authority are related, especially when they have incompatible goals. Should we pay more attention to polls than to experts, to stock prices than to popular sovereignty, to the parties than to social movements? We must determine what is new and what is old, regarding those who participate in politics, in an era of social networks, active societies, global responsibilities and more complex problems. How do we once again share the game of politics among ordinary citizens, experts, political parties, the people and social movements? The intensity of our political debates is, in the end, due to the fact that we live in a time of the progressive redistribution of political authority among the various levels of government, with aspirations for different powers, contested representation and identifications that are difficult to organize. There is nothing strange about the fact that this redistribution produces a special perplexity and disorientation or that it comes about in the midst of intense conflicts. Anyone can see that the way the question of subjects is resolved will have consequences regarding topics and conditions.

Praise and scorn for the political class The polls remind us that this is our principal problem. The very expression ‘political class’ suggests disaffection, alluding to a distance, a lack of agreement between their interests and ours. Those who represent us are suffering from what Peter Mair has called ‘the Tocqueville syndrome’ (1995). Politicians today, like the nobles of the past, struggle to justify their privileges at a time when the tasks they are carrying out are less and less important (or they barely manage to complete the tasks they are assigned). There is nothing new in this criticism levelled at politicians; its detractors allow us to come to know its true nature throughout history (Palonen 2012). What is new may perhaps be that, thanks to the amplifying power of the media and the networks, criticism has taken on the dimensions of an authentic lynching. In addition to the objective causes that justify this dissatisfaction (which range from incompetence to corruption), a hostile constellation has been formed around politics for very diverse motives. Some are even contradictory, as is frequently the case with the coincidences that cluster around indignation: some people are seduced by the ecstasy of direct democracy; others have more modest aspirations of electoral reform; there are those who calculate profitability and worry that there may be too many politicians who earn too much; others

Old and New Political Subjects

11

are gleefully rubbing their hands together because a society with a weak political system benefits them. Among all our expressions of dissatisfaction, it is worth distinguishing the performance of surrounding the Spanish Congress, a gesture that makes less sense than the old British law that prohibited representatives from dying in the parliament building. Would it not make more sense to surround the rest of the world instead – especially economic and media powers – so that parliament – under scrutiny but without any pressure – could carry out the functions we expect from it in a democratic society? The fact that politicians leave much to be desired is so self-evident that it is not worth spending much time on it. Nor is it surprising to anyone who knows how other professions work, none of which escapes serious review, with greater or lesser severity. It turns out, however, that those other professions that are also manifestly improvable are lucky enough to be less exposed to public scrutiny. What I wonder is how candidates can still be found for an activity that is so vilified, difficult, competitive, intermittent, scrutinized and little understood. I am convinced that politicians are, in general, better than their reputation suggests. But that, as I will show, is not exactly the problem. If it were, it would be easier to fix it with a simple substitution. What we are referring to when we note political disillusionment is the critique towards anyone who is carrying out this task (e.g. ‘they’re all the same’), and here the problem takes on a more serious character. First off, it is useful to note that the critical attitude towards politics is a sign of democratic maturity and not the precursor to its demise. The fact that everyone feels competent to judge his or her representatives, even when they are making enormously complex decisions, should make us feel better, even if only because the opposite would be more concerning. A society is not democratically mature until it stops venerating its representatives and becomes suspicious of placing confidence in them. If we assume the preceding, and without failing to recognize that the majority of criticisms are justified, I propose upending that point of view and asking ourselves whether society does not reveal a lack of sincerity about itself in some of its less nuanced versions of political criticism. In a representative democracy, they are there because we are not there or rather, in order for us not to be there. It is probably true that the best people do not go into politics, but this should concern us more than it does them. There is a paradox behind the criticism of politics that we could call ‘the paradox of the last car on the train’. I am referring to that joke about some railroad executives who, after discovering that most accidents particularly affect

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the last car, decide to abolish the last car on all trains. Well, let us suppose that politics does not work. How does one abolish the whole political class? Who could replace it? Who would take charge in a social sphere that had not been politically structured? Who would benefit from a world like that? In the end, we could even ask if there is a ‘political class’ and, especially, if it is possible to do without anything similar. It is clear that, when we use this expression as a sign of dissatisfaction, what we are trying to criticize is their distance, the elitism or insensitivity towards the problems of the people whom they, in principle, represent. However, can we imagine a society in which the political actors were merely a conduit for society’s goals? Politics is an activity that can be improved but it is also and especially something inevitable. Populisms ignore or hide this inevitability; they spread suspicion towards politicians as if it were possible for those who are not responsible or do not act that way to take responsibility. There are those whose ultimate goal is to suppress the mediation that political representation implies: consultations without deliberation, non-revisable constitutional frameworks, taxation without recognition, binding mandates and so forth. It is one thing to introduce procedures to resist the will of the people, to prevent representatives from taking too many liberties or going on forever – participation, accountability, a rotation of responsibilities, prohibiting re-election – and it is another thing to try to overcome representative democracy. The ritual criticism of politicians allows us to avoid some criticisms that, if it were not for them, we should direct towards ourselves. Does it make any sense to insist on certain criticisms of our political representatives while simultaneously claiming the innocence of those who are represented? There is a contradiction in both wanting our representatives to be like us and at the same time wanting them to have the qualities of the elite. It is impossible that such incompetent elites could have emerged out of a society that seems to know exactly what needs to be done. This reveals the fact that populism is ‘reverse elitism’; in other words, a way of thinking that is not based on the conviction that a people is equal to its rulers, but better than them (Shils 1956, 191). If politicians do everything so poorly, it cannot be that we have done everything well. Is it possible that we are using politicians to exorcize our own demons of guilt and frustration? There is a growing intolerance in the electorate towards the oligarchic connotations of the consolidated systems of representation. But let us not simplify the complexity of democratic life to the populist view where the people are victims, wholesome and virtuous, as opposed to the corrupt and confused

Old and New Political Subjects

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institutional scene, a way of thinking that finds passionate defenders on every point of the ideological spectrum, who agree on stigmatizing everything that seems opposed to the homogeneity of the imaginary people: whether it be the enemy, the foreigner, the oligarchy or the leaders (Rosanvallon 2006). There are quite a few platitudes and a number of condemnations that creep into the scorn that is expressed towards the political class. They reveal great ignorance about the nature of politics and promote contempt towards politics in and of itself. We should remind these critics of the principle that whenever something is challenged, we are within our rights to demand to be told who or what will take its place. A reasonable criticism must measure who is helped by its lack of scale. We talk about incompetence and in this way we favour having experts take over government; we criticize politicians’ salaries and thus justify handing politics over to the rich; we discredit politics as a whole, and those who owe nothing to politics agree enthusiastically because they already have a different type of power. Is there anything worse than bad politics? Yes, the absence of politics, an anti-political mentality, which would extinguish the aspirations of those who have no hope other than politics because they are not powerful in other realms. In a world without politics, we could save ourselves some salaries and certain shameful spectacles, but those who have no other way of asserting themselves would lose the representation of their interests and their hopes for equality. If politics is not much of a help, then consider what the fate of those who have no way of defending their rights would be if they could not even count on a political articulation of those rights.

Politics of the many and politics of the few When the political waters are troubled – and this is something that tends to happen frequently – there is a re-emergence of the eternal question about whether those who should be doing it are doing it. Attention is focused not so much (or not only) on how it is done but on who does it. This line of questioning is motivated by the suspicion that it may be a field monopolized by those who should not be involved. The negative opinions are polarized around those who believe that it is an occupation dominated by an elite and those who believe that it is too accessible to anyone; in other words, some people think that the political field is monopolized by the few and others believe it is populated by newcomers. This is the impetus for that tension that is so typical of democracies

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that confronts the old guard and the upstarts, the man in the street and the elites, professionals and amateurs, those who are well paid and volunteers. Let us recognize, first off, that we observe all of this with a certain degree of perplexity and that is why we often make contradictory demands of politicians. We would like expert knowledge to be taken into account when it comes to making political decisions, but we do not want to be governed by experts; we insist that they defend our interests, but we scorn politicians who only defend interests and are incapable of giving ground or coming to agreements; we demand the best people in parliament, but we are not prepared to pay them accordingly; we want them to speak sincerely, but we do not always like to hear the truth. There is also an unresolved contradiction between assuming that anyone can become a politician and organizing things in such a way that everything ends up in the hands of the experts or the rich. We want participation, but there is very little will to participate; we would like open lists, but only 3 per cent use the ones that are offered for the Spanish Senate; we would like politicians to have less decision-making abilities but we are certainly not in favour of leaving government in the hands of civil servants. Citizens do not want politics and cannot be weighed down with it; excessive information or excessive involvement in the decision-making process ignores the benefits of the division of labour provided by representative democracy. We need to give people more opportunities to have something to say about the questions that concern them, which does not mean that people want to have veto power or to be the last judge. Influencing, observing and demanding responsibility is not the same as having to decide. So who should take on the job of politics? There is only one democratic answer to the question of who should be involved in politics, who can and should dedicate themselves to it: everybody. There is no one who should be blocked or who we should declare unfit to do it (except in the concrete cases of disqualification that the law provides for in a very restrictive fashion). Guizot’s idea of a citizen who is ‘qualified’ to elect or be elected makes no sense in a democracy. If politics is open to everyone, it is because in principle we assume everyone is qualified with judgement and decisiveness. The political profession’s indeterminacy contrasts with the fact that politics is often controlled by a caste with little turnover; this is one of our principal criticisms of political parties. There is, however, also movement in the opposite direction at times: some people boast about their interloper status, about coming from outside the system to bring it up to date. This was the case of Ross Perot, that Texas businessman who burst into the ring for the 1992 presidential elections,

Old and New Political Subjects

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of José María Ruiz Mateos or Mario Conde in Spain, of Antonio di Pietro or Beppe Grillo in Italy. There are politicians in many countries whose value stems precisely from the fact that they present themselves as contrary to the political establishment (to a certain extent, this was the case with Obama, who did not belong to the Washington elite) and, at other times, from being successful in other realms of social life (communications, business, law, academia, etc.). It is a very old tactic to disqualify others as politicians and present oneself as a non-politician, in other words, as objective, disinterested, nonpartisan. In every case, success depends on good management of the tension between exteriority regarding the system and the need for behaving in the ways demanded by political logic while making the original contributions that one wants to introduce. Otherwise, the tension is transformed into self-destructive contradiction. In any case, in a democratic society, one must be careful when it comes to defining anyone with political aspirations as an outsider because politics is open to everyone and does not require any specific qualifications. Being an unknown in the political system does not make one an outsider; what can make the person an outsider in the worst sense of the term is attempting to behave in politics with a non-political logic and trying to turn politics into a media event, business transaction or legal matter. The fact that politics is open to everyone means, in the first place, that it is not something that the rich do exclusively. This has not always been the case; the democratization of politics is one of humanity’s recent triumphs and is not always guaranteed. The pre-democratic politician was an aristocrat who lived for politics without living from politics, a gentleman politician. Since the French Revolution, parliamentarians’ allowances were a compensation that enabled non-aristocrats to participate in politics. The possibility that members of parliament can make a living with politics allows people of various backgrounds to enter into politics. Affording politicians salaries that are modest but sufficient is a guarantee of equal access to political activity. The powerful tend to have other ways in which to make their interests heard, but what is surprising is that we endanger the successful acquisition of equal access to politics with nonsensical proposals. I am not going to address whether there are too many of them or if they earn too much; I would simply like to note that this debate damages their legitimacy and creates a future model of weak parliaments that are in the hands of the rich. A parliament of the few who address parliamentary business in their spare time would be a parliament that was even less capable of controlling the executives. If politicians did not earn

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anything, then the only people who would be involved would be the rich or their flunkies. Defending the quantity and salary of members of parliament sounds like a provocation today, but it is more egalitarian than certain populist measures that weaken democracy.

The role of experts in a democracy The second consequence of politics being open to everyone is that, in principle, it does not make much sense to divide people between those who are politically competent and those who are not and hand politics over to the supposed experts. However, this declaration of universality presents some problems when certain types of decisions are at stake. Some people have justified the recourse to experts since experts can more easily manage the complexity of matters which must be decided and only they can provide the political system with an attention to interests that are carried out over the long term, while politicians work exclusively in the short term and in agreement with the electoral cycle. That is the reason behind the political system’s tendency to delegate to institutions that are not representative and that do not have to report to anyone (or only do so indirectly), institutions that are called ‘non-majoritarian’ (Majone 1996, 3) and that Everson has defended in order to confront the ‘predatory inclinations of a transitory political elite’ (2000, 110). This is why political manoeuvring leads inexorably to technocracy. Either politics introduces long-term strategies and learns to manage complexity or the growing recourse to experts will be the only way of avoiding the dysfunctionality of the simplification and manoeuvring to which elected politicians too often succumb. However, it is one thing to have the recourse to experts occupy a prominent place in complex democracies and another thing entirely to have expert knowledge do without any democratic legitimacy. It is one thing to take expert judgement into consideration and another to leave government in the hands of those who, supposedly, decide in accordance with objective criteria. Because how do we identify the best experts and how can we be certain that, if we found them, they would make the best decisions? Who is going to make the final decision when the experts disagree and interpret objectivity differently? Politics is an activity that requires articulating the balance between the people, experts, civil servants and political professionals. Furthermore, this last group, the politicians, has a fundamental role to play if we keep in mind the type of activity politics is.

Old and New Political Subjects

17

Politics is a nebulous activity for which one needs good judgement, a broad perspective, caution, intuition, a sense of timing and opportunity, communication skills, an ability to make decisions when we are not certain of the outcome. Those who dedicate themselves to politics should even accept a degree of superficiality that allows them to form a general idea of things, a vision that would be destroyed if one spent too much time on the details. One can be neither an amateur nor a specialist (Bullitt 1977). This is one of the main reasons for the lack of esteem in which we hold politicians: we respect specialists more than generalists; specialists are better protected from criticism than generalists. It is very hard for the administrators of objectivity, who want politics to be an exact science, to comprehend what good politics does because they do not understand that politics, rather than managing objectivities, has to do with assessing the social significance of decisions, their opportuneness in various contexts, the ways in which they affect people. That is why there is no specific training for politics and anyone can practice it in principle. Politicians are necessarily self-taught (Scheer 2003, 33). Weizsäcker, the former president of Germany, caricaturing this reality a bit, said that a politician is a generalist whose only skill consists of knowing how to combat an enemy. They must learn skills that have very little to do with technical objectivity of the matters they control; this is the reason why people who are very competent in their fields (doctors or professors, for example) can be very bad ministers of that same field (health or education) and vice versa (those who are not experts in a field can manage it well politically). Because of their versatility, politicians can move from one ministry to another, and those who do not understand what politics is about will interpret this versatility as superficiality; this interpretation leads us to scorn those who govern us. It is another of the paradoxes in the current hostility towards politics: the bemoaning of politicians’ incompetence often conceals an elitist scorn towards ordinary people. Why is it not a good idea to place experts as the heads of governments? Well, because some of our experiences with technocrats are bad, because they have a great inclination to persist in their errors, to defend their position not as a product of one decision but as a logical deduction of a truth. Even more importantly, because it would make experts stop fulfilling their function as allies in the task of reducing the complexity of the world and building confidence. Democracy is a political system that makes experts intervene in the decisionmaking process, but it does not leave everything in their hands, replacing politicians with civil servants and experts. At the heart of politics, there is a precarious balance between the executive and government, between technology

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Politics in the Times of Indignation

and politics. It is important that this equilibrium not be thrown off balance because it is as bad to trust absolutely in the continuity of bureaucracy as it is to risk everything on political creativity. Without the executive, politics would become a solution of inefficient improvisations; without politics, nothing would protect us from the conservative machine into which the administration would deteriorate. However, if we continue to believe that politics has the last word in the face of the administration or that parliaments can control governments, a certain degree of professionalization of politics is necessary. ‘Politics as a profession’ (Weber 1919) is as necessary for the fulfilment of its role as a greater consideration of the role of expert knowledge in our decisions about increasingly complex problems (Innerarity 2013). A democracy needs experts as much as it needs to protect itself from them. There are different political profiles, and there is no optimal type. The ideal is to have an equilibrium between amateur and professional politicians. We must limit the absolute professionalization of politics as well as its absolute lack of professionalism. It is a good sign that professionals accredited in other realms enter politics, although we should not let them replace political logic with the logic of their specific fields. If we maintain this tension, we will be able to free ourselves from the presumption of the exactitude of experts and the superficiality of politicians, thus emphasizing the competence of experts and the creativity of politicians. Because political problems are too complex to leave them in the hands of those who manage exactitude, they require an effort of political imagination.

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The End of Political Parties?

We are in the midst of a crisis of democratic authorization, which reveals itself, for example, in that we no longer know how much attention to pay to the experts, whether judges are the only ones who can resolve political problems, how to understand leadership in a democratic society, who represents us, who decides (this leads to territorial debates or debates about European governance) or to whom parties belong (a good example of this is the discussions about primaries, which reveal that we do not really know if the political parties belong to the party machine, rank-and-file members, the hardliners who keep the party’s essence intact, the voters or everyone). Some people believe that this question no longer makes sense and that politics has stopped being a place of authority, ever since political power was captured by other powers, especially the economic-financial powers. These people are not mistaken. The process of organizing the world by boxing some things away into crates of old stuff and exhibiting others in window displays of the new contains a danger that the subsequent course of history may prove us wrong. This should not dissuade us from venturing hypotheses about how things are going to evolve. But it forces us to be cautious before definitively laying to rest things that appear weak or before touting the arrival of something that could end up passing us by or being only temporary. Who knows, when dealing with social and political issues, whether we are at a funeral or at a baptism, in other words, if we are facing a cycle, a trend, a repositioning or a historical turning point? Just as our ancestors did not come to an agreement at a particular time to abandon the Stone Age and move into the Iron Age, nor were they in any position to recognize this change of era; the task of history’s gravediggers and midwives never falls to contemporary but to future historians. In the world of politics, everything should be understood, as Raimond Aron said about ideologies, as ‘expectations that await the judgment of time’ (1948, 313). In any case, intellectual honesty requires that we make an effort to distinguish the truly new from the merely

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Politics in the Times of Indignation

novel and to ask ourselves whether the death of something stemmed from natural causes or a lynching. In the meantime, what we can do is analyse things with the greatest rigour of which we are capable and practice reasonable scepticism when it comes to labelling things as old or as new. It may be that neither of them are fully such, that we are facing transformations rather than substitutions, such that old political participants should be considered in a new light, rather than being replaced by new candidates. We must go back to thinking about how the principle of universal citizenship can be realized within a complex democracy and how to confront new forms of exclusion; we must question the place of experts in decision-making processes that demand a great deal of knowledge but that cannot dispense with democratic legitimacy; we must determine outdated models of political parties and the extent to which we continue to need them; we must attempt to understand people in a way that is compatible with other realities with which the people seem to conflict, such as individual rights or the responsibilities of interdependence. In short, we need to establish who should take part in politics.

The age of containers The political parties’ current crisis – their disrepute, loss of relevance or fragmentation – reveals a deeper crisis. In my opinion, a political age that we could call ‘the age of containers’ has come to an end, and we still do not know exactly what material from the old era can be salvaged and what new institutional forms the new era will adopt. A container is the symbol of commercial globalization, a place to store things, fitting them into spaces that are homogeneous, standardized, classifiable and manageable in such a way that nothing remains outside. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz (2000) has criticized this conception of the world as a puzzle with pieces that are the same size (or have the same nature), a conception elaborated under the assumption of a concurrence between nations and cultures; he announced a new inconsistency between spaces for the future, a greater heterogeneity of elements that make up social reality. His criticism coincided with the argument Ulrich Beck made against the container model of society and the nation states (1997), as if we were closed into self-sufficient capsules that have sovereign authority. Reality has not been defined in this way for some time, nor can it be governed based on those assumptions; liberal commercialization and communicative

The End of Political Parties?

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connectivity make it very difficult to maintain a national container with which to protect the unity of the economy, culture and politics. The world of containers presupposed a social context structured around stable communities, with defined professional roles and consolidated forms of recognition and reputation. The classical parties of the masses are political machines that were conceived within this social reality. ‘Party democracy’ was the correct political form for a society firmly structured into social classes, in groups clearly defined by their individual productive functions, whose social and cultural identification was destined to correspond in terms of representation. Like other social organizations, the parties acted as containers to the extent that they were weighty organizations that did not restrict themselves to managing the institutional processes of representation but also incorporated entire areas of society into their structures, guiding their culture and values in such a way that they could ensure the predictability of their political and electoral behaviour. Our social practices most likely continue assuming the existence of a world that has disappeared or that has, at least, suffered a transformation that is barely captured by our concepts and actions. What happens when interactions multiply, social functions become fleeting and identities precarious, when the logic of fluctuations is stronger than the logic of places? We must respond to this type of question instead of exhibiting the perplexity that we may feel, for example, because the logic of transferring votes between parties has stopped functioning with mechanical precision (between the left and the right depending on who is governing and who is in the opposition). Perhaps this vision of communicating vessels has lost much of its plausibility because there are phenomena that can no longer be explained as adjustments or rebalancing within the system, being due, instead, to deeper transformations. When the democracy of the masses arose, the parties stabilized both political identities and the corresponding electoral options for a long time. At that point in time, saying that electors ‘chose’ a particular political option made as little sense as saying that a believer chose to go to the Anglican mass rather than the Presbyterian or Baptist one on Sunday, as Rose and Mossawir astutely pointed out in their classic study (1967, 186). As the best studies note, class voting has decreased notably since the mid-1970s, especially in those countries in which class was a relatively dependable predictor of electoral preferences (Knutsen 2006). The era of ‘party democracy’, as it was known, represented a solid geography, while today we seem to move within a scenario of instability and even volatility

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Politics in the Times of Indignation

that affects the containers of the past (the political parties, churches, identities, media and even the states). Bernard Manin warned of this change in our schemes of representation years ago, summarizing it in the idea of a transition from ‘party democracy’ to the ‘democracy of the public’ or ‘audience’ (Manin 1997). This is what is at the heart of the generalized crisis of confidence that has eroded the channels of representation and the traditional organization of consensus and antagonism. This ‘liquid panorama’, to use the expression coined by Bauman, the fluctuations of which do not have a recognizable direction, affects the public as well as their representatives, society and the political parties. It affords the public a disconcerting unpredictability. Citizens are fleeing the scenes of conventional politics. The ‘democracy of the public’ adopts the fluidity of the voluble and unpredictable electorate. In marketing terminology, we have an electorate that is less loyal, more volatile and intermittent. There has been what we could very well call a liquidification of the electoral body; this was previously a rather viscose, stable and loyal material. We have moved from the ‘electoral body’ to the ‘political market’, with all the rules (or lack thereof), all the risks and all the unpredictability of the market. Instead of voters, a party has a mishmash of hooligans and clients (in variable percentages). The difficulty of identifying them and gaining their trust has to do with the fact that their demands have become more complex and fragmented. Individuals give off vague signals that the political system is unable to identify, develop and represent adequately. That is why parties have a great deal of difficulty when it comes to listening to their voters and understanding, incorporating or processing their demands. The electorate is less differentiated and presents topics of cross-convergence, with demands and expectations that are less transparent and identifiable. The ‘unfindable people’ label could be applied very appropriately (Rosanvallon 1998). On the other hand, politics has been both de-ideologized and personalized at the same time. The personalization of the electoral decision has a lot to do with that amorphous and de-ideologized electoral market. As with the origin of parliamentarism before the democracy of the masses, we vote primarily not for the party or the program but for the person. The difference is that in the past confidence in the representative was the result of a more or less personal and immediate relationship, while it is now the product of a media-based construction of the image. The voters’ volatility, in addition to the acceleration of the processes of social change, affects political agents and parties equally. If the voters are so ‘unfaithful’,

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the parties find themselves less and less obligated to follow ideological commitments. My point here is not to excuse failures to keep electoral promises but to try to understand what causes them. The general volatility of the political space explains the weakening of the idea of the electoral program, and a certain occasionalism of decisions and programs now reigns, susceptible both to improvised additions and to rapid abandonments. The electoral programs probably cannot be understood as old ‘programming’, since complexity has been taken to new extremes within which political decisions have to be made, and relevant interdependencies and the resulting unpredictability have multiplied. Strategic rationality has become very difficult when the circumstances of world stability that made it possible are no longer encountered. An extreme case of this institutionalized improvisation is the proliferation of ‘instantaneous parties’, which represent disaggregated interests; they try to respond nimbly to the often contradictory demands of different opinion sectors, which previously included ideas such as class coherence. Perhaps here we will find an explanation of the success of certain contemporary social movements, such as the Pirate Party in 2011, one of whose German leaders affirmed that they did not have a ‘program but procedures’. For this reason, we also now call ideologies political ‘sensitivities’, because we do not dare to use a term that alludes to something more solid and stable. At the same time, as all of that is taking place, the parties have suffered a transformation that separates them from social reality. On the one hand, the distance between citizens and the parties has increased while the differences between parties have decreased. Both of these processes are mutually reinforced, provoking citizen indifference towards the world of politics in general. On the other hand, in most democracies, the parties have long since stopped being organizations whose survival depended on the resources provided by their members and began to depend on public financing, as if they were agents of the state. This connection to the state has also been consolidated by the fact that the parties have prioritized their role as government instruments to the detriment of their representational function. Those who are in the opposition tend to consider that a strictly provisional position, because their raison d’être is seeking office; their vocation focuses more on achieving power than on representing the people. The main goal of the parties is to govern or wait until it is their turn to govern. The centre of gravity is displaced towards institutional responsibilities; the parties are controlled by governments and their role of identifying and representing social interests and demands is weakened. They may not even be able to perceive that role at times. ‘Parties have reduced their presence in the

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Politics in the Times of Indignation

wider society and become part of the state. They have become agencies that govern … rather than represent. They bring order rather than give voice … . The result is the beginning of a new form of democracy, one in which the citizens stay at home while the parties get on with governing’ (Mair 1995, 97–8). The consequence of this is that the opposition often appears on the margins of the conventional parties, in social movements and protests. The party of the masses in the nineteenth century was organized according to the mould of the public bureaucracies and like centralized factories, the two great inventions of modernity that were the ‘Fordist factory’ and the ‘Weberian bureaucracy’: standardized production and formalization of functions. In both cases, on the assembly lines and in the bureaucratic organization, standardized processes allow things that are different to be handled in a similar fashion, with the logic of the container. The factory and the political party have been our largest means for the standardized production of objects and the serialized management of people. Transformations in both managerial and administrative ways of organizing reality could not leave institutions like the political parties, designed with their own logic, unscathed. ‘Post-Fordism’ has buried the Weberian bureaucratic model in favour of a light, open, diffuse and polycentric one; it promotes a new socio-productive paradigm that is no longer characterized by the large processes of rationalization and centralization. New theories of organization invite us to leave a space for disorder, under the form of irregularity, difference or periphery, and to distrust the logic of the container in which everything fits perfectly. It would be a question of organizing without bemoaning the amount of complexity, the number of variables to control, the amount of subjectivity to sterilize, the amount of difference that cannot be reduced to a norm. The objective would be to create open systems, more similar to organisms than to containers, more porous than closed, in dialogue with everything that surrounds them and not protected against their exterior. The challenge that these changes present to political organizations is how to act in an environment with a new style of behaviour that is characterized by dissemination, autonomy and horizontality, with a mobilization that is more oriented towards specific problems, more through isolated actions than stable bureaucratic organizations, such as the political parties or unions (Inglehart 1990). What will things look like after the current crisis of the parties? In the first place, the political environment has become more complex, with other forms of the representation of interests, networks of parallel or alternative participation, agents or aggregations that have complicated the ‘game’.

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In these new circumstances, political parties have not lost their reason for existing, but their ‘political capital’, like the financialized capitalism of today, is no longer stably guaranteed and always depends on a fluctuation of resources that they sometimes capture but without being able to capitalize on it once and for all. This instability will force political organizations to develop an adaptive intelligence and to restore their ability to represent and govern a society that has become more demanding, jealously controlling its delegations of authority.

Ambiguities of disintermediation The current crisis in political parties will only be overcome when there are better parties. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as they say, would not be a good solution, and experience teaches us that a system with bad parties is better than a system without any; those who bemoan the parties’ oligarchic nature would have more reason to complain if the parties are weakened to the point of being unable to fulfil the expectations of representation, guidance, participation and configuration of the political will that is expected of them in constitutional democracies. I say this as an invitation to explore the possibilities of disintermediation that we have before us – the expectations raised by social networks, the realization of primary elections or the renovation that comes from social movements, for example – but without creating too many illusions. As for the first point, we can affirm that the new political organizations that have arisen out of the social networks’ push towards immediacy and horizontality have had rather poor results when measured against the expectations they created. It is true that the internet confers an unprecedented ability to connect everyone instantaneously; it brings closer that which had been separated (such as representatives and those who are represented); it allows observation and control, without the need for mediation by any organization, such as the parties. It is somewhat similar to what the invention of the printing press meant for Protestant reform: it made ‘free examination’ without ecclesiastic mediation technically possible. The internet affords all citizens access to the decisionmaking process and makes party intervention appear useless. However, turning that immediacy into the only democratic register makes us devalue other central elements of democratic life, such as deliberation or organization. The decision-making moment is important, but it requires spaces and procedures of deliberation, the importance of which is not recognized by those who seem to understand democracy as an aggregation of consultations.

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Politics in the Times of Indignation

As was the case with Margaret Thatcher – who weakened the state and strengthened herself – in some political movements that have arisen under the protection of social networks, without structure or rules or a program, authority is at times exercised in a more tyrannical fashion than in the traditional parties, since this supposed flexibility allows an adoption of decisions that is less limited by the rights of the members, commissions of guarantee and the reference to a body of doctrine or stable program. The fate of the Italian Five Star Movement is a case that is very illustrative of digital ambiguity. In such a disorganized organization, who guarantees the right of its members or who takes responsibility for the results? As Michels said (1911) at the beginning of the twentieth century in a famous essay about the sociology of the political parties, organization is the weapon of the weak against the power of the strong. What can we say, in the second place, about primaries and other similar procedures through which internal democratization is seen as the best way to recover electoral support? In the first place, it is an interesting resource that introduces an element of unpredictability into the life of the parties, but, in my judgement, it should not be imposed by law, among other things, because the parties that do not manage to mobilize their voters will pay for it, in one way or another. But it also has its incongruity: it allows the parties to generate a pretence of external democracy, while they maintain an impoverished inner life, externalizing participation at a specific time and around a selection of individuals; this incongruity is frequently resolved with a logic that is more media based than political. Nor should we expect social movements to give what they cannot give. I am not saying this so we will diminish our expectations of them, but the complete opposite: so we maintain our expectations high. The social movements can give us something more radical than what is afforded by the political parties, which they cannot replace. As Michael Walzer says, the parties are dedicated to collecting votes, and social movements to altering the terms of that collecting (2012). These two things do not mesh very well, but out of that tension, we can expect greater revitalization from our weakened politics than from that fatal combination of magical formulas, populist proposals and commonplaces.

Political parties after the end of political parties My goal in comparing Grillo and Thatcher is neither rhetorical recourse nor slander. Instead, it responds to an objective coincidence that has always struck

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me as very suspicious: there are those who want to deregulate the political space from the digital left and those, from the extreme right, who push deregulation of the public sphere because they trust that this will lead to the weakening of certain social and political demands relative to justice or the welfare state. The triple alliance between ineffectual political parties, the left with little sense of reality and the right that knows reality all too well is an undeclared conspiracy that threatens our democratic life more than any other dysfunctionality. These three tendencies combined could weaken the full set of values of a democratic and egalitarian society, and that is what should concern us, not the concrete future of our political organizations. What has and has not come to an end at a time when the end of parties is so frequently declared? What is gone is the monopolistic control of the public space on the part of the political parties, but not the need for mediating bodies where the political will and the antagonism that serves as a basis for collective decisions are formed. It is one thing that the parties and the trade unions must be profoundly renovated and another that social conquests and the attainment of citizen participation can be ensured without organizations such as the parties and the unions. The criticisms they face are partially correct and partially based on a lack of knowledge of their functions. While there is criticism of the fact that parties and unions establish a filter and a mediation that frequently falsifies social reality, in civil society there are imbalances of power in the groups that compete for the decision-making centres that could be even more unfavourable for the weak if we had a more deregulated political space. The institutions, like the parties, which establish mediations and articulate the political game, generate many inequalities, of course, that are not corrected by leaving the political space without any mediation. No matter how well or poorly they do it, democratic practice does not seem possible without institutions that carry out this type of filtering, selecting and guaranteeing, or, at the very least, any alternative de-structuring of the political field would be much worse. The parties, although they do not always do it well, attempt to ensure that citizen influence is not scattered, episodic or unequal. Manin is not exaggerating when he interprets the movement from a party democracy to an audience democracy as a decrease in popular sovereignty, in contrast to what it could seem like at first glance (Manin 1997, 233). When people vote for parties, they issue a judgement on the political future, based around an ideological program, and they are expressing their confidence in one person, as was the case at the beginning of representative government and as is the case now in plebiscitary

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democracies when the image of the candidate embodies, or actually conceals, the policies that will be carried out if that candidate is elected. The parties are essential for clarifying the options that are available to voters; they serve to train political personnel, select candidates, manage the circulation of the political class through institutions and control those elected by keeping them connected to the promises made to voters. Citizens can vote for a political program connected to an identifiable line of thought because of the political party. Confidence in the candidates is generally sustained through identification with the political ideas of the party they represent. Drawing attention to this usefulness conflicts with a critical tendency that has been established, almost without nuances, as what is politically correct. One of the most persistent criticisms is that political parties are instruments used to reinforce the power of the politicians. We are led to believe that if the members of parliament were completely independent they could better represent their voters, which is far from self-evident. This was the famous reasoning of Edmund Burke, the conservative politician at the end of the eighteenth century, and his idea stemmed from a rather aristocratic conception of representation (1987, 156). The result would be to increase the confusion of the citizens, the lack of direction of the government and a greater fragility in the political system as a whole in the face of populist or media pressures. The party serves to control those elected although it often does not do so effectively. Without political parties, elected officials would be more of a caste than they are at this point and even less controllable. What has come to an end is the ‘container-party’, but not the idea of a political organization that contributes to making the world intelligible, that guides the decisions of the citizenry, that can offer channels for political participation and articulate civic control over its representatives. It is evident that the current parties come nowhere close to fulfilling these expectations satisfactorily; after the crisis of the parties, we are at the crossroads of either creating better parties or entering into an amorphous space whose territory will be occupied by technocrats and populists, thus defining a new battleground that would be even worse than the current one.

3

Politics of Recognition

If things that we thought were immutable, such as the climate, the price of money or some politicians’ convictions, can change, then there is no longer any reason to be surprised by the transformation of our political landscape or to continue clinging to interpretative models that feel more familiar to us. Included among our pleasing bromides is what some people call the ‘socialdemocratic consensus’, which classified social antagonisms into a right–left schema, with some particular class identifications and corresponding conflicts. These were managed rather effectively in the compromises that gave rise to the welfare state. But for some time now, in every arena, from the domestic and local to the international plane, things are giving way to a new axis that has to do with identity. New types of social exasperation arise around this new axis and collective projects are articulated based upon it. New issues burst onto the political agenda and are superimposed on traditional ideological polarizations. The political playing field has been filled with different voices, and new actors attempt to assert themselves with the same rights as the established actors. Among them are women, different cultures, victims, sub-state governments, ethnic minorities, different sexualities, minority languages and so forth. Many people will regret the indisputable fact that the political panorama is becoming more complicated, but it is also an opportunity for us to readjust our criteria of justice and representation. There is a new space of actors and issues that ends up placing into question the concurrence between institutionalized politics and true society, whether by challenging our systems of representation, the supposed concurrence between national identity and political authority or the inadequacy of world governance in its current format.

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From redistribution to recognition Diverse thinkers have suggested that this transformation of the political panorama may be understood by turning to the idea of recognition. Axel Honneth (1992), Charles Taylor (1995) and Nancy Fraser (2002) are among the many who believe that conflicts have moved from the arenas of class, equality and economy towards the space of identity, difference and culture. A new configuration has been created in which the problem of redistribution – which was the great challenge throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – has been eclipsed by problems related to recognition. All of this is taking place in an era, as Anthony Giddens said, that is founded more on difference than emancipation; the principal goal of individuals and cultures is to express their difference and see it recognized in the public sphere. ‘Difference … seems to have displaced inequality as the central concern of political and social theory. We ask ourselves how we can achieve equality while still recognizing difference, rather than how we can eliminate inequality’ (Phillips 1997, 143). In accordance with this series of social transformations, a ‘paradigm shift’ has come about at the heart of the theories of justice, which formulate a non-utilitarian interpretation of social struggles (Ricoeur 2004; Renault 2000; Williams 1991; Young 1990). The ‘fight for recognition’ has become the paradigmatic style of political and social conflict since the end of the twentieth century. The demands for recognizing difference (of nationality, culture, gender, sexual orientation etc.) are at the heart of many of the conflicts in the world nowadays, probably including those that are most difficult to handle, and prescriptions for familiar social commitments do not help them. Some critics have discussed ‘post-socialist conflicts’ in which a collective identity replaces class interests as sites of political mobilization and in which the fundamental injustice is no longer exploitation but cultural and political domination (Fraser 1995, 212). Many of these conflicts stem not only from power or the economy, but from moral experiences, concretely from expectations for recognition that are deeply rooted within each of us. The recognition makes itself known principally in its absence, under modalities of humiliation, discrimination, exclusion, scorn, invisibility and imposition, which are exercised on genders, races, sexualities and subordinate nationalities. All of that leads to a new, unstructured and complex political scenario in which it is difficult to manoeuver with the old categories. Complaining about this new public is not particularly useful for confronting new problems, but it is even worse to offer inappropriate solutions such as, for example, treating questions of recognition as economic issues or interpreting the new wars as territorial conflicts.

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In the discussion about this paradigm shift, there are those who insist on continuing to defend the centrality of redistribution (Rorty 1998; Gitlin 1995), believing that identity politics constitutes a distraction in the face of real problems, that it leads to a Balkanization of society and the rejection of universal moral norms. It is true that the paradigm of recognition does not invalidate the problems of redistribution. In fact, all the axes of oppression in real life are mixed; it is often the case that those who are culturally excluded are economically disadvantaged. Furthermore, there are no zones that are exclusively economic or spaces that are exclusively cultural; any social practice is simultaneously economic and cultural, although not necessarily in the same proportions (Fraser 2003, 63). It is probably most accurate to affirm that justice today must be thought of as redistribution and as recognition at the same time. With all the nuances that we should keep in mind, it seems unquestionable that most conflicts nowadays have to do with something we could characterize as sentimental, if it were not for the fact that this term tends to be synonymous with unreality. The growing psychologization of conflicts indicates that we live in an irritable world, from the most domestic levels to the international scene. The ancient struggle for redistribution is being replaced everywhere, at least in part, with a conflict about honour and affronts, and it is being fought at the level of representations and symbols. Many current events are explained more from a place of anger than from an ideologically organized antagonism (Sloterdijk 2006). This is what Ross has called ‘psychocultural dramas’ (2001, 157). Some make the mistake of believing that what is called international terrorism stems from something else, that it has to do with power or territory and not with the resentment or hatred of those who have been humiliated (and I am beginning to believe that a large part of the ‘war on terror’ only serves to calm an emotional imbalance as well as destroying everything else in its wake). When delimited space is unified to the point where everything becomes a border, to use Bauman’s term, then the entire world has become an irritable zone. Power, money, communications and the environment have been globalized, but grievances have been as well. Anyone can offend and be offended; scorn has also been delocalized and the true market is the one that trades respect and recognition. Like everything human, this situation is also ambivalent. By introducing the question of identity, we increase the catalogue of rights, spread equality, pay attention to victims; we can delve deeper into pluralism and recognize the respect we owe each other. But it also unleashes hysteria and victimization. One of the most important problems we face is precisely the psychologization of victims or unreasonable humiliations, that ‘new form of ‘unhappy consciousness’ as a

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kind of incurable feeling of victimization or a tireless collection of unattainable ideals’ (Ricoeur 2004, 316; Fraser and Honneth 2003). Although it is true that conflicts are not tackled correctly if the self-representation of the other is not kept in mind, it is also true that if the definitive criteria were to be how one feels, everything would be reduced to a subjective feeling from which one cannot develop any grammar of the common good. At the same time, we should not undervalue the dangers of identity politics which can at times lead to the imposition of a single, considerably simplified group identity, which denies the complexity of individual existences, the multiplicity of their identifications and the crossed dynamic of different affiliations. This panorama undoubtedly demands a new kind of leadership, more psychological and sensitive to other forms of exclusion. We will have no choice but to learn to live within this confusion of meanings and manage new conflicts with greater care and diplomacy, paying more attention to their psychological dimension than to the variables we could call objective. Diplomacy, that form of political courtesy, seems to have become the most appropriate language for ‘world society’. This situation also requires a way of governing that is more sensitive to participation and cooperation. In addition, we will need to fight the causes that nourish those feelings, with or without good reason. There is too much discrimination, inequality, humiliation and hegemony in our world to think that everything is due to an excess of susceptibility.

The ‘who’ also matters We could explain our confusion regarding these new conflicts by the fact that, consumed by the ‘what’ of justice, we postponed the debate about the ‘who’ (Nancy Fraser). It is as if we discovered that the ‘who’ also matters and the question of the subject is now at the centre of our controversies. It is not unimportant who does it: if men represent women, if the general interest in compound states is defined by the centre, if a hegemonic power takes responsibility for bringing order to the world and so forth. The critics of parity, Jacobins and unilateralists coincide in thinking that the question of ‘who’ is secondary, even non-negotiable. Chesterton had warned against that usurpation when he affirmed that there are three things that one should do for oneself even at the risk of making a mistake: choose one’s own wife, wipe one’s nose and decide in politics. The fact that the question of the subject, of the ‘who’, has returned to the foreground means that we probably need to adjust our procedures for representation, participation, delegation and

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decision-making to the reality of a growing pluralism, to a heterarchical world with new actors. Perhaps there is a change, if not of the notion, then at least of the weight given to our conception of equality and justice. The paradigm of recognition underscores the demand to truly share protagonism; it includes an idea of equality as parity of participation or co-decision. Recognition fundamentally consists of respect for each person’s ability to take part in the processes from which the conditions in which they live are determined (Taylor 1995). What comes into play here is an idea of liberty that is not only protection from interference but also the opportunity, legally guaranteed, of participating in the public process of the formation of political will (Honneth 1992). Recognizing someone implies facilitating his or her participation in democratic deliberation. The responsibility of the states is not limited to guaranteeing personal liberties, but should provide their citizens with the possibility of configuring laws that protect their liberty. The fact that the ‘who’ matters means, from another point of view, that certain forms of sublimation of ownership (neutrality, cosmopolitanism) are nothing more than a tricky solution so that nothing will change substantially; the ‘what’ continues in the foreground and the forms of domination are reproduced. The procedural ‘Esperanto’ (Tully 1995, 7) conceals power relationships, in the same way as ‘constitutional patriotism’ is at times a way, alongside a series of democratic principles, to sneak in some shameful advantage for those who are more able to configure a majority. As Kymlicka has made clear, the pretension of neutrality is aporetic because the common norms do not arise from a historical and cultural void, but have an origin that is generally confused with the cultural attributes of the majority (1995, 108). Questions that have to do with symbols, internal limits or language tend to be decided by privileging some people over others. A partial interpretation of the idea of equality and non-discrimination is often imposed (Requejo 1999). Furthermore, in fact, the representation of humanity in terms of undifferentiated identity is not real and tends to hide a good deal of hegemonies, discriminations and power relationships. ‘There is difference and there is power. And who holds the power decides the meaning of the difference’ (Jordan 1994, 197). There is a veiled identity at the centre of liberal politics, in which other identities can only appear as ‘others’. There is only space for two entities: the normal citizen and the ‘other’ (Hekman 2004, 58). Tolerance, understood in this way, is also a form of power. The ‘normal citizen’, the one who is not nationalistic and has no identity, gender or colour, lives within a hierarchy in which some

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are more citizens than others, where impartiality is often nothing more than the partiality of the hegemonic group. The supposedly neutral constitutional order frequently hides a ‘feigned cultural indifference’ (Tully 1995, 191) that reinforces the dominant culture over the others. In the end, what classic liberalism should be reproached for is that it has not been faithful to the principle of equality between individuals; it has not understood that fidelity to this principle would require completing it with a principle of making groups, cultures and territories equal. If nothing more than equality between individuals is defended, then the fact that certain individuals are penalized because of their membership in a group is ignored. The same principles of neutrality and universality require us to revise the ways in which we have thought about public space up until now. In other words, in an analogy proposed by Michael Walzer, the state or the constitutional order should be separated from nationality, in the same way that it was separated from religion, after the interreligious conflicts that marked the beginning of modernity, and thus the prejudices caused by the privilege conceded to an identity that was assumed to be homogeneous would be corrected (Walzer 1982). This is one of the reasons why it can sometimes be necessary to correct representation, not so that it will reflect society like a mirror, but to avoid the historical domination of certain groups by others when the theoretical equality of conditions is not sufficient for there to be effective participation by everyone. The best way to defend that which is universal is to refuse to let it be monopolized by anyone, profoundly distrusting anyone who believes that they have a privileged relationship with universal values or considers themselves in the position to determine what is truly public and common. There is no worse particularist than one who is unable to recognize his or her own particularity: males without gender, states that enjoy the monopoly of good intentions, religions that administer natural law – the watchdogs of the world who have no oil needs. Universalism is an aspiration for everyone, not an attribute of a few, a horizon we need to build among all of us, which no one has special privileges to control. There is no procedure for the configuration of that which is common other than taking seriously the pluralism of our societies, which are more diverse than we tend to assume, and the pluralism of world society, where new agents discuss old hegemonies, where multilateralism is a growing objective, where humanity’s common destiny cannot be designed without the societies that demand trajectories other than the Western one. The unity of struggles that are as apparently distinct as gender, plurinationality or multilateralism resides

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precisely in the ideal of recognition, in other words, in the demand to be respected as decision-making subjects and thus verifying our procedures for representation and participation.

A new equity There are many things that seem to support those who claim that politics is no longer what it once was. Among others, the most provocative, the ones that most strongly demand another way of thinking about and doing politics, tends to be the matters that were believed to be resolved and whose reappearance defies our comfortable normality. There is nothing that causes more perplexity than the persistence of questions referring to identity that appear connected to new demands for recognition and equity. Those who are irritated by this reappearance, those who would wish that the political agenda were different, would do well in knowing that things have always been like this in essence and that there is no reason to think that we will ever stop arguing about things like who we are, who decides and how, who have we left outside, and whether the idea of equality we are using is still valid. This was the question, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the fight against racial discrimination, in the struggle for social rights or when demands arose for gender equality in a society that did not perceive those exclusions, a society in which it was incorrectly assumed, because of the blindness of custom or because of an interest in maintaining domination, that everyone voted or had the same opportunities. Every one of these discoveries, whether as a result of peaceful debates or costly conquests, knocked down other models of identity, decision-making and social integration, and reformulated them in agreement with a more complex and balanced idea of equality. There are still those who judge the parity of gender or the extension of rights as superfluous nowadays, in the same way as liberals in the nineteenth century thought the express formulation of social rights was unnecessary. The new demands for self-government, the problems presented by immigration, the insistence on reforming international organisms in order to make multilateral approaches effective are matters that, with all their heterogeneity, reformulate that old question about whether ‘we’ is coextensive with those who are here. These are questions that we can resolve well or poorly but which must be correctly identified as the expression of a crisis that affects the integration procedures of the classic national state and the instruments of world governance.

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They respond to the exhaustion of a model of integration that was configured in accordance with principles of neutrality, homogeneity and abstract equality, but that frequently enshrined hegemonic situations. They also require us to reopen the file of cultural and political pluralism. The project of making conditions equal by systematically bracketing all types of differences has come to an end. The traditional distinction between public and private attempted to configure a public space that worked with individuals renouncing their identity, through the public abstraction of identity. This was a model based on the prejudice of thinking that in order to constitute the other as equal we needed to wipe the slate clean of that which distinguishes us from those we consider similar to us. There are those who have designated this model a ‘politics of indifference’ (Kukathas 1998, 691). The liberal or republican model functions more with the expectation of transcending differences than providing occasions for their recognition, expression and entanglement. As Taylor affirms, it is a model that is not hospitable towards difference (1995, 248). The procedure of suppressing differences has undoubtedly been a factor promoting the rift with the society of the ancient regime, which was structured on the basis of laws regarding hierarchy and privileges. There is a moment in the abstraction of differences that is indispensable for thinking of ourselves as similar, above and beyond all context. But the problem is knowing whether this procedure is able to manage the pluralism of contemporary societies. Nowadays, we cannot demand assimilation and conformity in order to recognize full citizenship. In my opinion, this model must be completed or transformed in order to confront the challenges that are presented by the new pluralism and the recognition and articulation of regional and worldwide stability. The current world’s great challenge consists of how to articulate coexistence in profoundly plural societies while simultaneously avoiding the communitarian model and the model of the privatization of identities. We can perceive that the idea of abstract equality has nothing left to offer in its minimal ability for integration, which is increasingly obvious. The adherence to legal and political principles is not enough to assure the cohesion of the social space and create the conditions for a common belonging or a shared citizenship. The historical experience stubbornly teaches us that when the construction of the state is carried out with the belief that, in order to progress towards what is common, it is necessary to radically situate oneself beyond differences, the result is that differences are expelled from the public sphere and one’s individual situation is affirmed over that which is common. Sooner or later the public negation of that which differentiates us ends up being perceived as a type of

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exclusion, especially by those who feel that the place they are given in the circulation of social opportunities or in the sharing of power brings about inequality. Lately the demands for equity have taken an unexpected turn, and they demand from us a new formulation of equality that could be summarized as follows: we must once again value differences to make progress in the logic of equality. The same dynamic of democratization that demands radicalizing equality is what leads us to understand identity as politically and culturally differentiated. It would be a question of finding a model of equality that is realized in the midst of recognized difference. We cannot bracket real differences if we want to recognize them as equals; for example, men and women or members of cultural groups that affirm their respective identities or communities with different aspirations for self-government or the states that legitimately aspire to have a greater protagonism in world governance. These are differences that must be recognized between equals, certainly, but as differences. Immigrants, women, different minorities, communities that reclaim greater self-government do not demand privileges, but the state effectively maintains its promises of neutrality. As Alain Touraine noted, talking today about an opposition among individual rights and the collective rights of communities will soon seem as absurd as the opposition that was established a century ago between social rights and bourgeois democracy (Renaut and Touraine 2005, 48). We find ourselves in a situation that can be understood by analogy with the socialist demand of completing formal liberties with material rights to make them truly operative. Individual freedoms cannot be assured without respecting cultural plurality. Individual rights are insufficient for representing differences equitably (Kymlicka 1995, 132). A clear example of this is the recognition of civil rights that the African American community achieved and that is insufficient without public policies oriented to effectively correct inequality. At the same time, traditional human rights doctrines give no answers to certain problems. For example, the right to free expression says nothing about what linguistic policies are adapted in a situation of coexistence between various languages in a single social space; the right to vote does not clarify the question of what, for example, the electoral circumscriptions should be. Freedom of movement does not afford us any criteria to determine what immigration policy should be applied. This requires another criterion and another model, or a correction of the previous one. We are facing a transformation of politics demanded by the deepening of social pluralism. In the contemporary world, there has been a significant displacement that must be taken into account in order to shape realities as

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valuable as the common world, public matters or secularity in order to integrate differences within them and not simply neutralize them; it is not a question of eradicating them but of recognizing them under the rule of equality. Our greatest challenge consists of integrating the individual, not for the privatization of his or her belongings, but for the public recognition of a differentiated identity, as much from the point of view of gender, as from his or her cultural dimension or identification with a particular political community. This is the great dilemma we are facing, the question that greater efforts of imagination and political creativity are going to be demanded of us in the coming years: making progress in extending rights and completing the movement from the abstract universalism of political rights to the concrete universalism of social and cultural rights. There is an old English joke that we should recount to those who continue to prefer, for example, a world governed by men or who believe it would be more prudent for us to be configured by the ‘more universal’ cultures or for us to ask a superpower to provide security for the world or those who would prefer the easy road over allowing all the uncomfortable consequences of growing social, cultural and political pluralism. One person asks ‘How does one get to Biddiscombe?’ and another answers, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.’ Those who feel overwhelmed by the task could, if it makes them feel better, blame this uncomfortable agenda on the immigrants, women or non-aligned states; they could recite the traditional formulation of sovereignty, since the task will continue awaiting them in all its complexity.

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Right to Decide?

One of the symptoms of our political confusion is revealed in the fact that we have not managed to come to an agreement about the level at which decisions should be made. There are supporters of subsidiarity, nationalists, Jacobeans, federalists, secessionists, internationalists, all appealing to a particular democratic principle. It is precisely this appeal to democracy that makes these discussions so intractable. This process of interrogation is present within the states and between them, in compound societies, in multinational arenas and at an international level, in Europe and in what is called world governance. If these were simply matters of method and effectiveness, then that would be one thing; instead, each group’s position is defended as more democratic and even as the only democratic choice, because there are many assumptions, some of which I would like to question here. Perhaps this will help us, if not to solve the problem, at least to see what the problem is, which tends to be half the solution.

Who decides what? A president of the German parliament, who liked to make his official visits in countries where there was something to hunt, had a disconcerting experience in the former German colony of Togo. While he was being driven from the airport to the city, the crowd was shouting something, which intrigued him. His host explained that the word they were chanting, ‘uhuru’, meant ‘independence’, which the guest did not understand since Togo already was independent. The Togolese president explained: ‘Yes, but that was a long time ago, and people have gotten used to it by now’. The world has gone through many changes in recent years, but many people continue to chant their own particular slogan as if nothing had taken place. Concepts such as sovereignty, constitutional frameworks, territorial integrity or

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self-determination need to be reconsidered if we do not want to offer the same spectacle that astonished the German traveller. Societies have become internally pluralized, and nations have persistent aspirations for self-government; at the same time, the environment of interdependencies makes the concept of sovereignty or exclusive decision-making spheres useless. We are living at a time of profound changes in the history of humanity, in which certain ways of organizing life in common are becoming ineffectual faster than our ability to invent others. At these historic times, between the ‘no longer’ and the ‘not yet’, human beings offer diverse performances that could make the Togolese laugh, because there are those who demand what they already have, those who defend what is not in force and those who promise what cannot be achieved. The debate around this question is filled with nonsensical statements and reproaches; slogans are preferred over concepts because they guarantee one’s position to be at an advantage by conferring the superiority of unquestionable evidence. Who can protest the democratic right to determine our own future? How but as a sovereigntist challenge can we describe any initiative that is raised at the margins of the current constitutional legislation (even if the constitution does not foresee any means to modify the political subjects that uphold it)? The positions that are confirmed in this way become procedures that prevent any possible solution because they predetermine the result of the battle. There is no way to politically channel the discussion if ‘we are a people’ (even though not everyone feels that way or a good number would want to legitimately connect their destiny to other people’s) or if that question is settled by a particular constitutional framework (which distributes majorities and minorities in such a way that secession and even modification of that framework are impossible) and the only political subject with the right to decide is the whole of the Spanish people. There are those who establish the political subject independently of its empirical verification and others who fix the rules of the game in such a way that the result of any negotiation is predetermined. Some people make use of a veto when it serves them and contest other people’s vetoes when they find them unfavourable, in such a way that it is impossible to escape the bottleneck created by imposing majorities and the vetoes that they block. Is it possible, in spite of the self-interested and opportunistic use of certain concepts, to imagine a position of democratic coherence from which political conflicts regarding identity and self-government could be resolved? Let us begin with an observation without which complex societies cannot create their democratic coexistence. In compound societies, where there are groups that are resistant to standardization and that have a profound desire for

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self-government, everything that can arise in terms of unity will do so from a place of difference and because of difference. For that reason, the political articulation of difference requires us to move forward with the logic of recognition and reciprocity. Complex and mature political systems cannot be well governed through imposition, unilaterality and subordination, but through agreements and bilateralism. The rules of the game for advanced societies are constituted though agreements and non-imposition. The multilateralism that the most progressive positions demand for the new configuration of the world can also be required as the organizing principle for our societies. Coexistence can be articulated from a principle of constitutional pluralism: political subjects expand their playing fields to the extent that they manage to increase their cooperative riches. The concept of sovereignty understood as the unlimited, indivisible and exclusive exercise of public power should be replaced by recognition of the fact that sovereignty is shared among diverse institutions – at the local, regional, national, state and international levels – and limited by that plurality. From this perspective, the right to configure one’s own destiny autonomously means nothing more than the right to participate, under equal conditions, in the game of shared and reciprocally limited sovereignties. Deciding is always a co-decision, and this presupposes different reciprocal demands for each entity: sub-state societies must respect their internal pluralism and remember that there are common connections that can only be modified through agreement; the states that are home to these communities cannot resolve these issues except with instruments that imply giving up their dominant position and putting into place processes of negotiation or arbitration with undetermined outcomes. Any process that does not conform to these standards will be a historic failure relieved only by the comforting insistence on keeping the tribe united or on ensuring compliance with demands imposed in the name of supposedly indisputable values.

The constitutional paradox I have always believed that the root cause of masculine hegemony is explained by a small error of perception that ends up getting bigger, dominant and even aggressive at times: this is the idea that we males have of ourselves as asexual beings, without a gender, ‘normal’, not being a sex but having a sex, while women are some anomaly that we are generous enough to protect. Something similar

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happens with minorities, accents, distinctive characteristics or the peripheries: they are something that belongs to others. A series of achievements in the second half of the twentieth century stemmed from the discovery of the lack of equity that was concealed in that point of view of reality. Let me make use of this analogy to talk about nations because there are diverse classes among them as well: there are the nations that have always been there and the newcomers, those that are historically authorized and the ones that are in the process of being constructed, those that defend themselves and the ones that need nationalists to defend them. What I mean with this is that there is a blindness towards one’s own hegemony that, in the concrete case of nations, means that there is no national identity that does not take too many things for granted, shutting the door on discussions of other potential forms of self-organization. Nationalists are always others, those who want to question the dominant order, not the ones who are peacefully enjoying the hegemonic state of affairs. Why is it so hard to come to an understanding about these things, in Spain in particular? Because each of us assumes that the subject, the framework or the scope of the decision is unquestionable. When some political leaders give us permission to discuss constituted power, but conclude at the same time that constituent power is sacrosanct or, in terms that are apparently less authoritative, they maintain that everything can be discussed but only within the constitutional framework (and conditions are, incidentally, never right for constitutional revision), they are making self-serving use of that blind spot from which political hegemony is constructed. This is, of course, a point of view that is also shared by those versions of peripheral nationalism that take the subject of the right to decide for granted and are only willing to discuss its exercise. Those who advocate exiting a federal state also take for granted some questions that are precisely the ones that need to be discussed. Affirming that it is a decision that must be made by all the Spanish people – just like that, without any differentiation – presupposes that this decision-making ability in Spain is harmonically divided in a continuum without fissures or fragmentations, as if there were no polycentric reality and the asymmetrical aspirations for recognition or self-government were dependent on the obstinacy of a few marginalized groups. But what if what needs to be discussed is precisely constituent power, the framework of sovereignty or the subject that should decide? Why make it so easy by assuming that the very matters under discussion are pacifically shared? Why not fearlessly examine that blind corner, which is invisible to all national viewpoints and around which all constitutional processes have tiptoed? We would

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be closer to a democratic solution to territorial conflicts if we drew the necessary conclusions from that paradox. Let us be sincere. Saying that Spain is indivisible or that the Basque people have the right to decide is a performative action and not a statement of fact; these are legitimate aspirations, not non-negotiable rights. The relationship between constituent and constituted power, or between democracy and legality, is a true dilemma. The sooner we recognize that, ‘in many instances, constitutional doctrine presupposes the existence of that which it creates’ (Weiler 2001, 56), the less often will we make the error of granting some realities greater necessity than what their contingent character allows. All the discussions about who the subject is for the right to self-determination cannot escape a vicious circle, unless we reify the people and grant them an entity that is unquestionable and above any contingency. ‘The people cannot decide until someone decides who are the people’ (Jennings 1956, 56). In point of fact, no democratic system is capable of resolving the question about ‘who decides what’ in a democratic fashion; they must always refer to a previous framework of sovereignty (Walker 2011, 103–4). ‘The criteria of the democratic process presupposes the rightfulness of the unit itself ’ (Dahl 1983, 103). This paradox always makes the attribution of an action to ‘the people’ problematic. How do we resolve this dilemma? In a democracy, the only procedure for coping with this paradox is to consider the question of ‘the people’ representatively, de-totalizing them, keeping open the question of belonging and considering the people more as a practice than as an entity removed from historical contingencies. Power always has a representative structure; thus the unit is always a represented, false unit. There is no question that the subject of legitimacy is the people, but this cannot be understood nowadays without crystalizing it into a plurality of procedures and institutions that express its complexity. We must think about the demos as a reflexive, debatable, revisable and open polity. We call it pluralism in order to de-dramatize it: at the heart of every constitutional order, of every democratic coexistence, there is an inconsistent ‘we’, a strain and a contradiction, that continuously and provisionally redefines the aspects of inclusion and exclusion. That is why political questions cannot be monopolized by institutional realities, by the organization of society and by ritualized statehood. Politics is instead the place where a society acts upon itself and renews the forms of its common public space. Society did not emerge from the collapse of a community; there is no original division or first unification, no innocence lost from the collective life or an initial institution. This does

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not mean that there is no ‘we’, but that it is of an unstable scale, an open and changeable reality, snatched by human beings from the design of destiny and placed in the realm of what we do with our freedom. That interval between what is constituent and constituted ensures that the people are not limited to any of their representations. ‘Questionability’ forms a part of their collective identity (Lindhal 2007, 21) because in a democracy, totality is only thinkable as a ‘polemical totality’ (Röttgers 1983). Modern societies do not owe their strength to determinants of identity but to resistance against the hypostasis of a lost familiarity as well as against a definitive determination of the social field. If a society wants to remain free, it must reject any totalizing unity between the representative and those represented. That is why ‘questionability’ is a property of our identities, if we want to understand them at the core of democratic values. In practice, how do we eliminate the paradox from this dilemma of democratic identity? Luhmann maintains that complex societies do so by displacing their paradoxes through time (1997, 1061). This proceduralization does not resolve the constituent paradox of the social, but postpones it, transforming it into flexible rules of inclusion and exclusion, reiterating over and over again the question about the ‘we’ so that it includes and addresses its externalities. The unrepeatable and fictitious foundation represents nothing other than the initial non-identity that is fractioned through continuous iteration. This impossible identity recalls that the establishment of a polity is not closed once and for all, that what is common is not original or present, or previous or deducible, but something continuously displaced, postponed, deferred. ‘The collective subject is always in a state of continuing self-constitution, and the judgments it makes will always have a reflective effect upon its own identity as a community’ (Beiner 1983, 143). The heterogeneity of a community that is establishing itself makes it always need to repeat its establishment anew. This is another way of referring to the need to come to an agreement, for a reasonable period, which implies assuming that things are neither fixed nor unquestionable, which is something that those who are most passionate on either side will have difficulties recognizing. The difference between constituted and constituent power suggests a normative horizon that cannot be reduced to legal facticity or to the current constitutional framework, but nor can this facticity appropriate that horizon as if these values could not be realized in a different fashion. For this reason, the commitment between constituted and constituent power should be continuously updated. There are those who deny the principle of revisability for our identifications or political membership with the more sympathetic formula that it must all

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pass through the bottleneck of constitutional procedures (procedures in which certain forms of power, asymmetries and hegemonies that predetermine the solution have been crystalized). Conflicts of this nature in compound states tend to fester because we do not completely recognize the plurality of our own demos and only defend the plurality of others. Why not try to resolve them by asking both sides to commit to not demanding more external recognition than they are capable of recognizing within themselves? Accepting pluralism within ourselves legitimizes us to demand the respect that we are owed by those with whom we coexist in a space that is also plural.

Transnational self-determination During the new Greek finance minister’s European tour in early 2015, he and his German colleague addressed a press conference that revealed European difficulties when it comes to thinking of themselves as a subject beyond their own electorate, which probably explains where the great difficulty of the European project currently resides. At that press conference, Yanis Varoufakis alluded to the commitments that the new Greek government had made with their electorate, while Wolfgang Schäuble reminded him that he also had commitments with his own electorate and that, in any case, one cannot logically make commitments at other people’s expense. Each of these men thinks of himself from a position of self-determination that does not include others, and this is precisely the problem, a problem we will only resolve when we are capable of reconstructing the idea of democratic self-determination from the current position of complexity, especially in a space with interdependencies that are as dense as those found in the European Union. Traditional concepts of sovereignty and self-government used to presuppose a homogeneous concept of the people and a closed idea of political space. But these concepts should be thought of in another way when the extraterritorial effects of politics carried out by the states compromise everyone’s ability for self-government. The states need to move from a contractual responsibility regarding their citizens to a sovereignty that commits them towards the exterior when it comes to certain common goods. Within interdependent states, there is no national justice without some type of transnational justice, nor democracy without a certain inclusion of non-voters. The republican principle of nondomination can only be respected if it also refers to those who, without forming part of the national demos, are affected by our decisions.

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Under the current conditions, self-determination means accepting the effects that the decisions of other national states have over us to the extent that we have had the opportunity to make our interests heard in ‘their’ decision-making processes and, inversely, that we are prepared to make other citizenries subjects in our decisions. If we want to make the principle of democratic self-government effective, we have no choice but to advance towards a new post-territorial congruence among the authors of decisions and their target groups. Current debates about the future of the European Union should be considered in the light of these circumstances. It could be that we then discover the extent to which the European Union is called upon to carry out an essential role in managing the risk that interactions between diverse territories entail, making a certain collective control of externalities possible. A society is not sufficiently self-determined when it is only nationally selfdetermined. The more interdependencies determine the life of citizens, the less their demands of self-determination are limited to the realm of the national state. The open nature of democracies would be betrayed if the deliberative community was always coextensive with the demos of formal decision-making procedures, the national citizenry or the electorate itself. This is the case up to the point where we can talk without exaggeration about a deficit of democratic legitimacy when a society cannot intervene in decisions of others that condition it, but also when it impedes those others from intervening in their own decisions that condition them. In any case, this principle of transnational self-determination cannot be effective without a great institutional innovation, which will continue to provoke resistance and even the declaration of impossibility by those who maintain the national framework as the only normative reference, whether out of self-interest or simple conceptual conservatism. The normative nucleus of representative democracy lies in representatives having an obligation to account for their actions to those whom they represent – and only to them – because it was presumed that there were no effects towards ‘the outside’ that were worth considering or that could not be protected for reasons of state or devalued as a neutral externality. As the interaction between states and their mutual responsibilities increases, the range of those to whom their political decisions have to be justified increases to the extent that they affect them significantly. Democracy implies a certain identity of those who decide and those who are affected by those decisions. Respecting this criterion signifies that the effects of

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the decisions of other nations are unacceptable if we have not had the opportunity to have our issues taken into account in ‘their’ decision-making process and if we have not been prepared, reciprocally, to take other citizenries into consideration in our decisions. We are all obligated to redefine our own interests by including our neighbours’ interests in them in some way, especially when we are connected to them not only by physical proximity or general interdependence, but by institutional community, as is the case with the European Union. In fact, the failure of the Union when it comes to solving the current economic crisis is due precisely to the fissure between political instruments and the nature of the problems. States have been unable to internalize the consequences of interdependence; they continue to impose externalities upon each other and are unable to regulate the transnational forms of power that are beyond their control. As interdependencies increase, self-determination becomes more complex, both in space and in time. Making self-government more democratic today means making it more complex so that it can include interests from distant times and places with which we maintain conditioning relationships and, therefore, certain responsibilities of justice. Self-determination continues to be a basic principle, and democracy would be inconceivable without it; the problem is that, in a world where there is overlapping and conditioning, it must be considered with greater subtlety than when the subjects of those rights (peoples, generations, cultures) were more or less fixed units and could exercise their sovereignty in an isolated fashion. The justification that the representatives owe cannot be resolved at the heart of the electoral base alone; it cannot stop with their immediate interests, pointing instead towards a general obligation for justification that includes those affected by their decisions and the consequences of those decisions. We could summarize this theoretical digression in a warning: be careful with your own electorate because it is, effectively, the only domain of democratic accountability, but it is not the only realm that defines our human responsibilities.

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Part Two

The Political Condition

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5

Political Time

Contingency is the inevitable shadow of politics – a property that fills the entire present with the doubt of the possible. Thinking and acting politically means entering into a space where what dominates is the sense that things could have been different and could have been decided differently, that decisions were made too soon, without sufficient reasons, or with the necessary reasons, but when it was already too late. In the whirlwind of political life, exhausted by that which is immediate and constrained by weighty matters that come into play, those who partake in political life as more than mere spectators experiment intense uncertainty. At the same time as the protagonists make history, they are being judged by their contemporaries, and this double judgement – the judgement of historians and of voters – rarely coincides, which tends to force them to have to choose the approbation of one group, knowing that this will earn them the anger of the other. Not understanding this peculiarity of the political profession – the uncertainty that characterizes and also reveals the nature of our political condition, regardless of the degree of commitment we bring to it – prevents us from reaching true understanding as to its nature, which we need in order to be able to judge it with the severity it deserves. We citizens should make the effort to criticize our representatives with all opportune harshness, but without this criticism being a condemnation of politics itself, which is what always happens when we judge our representatives without having understood what politics is good for and what its conditions are. I am afraid that the current lynching of this necessary commitment, even when justified by the indignation provoked by cases of corruption or special incompetence, reveals that we have not understood the extent to which politics is necessary in a democratic society and what the limitations are that arise less because of political class than from political condition.

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The uncertainty of politics One procedure that is very effective at revealing what political tasks are good for consists of examining some of the criticisms that are habitually levelled at politicians, since these criticisms reveal, even if indirectly, the perception we have of what they do or do not do. Well, then, there is a group of criticisms that have to do with the supposed incompetence of politicians. This criticism may be pertinent in many cases, but let us examine things by shifting perspectives again. Why do politicians strike us as particularly incompetent? What type of activity is politics if it makes those who dedicate themselves to it inevitably seem unprepared and also potentially unprofessional? The main reason for this contempt has to do with a fact that we all too often forget: societies entrust to their political systems the management of the most complex problems, the ones that cannot be resolved through unquestionable professional skill. Many of our complaints about the fact that politicians are incompetent or argue too much seem to forget what is being delegated. Politics encounters a greater concentration of uncertainty and antagonism than other spheres of social life. If politicians are vulnerable to criticism, it is because we have entrusted them with this mission, something we seem unaware of when we forget that their incompetence and discord is due to the fact that we transfer to them the problems that are not resolved through irrefutable competence. It is not that they are incompetent (or not only and not always), but that the problems with which we have entrusted them are unsolvable through professional competence; they run the risk of our discovering their incompetence because we have delegated to them the problems with the greatest uncertainty. They are not the ones who spend their lives arguing; instead, we have pacified our civil society by placing the most controversial problems in their hands; they argue so the rest of us can avoid the arguments that make us most uncomfortable. For our criticism to be just, we should not forget this property that makes politics a particularly difficult, polemical and uncertain activity. Politicians live in a world that is much more contingent than that of the majority of citizens. As Albert Hirschman said, the only virtue essential to democracy is the love of uncertainty, a habit acquired in an open process of information and discussion that questions consolidated beliefs (1995, 118). Politics owes its contingency to the fact that it is an activity in which the decisions that are adopted have a lot in common with bets and are not preceded by indisputable reasons. One must anticipate events within a situation of great complexity. ‘Political intelligence entails more understanding than knowing’

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(Berlin 1998, 81); in other words, more than profound knowledge, it demands an ability to take responsibility for the situation, an understanding of what is in play and a bit of courage. It is a realm of risk and unpredictability, where it does very little good to follow rules, to adapt to dominant criteria or to simply continue on as before. That is why it entails creative strength, but an abyss as well, and those who dedicate themselves to politics must learn to balance on the edge. That is why politicians are particularly dedicated to the contingency of the world. We have chosen to place them there, perhaps so the rest of us can situate ourselves at a less risky location. For this reason, politicians are like soccer coaches, scapegoats or fuses: they fulfil the role of letting us blame someone for our failures rather than disbanding the team or breaking up the society. There are many technical and specialist questions in the political world, of course, and correct decisions cannot be made if they are not preceded by study and technical advice. But the specifically political part of politics comes after the examination of what is objectively determinable: when the specialists and administrators have done their job and it is still not absolutely clear what should be done. It is at this time of limited proof when political vision, hope and the vertigo that inevitably accompanies hope make an appearance. In politics, there is no objectivity, codes and protocols to be applied, measurable amounts, verifiable data, absolute values that can bring an end to our controversies. Or, at least, the specifically political is everything that remains in question once the experts have spoken and the bureaucracy has done its job, when the appeal to values does not completely determine what should be done in a specific case or when decisions have to be made before we have at our disposal the data that would be necessary; but that arrives too late to use. Many of the criticisms of politicians stem from the fact that a politician is someone who decides, who opts for the lesser evil, who cannot make the whole world happy. This is hard to understand for those who have not understood the logic of politics, its character which can even be tragic or, to express it more prosaically, for those who have not learned the distinction between rights and aspirations. It is one thing to express an aspiration and another to decide between real alternatives while assuming the corresponding responsibility. Unlike all those speeches that are full of generalizations, decisions have to be adopted in accordance with a particular situation. ‘Almost any course of action can be counted upon to cause trouble somewhere, but a government must face the reality that it cannot balance its books by expenditure cuts that will have no effect in any region, nor by imposing taxes that no one will have to pay’ (Kroeger 1990). This ‘selectivity’, the inevitably particular and finite character

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of their decisions, leads to incomprehension on the part of those who are used to thinking that the opposite is possible: choosing the absolutely good instead of the absolutely bad, or choosing everything at the same time and making everyone happy. Politics does not choose between the good and the bad but between the bad and the worse or, to present it in a less melodramatic fashion, between two things that are mediocre. This sparks criticism from those who have not understood what it is all about. But in the space of the humanly possible (not only in politics), with limited time and resources, choosing the lesser evil, letting someone down and postponing certain objectives to address first priorities are all inevitable. Issues in politics are not absolutely objective and obvious, but they consist of a combination of diverse criteria that are often contradictory. This demands a certain complexity of political judgement, which the populist discourse is unable to provide. The fact, for example, that in politics there is so little objectivity, that in politics there is more persuasion than demonstration, is what explains that in the popular imaginary, the politician is synonymous with schemer, manipulator or trickster. In any case, the criteria to judge the competence of politicians cannot stem from other areas but from the very practice of politics, which is a quite unusual activity. If politicians strike us like this, it is probably because they cannot be any other way. This is necessarily the case since political activity is carried out within much greater uncertainty than that found in other human activities; this uncertainty is brought about by the type of knowledge that is presupposed, the way decisions are adopted and, as a logical consequence, the type of life that political activity implies. The knowledge, decisions and life of a professional politician imply more contingency than other professionals typically have to negotiate. It is a contingency that has at least three facets: (1) cognitive, (2) practical and (3) existential; in other words, it refers to knowledge, decisions and the life of politicians. Thus, the first contingency of political life has an epistemological character. All social agents, including those who do not want to recognize it, are required to act under conditions of a particularly intense uncertainty. It is no longer possible to justify decisions based on a collectively binding, expert, certain, incontrovertible knowledge. On political questions, the recognition of the expert or authority does not remain uncontested. Due in part to the democratic constitution of the system, almost all political observers feel competent to judge political decisions. It is true that political actors should make decisions based on available knowledge and act as if they were in the know, but perhaps it is more realistic for

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them to renounce absolute certitude and even communicate their uncertainty more. We would need to see what weakens confidence in our political system more: the recognition of politicians’ ignorance and their limited capacities for action or the permanent deception citizens feel because of politicians’ unfulfilled and un-fulfillable promises. Political protagonists should learn to produce confidence while renouncing heroic suggestions for security and bloated expectations. If they were in the position to recognize their own contingency and ignorance, they would probably create confidence in politics in the medium term that would end up affording them the credit they barely achieve by concealing their uncertainty. The second source of political contingency stems from the nature of the decisions that are adopted within the political system. Contemporary society is plural regarding the knowledge it has at its disposal, which is inevitably partial, making the goal of basing its decisions on definitive and non-polemical knowledge illusory. The fundamental contingency of politics has to do with the way decisions must be made and the future that is thus configured, with all the accompanying risk and unpredictability. In the first place, we must keep in mind that complexity and contingency in the political order produce an immense need for decision-making, and it is impossible to escape because a decision must be made. Society lives its future ‘in the form of the risk of its decisions’ (Luhmann 1992, 141). Every decision, like every non-decision, conceals contingent risks, and any alternative simply weighs the advantages and disadvantages differently. Politicians are precisely the type of people who make decisions in spite of having insufficient information and insecurity regarding the future. But we should not think that it is a weight that burdens a few people and forget that it is, more than anything, a general risk that the political system has been able to transform into an opportunity. The historical peculiarity of the democratic system consists precisely of its being a type of organization planned to give opposing responses to an open series of questions (Dubiel 1994, 112). What we know is always accompanied by enormous ignorance, which is why we cannot renounce the epistemological advantages of institutionalized disagreements. It makes no sense to confer the imperiousness of a supreme truth to one’s own goals while discrediting rivals’ goals as false or immoral. The ‘intelligence of democracy’ (Lindblom 1965) stems precisely from this verification that has been put to good use. Democracy is a system based on the experience that, no matter how certain the triumphant majority seems, it is useful to keep the losing minority on hand as a resource to make an alternative possible. This is useful in the case that, as often tends to happen, the current hegemonies are worn out,

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reasons falter and the established majorities are exhausted. It is the same, in the long run, as presuming that there is nothing that is permanent and protected from its own decline and questioning. The third dimension of contingency is found in the very life of those who dedicate themselves to politics. Politics is never lacking in risks and those who want to dedicate themselves to it need to know they are entering into a dangerous terrain, including in the personal arena. A politician is someone who is particularly exposed to contingencies: uncertainty, time pressures, exposure, failure and the type of risk that is assumed or length of time in the position. The wheel of political fortune creates many former politicians. There are cabinet changes that remove a minister who did nothing wrong, simply because there is a need to reinvigorate the bench (the English call this a ‘reshuffling’ of the cabinet). Good politicians should always know that the end of their careers does not depend only on them. Even if we regret that there are those who linger in their positions, it is also true that there is a particular volatility in the upper echelons of politics. In other professions, one is not required to validate one’s continuity with popular support, nor does it depend on such a fragile chain of confidence. Like everything political, the effects of that insecurity could be blind submission or demagoguery, as well as the consciousness that one is there by others’ consent rather than one’s own merits. As noted by Michael Ignatieff, who did not fare better in politics than at the university, ‘if you have not understood that you can lose everything, you have learned nothing about what politics means’ (2013, 161).

Too soon or too late The medium through which politics is carried out is time. One must know how to measure up to time, which can be slow to the point of exasperation, revealing the resistance things have to being modified. There are times when we must confront sudden changes we can barely anticipate; at others, we must anticipate and react before certain things take place; at still others, we must react and repair. In any case, it is a question of combining patience and agility in a non-predetermined dosage. Managing time, which has so much to do with luck, is something that can be learned, but not taught. Not all human activities have such a close relationship with time. An intellectual may be interested in ideas, but a politician only questions whether an idea’s time has come. When we say that politics is the art of the possible, it means that it consists of the ability to

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recognize what is possible at any given moment. The gift of opportunity, the ‘genius of the moment’, as Otto von Bismarck called it, which some may even consider an insignificant detail, is central to political activity. Intuition about timing is essential in politics, an instinct to quickly relate different pieces of information and capture the general idea. All one can do is turn events to one’s favour. That is why those who dedicate themselves to politics tend to be condemned as opportunists, but opportunity is at the crux of politics. Time’s centrality when it comes to politics indicates a problem, not an ability within anyone’s grasp. Only those who are crazy believe they can control time. The most common experience of the political management of time is that we always act either too soon or too late and that being right on is more of an exception than the rule, especially at times that are accelerated or when too many elements are interacting. The following example should suffice to illustrate the complexity of the various temporal registers that should be kept in mind. The time necessary to establish the treaties by which the European Union is governed can be estimated to cover a period ranging from five to ten years. During the most difficult moments of the financial crisis, the timeliest responses to emergencies within the financial markets needed to be made in a one- or twoday time frame. Sometimes it was even a question of hours: the decision about how to calm the financial markets had to be adopted in Europe before two o’clock on a Sunday morning, in other words, before the market opened in Tokyo. To complicate things even further, those who needed to make the decisions had to take democratic responsibility for them or, at a minimum, enjoy legitimacy on the basis of a fiduciary mission that they had been granted democratically. The solution to this problem could be that politics will need to be more proactive and pay more attention to possibilities that are apparently remote (in time and in probability), exactly the opposite of what happened with the crisis in the financial markets in September 2008. This asynchrony refers to a basic problem with a very difficult solution. The temporal structure of the system of representative democracy presumes the compatibility of political time (in other words, the time of deliberation and the time of decision-making) with the rhythm, velocity and sequence of social evolution. The political system should allow time to organize the process of configuring political will, be in a position to react quickly in the face of necessities that arise from every social strata, articulating collective interests in programs, legislatures and executive decisions. Parliamentary democracy implies the ability for politics to stop or decelerate social processes in such a way that there is enough time for reasoned deliberation.

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This ability for a moratorium is a necessary condition for democratic deliberation. When that ability does not exist, politics turns into an executive regime that places decisions above deliberations, which is something that takes place when parliaments are limited to approving what governments have decided under the pressure of time. The democratic self-determination of society requires cultural, structural and institutional assumptions that social acceleration seems to erode. The processes of acceleration, which sprang from utopian desire, were made autonomous at the expense of the hopes of political progress. It has now become clear that the acceleration of the processes of social, economic and technological change depoliticizes to the extent that the synchronization of processes and systems is made more difficult, overburdening the political system’s deliberative capacity, social integration and generational balance. One of our greatest problems derives precisely from the contrast between the speed of social changes and the slowness of politics. Governments are simply too slow in the face of the speed of global transactions. Neither education and politics nor the law can withstand the pace of the globalized world. Their institutions progressively lose the capacity to organize the processes of technical and social acceleration. Governance becomes problematic. Confronting the complexity of decision-making and the media pressure for instantaneousness, political institutions find their sphere of influence reduced, in the best case scenario, to the reparation of the damages generated by the economic and technological system. The political system is faced with a serious dilemma. On the one hand, it must adapt to the accelerated developments of science and technology in order to integrate their innovations into the social system, but on the other hand, it is in no condition to keep pace with the speed at which the knowledge is produced. While technology follows an enormously accelerated course, the speed of political processes is limited by their procedures. This is why the state, which arose as a revitalizing force in modern society, seems to be a force for social deceleration today. Administrations and bureaucracy present themselves as paradigms of slowness, inefficiency and inflexibility. All the processes of debureaucratization or decentralization are motivated by this pressure to accelerate the decisions of public administrations. This desperate search for efficiency also explains the displacement of decision-making procedures from the area of democratic politics to areas that are more agile but less representative and democratic. Examples would include the rise in expert commissions, which are better equipped for the imperatives of speed than parliaments are; the difficulties that

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the legislative branch has in effectively controlling the executive branch because of their differing levels of agility; the fact that politically controversial topics are displaced towards organisms with greater decision-making capabilities (the judicialization of politics) and that civil society is self-regulated (economic deregulation). At the international level, decisions are shifted towards groups of experts or to interest groups that may lack democratic legitimacy, but are much more agile than governmental summits. Even if there is good justification for correcting the political system’s slowness, this raises the question of whether the end result is a strengthening or distortion of the political system’s capacity for intervention. Politics always has an element of ‘idleness’, a time of free discussion and deliberation, that conflicts with the demands of decision-making but cannot be eliminated without placing the legitimacy and rationality of political decisions at risk. The dynamics of acceleration constitute a threat against politics to the extent that acceleration represents a loss of a society’s capacity for political selfregulation. There is a contradiction in the fact that democratic life presupposes self-government and yet we are aware that dominant time frames do not allow for self-regulation. There is real pressure to convert politics into a true anachronism, to remove political structure from the world: the most powerful conditions related to the determination of time are not democratically controlled or controllable. Because of this, some people announce the ‘end of politics’; others, as a response to the ‘ungovernability’ of complex societies, recommend a ‘deregulation’ that actually represents capitulation in the face of the imperatives of the economic movement. For this reason, our great challenge consists of defending temporal attributes – as well as the corresponding procedures for deliberation, reflection and negotiation – in the democratic formation of a political will to counteract the imperialism of techno-economic demands and the agitation of media time. How then do we gain the capacity for political intervention on social processes? Without insisting on formulas that have shown themselves to be inefficient or renouncing the ideal of democratic self-government and thereby abandoning the configuration of the future to ‘societal drift’ (Lauer 1981, 31), a possible solution consists of compensating for the slowness of politics with future predictions. In order to configure collective life, one needs a certain degree of stability that makes social processes comprehensible and, to some extent, controllable. Achieving stability would allow us to formulate preferences and goals beyond the present moment. Planning must entail a system of thoughtful learning that modifies the conditions and methods of its anticipatory behaviour.

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Faced with this panorama, the most liberating solutions do not originate in deceleration or in the flight forward, but in the battle against false mobility. Of course, compensatory slowness, so celebrated in many self-help books about time management, may be a reasonable strategy. I would like to emphasize, however, that saving time is a fundamental anthropological mandate and that, in reality, decelerations are part of a general strategy of acceleration that we could call accelerative decelerations. ‘Slowly but surely’ is not an attempt to waste time but to save it. At an individual level and within organizations, these cunning arguments serve to avoid the wasting of time caused by dysfunctional accelerations. Sometimes, waiting periods can also be employed to solve isolated problems that impede normal activity. The demand for deceleration, as a general principle, is not very realistic or attractive when we consider the political, economic, social and cultural circumstances in which we live. It makes no sense to desire slower calculators, longer lines or transportation plagued by delays. The central question consists of determining, for every activity and at every moment, exactly what will save us time, which will sometimes imply a deceleration and at other times the complete opposite. But it may also be achieved by other means, such as reflection or forethought, or by fighting false mobility. My proposal would, therefore, be an argument in favour of saving time, but rather than doing so by increasing acceleration heedlessly, we should make an effort to fight false mobility in a methodical manner. Ultimately, we can save time through strategic reflection, placing the instant into a broader temporal framework or protecting that which is truly urgent. It is not a question of fighting against time or forgetting about it, but getting it ‘on our side’ (Benjamin 1974, 1199).

On success and failure in politics I have had the opportunity to speak with some politicians who had to leave the profession through the back door, when they still thought they had things to do, or who were removed by a popular hostility that was hard for them to understand. I tried to console one of them with the idea that posterity would judge him better than his contemporaries did, and much better than the members of his own party. He shrugged his shoulders, as if wanting to tell me that would be too late and he would have preferred approval in the present rather than posthumous

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praise. What is at play in this type of argument is the question of what truly constitutes success and failure in politics, how it is measured and who decides. Let us begin on a dramatic note, because it is a part of life in general and political life in particular: politics will always fail because no one ever gets everything they want, but they do get a strong sense of the way events resist their plans. On the other hand, in the context of political pluralism, it makes no sense to seek universal approbation, and there is little undeniable proof of political success and failure. All of this combined makes the common political experience one of certain failure. Chamberlain’s biographer emphasized this tragic element without sugar coating it: ‘All political lives end in failure … because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs’ (Powell 1977, 151). The logical acrobatics of political memory tend to ignore this type of thing, in the same way that politicians, when they are still active, exhibit their own successes and protect themselves from future failures by exaggerating current difficulties. A politician is someone who combines judgement on his or her received legacy with what is politically possible in such a way that he or she is judged with the greatest possible benevolence. If anything is lacking in political memoirs, it is modesty, yet modesty would be the logical conclusion for any political life examined with sincerity. There are many more reasons against boasting than in favour of it, but human beings do not always choose what is most reasonable. I would like to point out two circumstances that recommend not bragging too much about one’s own achievements. The first has to do with the difficulty of measuring success and undeniably attributing it to a particular person. The government’s actual effect on the economy, for example, can barely be measured according to their opportunity costs, in other words, in relation to the effects an alternative decision would have had. Any success should be weighed in relation to the difficulty of the matter and alongside other possibilities. How many political decisions are harshly censured without taking into account what was possible at the moment at which they were adopted? What deserves praise or censure is so relative to a determined context that we should always assess with caution. There is another motive for modesty that has to do with the fact that there are many actors who intervene in this context. Keeping in mind the extreme contingency of everything political, the adjudication of merit or blame is not a minor problem, and we rarely have the evidence that is required to determine who is responsible for things being the way they are, good or bad. Citizens tend to support their governments when the economic situation is good and to

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remove them from office in moments of crisis, without those situations being due necessarily or exclusively to the government in power. In environments of dense interaction, successes and failures have many authors, which partially vindicates individual actors, frequently minimizes responsibility and reduces the scope of the triumph, requiring it to be shared among many. Allocating a success or failure to a concrete government becomes even harder as the problems become more intertwined and the consequences that political programs have on social reality become more diffuse. Is a crisis the fault of those who were in power when it emerged? Will its solution be due to those who governed afterwards? In what way did global circumstances influence each of these groups? There are many risks that undermine the confidence of the electorate but have little to do with the concrete action of elected politicians. In those cases, the fundamental principles of democracy may be weakened – someone is legitimized to make decisions by popular election and that person is responsible for them before a concrete electorate – when in reality the person either cannot do anything or has assumed certain risks for which he or she is not fully responsible. Policies about climate change or the financial crisis present dilemmas of this type; a lot can be done on a state level, but the final result escapes the control of individual actors. When reality is so intermingled and complex, the practical effects of our decisions are less transparent and the whole political debate revolves around the interpretation of the situation. It is not surprising that in these cases confusion is created by the difficulty of ascribing responsibilities, the abundance of excuses and populist manoeuvres that blithely determine whether decisions were good or in error. Does this mean that everything is relative, that nothing can be done or that politics is a space of impossible responsibility? No. It is an invitation to look at things in another fashion. What we can do and demand from others should be formulated in its context and not in the context of abstract possibilities. Politics consists of doing everything possible in a given context and not in any context whatsoever. Both for favourable and adverse situations, the ‘leader’ assumes responsibility, but we know full well that this fiction does not correspond to complete authorship or responsibility. In spite of this, it is part of a political approach to life to know how to recognize and take advantage of these situations. Nietzsche summarized our responsibility by noting that we should measure up to fate. Dealing with political matters, this responsibility is very demanding. Former British prime minister Harold Macmillan offered up a laconic affirmation, in the midst of the planning euphoria of the 1960s, when he was asked what had most modified his politics: ‘Events, dear boy, events.’

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Success and failure are not absolutes. Objective failure can even turn into a political or moral success and enter into the realm of heroism, as with Cato the Younger and his famous suicide with which he expressed his refusal to live in a world governed by Caesar, or the honourable place that history has reserved for Henning von Tresckow, who organized the failed attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944. In any case, political judgement is never definitive because it is exercised within the open history that defines us. In a more banal sense, one should consider the fragility of power or recognition when they are enjoyed and never be discouraged when success refuses to coronate our efforts, because democracy is a political system that on principle does not deny anyone that possibility. The horizon from which success or failure is assessed is different because the determination of what is politically possible is being continually modified at all times. In addition, success is not determined by immediate results; there are many examples of failures that were successes in the long term, in the same way as there are resignations that represent victory. Of course intuiting the electorate’s state of opinion and anticipating and responding to their expectations is part of the art of politics, but that is not sufficient to define a successful policy, since in that case its best example would be the populist with the least scruples. Success in politics and political success are not necessarily identical. Political judgements are continuously being made in society in the short term (surveys, media opinions, elections etc.), but every one of these assessments has its own expiration date. Assessments that are called upon to last require a certain amount of distance. What is a success from close up can be a failure when seen from a distance. History books are rewritten and judgements are modified with the passing of time, either little by little or abruptly. Media buzz, the electoral cycle and historical assessments are controlled by different temporal registers, and it is almost impossible to compete well on every terrain. Only posterity can judge the big political issues rigorously, which will undoubtedly not satisfy politicians who have, in their opinion, been judged too harshly by their contemporaries, which only goes to show that politics is a task that is as difficult as it is lacking in rigour.

6

Political Discourse

Politics is a way of doing things with words. In the face of those who are suspicious of rhetoric and presuppose a perverse simulation in any form of political theatralization, we must remember that democracy is unthinkable outside of that contradictory space of public discussion that we configure with our words and expressions. Defending the polemical nature of politics nowadays is a way of protecting democratic institutions from their possible reification, because this is at the heart of how we defend the idea that citizens can change their minds. They are not incapable of truth but do not own it either. We only argue because we are unsure of certain things, and we presume that other people have a disposition to being convinced just as they presume we do. The value of democracy is that it lets citizens change their minds and their representatives without needing to place the political order as a whole in question. In order to understand the nature of political discourse, we must revise our conception of truth in politics, not to suggest that anything goes, but to expand the contract that connects those who govern with those who are governed, which is not resolved with the arbitration of a supposedly unquestionable objectivity.

Rhetoric and ideologies under suspicion The old suspicion of eloquence is that it is, at its worst, an unnecessary, untrustworthy and deceitful art. Plato formulated the most irreconcilable version of the antagonism between power and truth when he suggested that democratic politics systematically prefers popularity over truth. Since antiquity, the fear of demagogues has nurtured a generalized distrust towards politics, as if the art of governing were nothing more than the ability to trick others and the exercise of power were inevitably linked to lies. Convincing others, which is the fundamental task of politics, has a certain similarity to deceiving

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them, which leads it to being mistaken for the latter. In the history of human societies, seduction and deception resemble each other to the point that they are sometimes indistinguishable. Rhetoric has mobilized people behind great goals, but it has also been capable of offering foolish promises, making them appear possible and reasonable. Great theories of modern political thought have not trusted human understanding to resist the charms of well-articulated discourse. As Thomas Paine noted with scorn, a person who speaks eloquently could make us believe that donkeys fly. John Stuart Mill similarly ventured that if the Newtonian system were submitted to a vote in a democratic assembly in which a good rhetorician was defending the Ptolemaic system, we cannot assume that the former would win the vote. However, those who distrust rhetoric excessively do so because they trust the truth too much. The suspicion of rhetoric is based on the assumption that it is an affront to truth to consider its practical plausibility and its need to be convincing. The truth, they say, is so important that it has nothing to do with feasibility, nor does it need a special communicative strategy in order to be acceptable and to impose, to say it with Habermas, ‘the strength of the best argument’ (1981, 52). The evidence that accompanies it would be enough. In my opinion, this way of seeing things ignores the rhetorical side of politics because it has an objectivist idea of the truth, as evidence that is imposed without the need for persuasion, which is carried out in history without any type of resistance. The prejudice against rhetoric may display excessive naïveté regarding the strength of the truth, but it may also hide things that are worse and harmful for democracy. Behind the accusation that politics is simply a type of verbal excess, we find the implicit idea that the best political regime would be one in which there was no arguing, in other words, where reality was obeyed or, to be more precise, those who dictate the correct interpretation of reality were obeyed. That is why recent attempts by political philosophers to improve democracy have been accompanied by rehabilitations of rhetoric as a legitimate part of deliberation in the face of the authoritarian slant of certain attempts at objectivity (Bohman 1996; Young 2000; Richardson 2002; Garsten 2006). In all human activities that, like politics, share an inevitable lack of exactitude, the nostalgia for precision is always hidden. Many have yearned to end that inexactitude and have thus demanded a more exact language. In the positivist tradition, for example, some people elevated the exactitude of the scientific languages to a universal norm and a paradigm for overcoming disagreements. It is true that there is progress in the fact that a good part of science has managed to rationalize their language to the point of achieving precise formulations.

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Carnap or the early Wittgenstein hoped that positivist language would not exclude anything but music and mysticism. But the language of politics is not scientific or musical or mystical, and that is why it constitutes a scandal in the eyes of its positivist critics. From this perspective, one cannot understand the rationality that is part of politics and its particular use of language. When thinking about the nostalgia for exactitude, it is worth noting that the configurations of ideological language are much broader than a mere register of objective facts. Inventing electoral slogans, catchphrases and mottos, rallying the populace with speeches and shaping public opinion are more important than what those who are pining after objectivity presume. Furthermore, why should we believe that rhetorical devices are a barrier to communication and not the complete opposite? Drumming up support through emotional appeals, metaphors and other elements of eloquence can strengthen dialogue and favour mutual comprehension. The rehabilitation of rhetoric has a lot to do with the role of ideologies as ways in which we attempt to comprehend political reality. We should not ignore any element of the description of reality and of public communication nor ignore the ones that are not highly regarded by the administrators of objectivity. This need to put all of our resources into play is exacerbated in contemporary society since current complexities mean that the political goals we are fighting for can almost never prove their immediate effectiveness. Modern society would be politically unstructured if we could not translate complex circumstances into a format accessible to everyone. While we frequently celebrate a lessening of ideological belief, ideologies are precisely what leads to an integration of society and its groups and allows action in the people’s name. In other words, they configure something like a political will. Ideologies do not attempt to demonstrate the truth, but they focus on practical devices: they confirm prejudices, encourage doubt, demand or dissuade, diminish or nurture resentments, provide feelings of belonging, certainties and precautions and so forth. Let us consider the concrete case of how ideologies help us form an opinion about political events (no matter how much and how often this function has been perverted or disappointed by reality). We are overwhelmed by all types of information that openly surpass our capacity for assimilation and direct verification. It is not within the reach of our individual abilities to get a comprehensive fix on the workings of the financial markets, the complexities of geopolitics or budgetary details. We are under constraints that force us to express our opinion on the most diverse topics, without interruption, with limited time and without the ability to verify them personally or measure them

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with the criteria of our reliable experience. The primary function of ideologies, the political parties and labour unions is simplification and the schematization of the social world. To state it in a Kantian fashion: ideologies form their opinions based on the confusion of information seen through the a priori interests of the group. They diminish the contradiction that exists between the obligation of having an opinion and the ability to have an opinion that is felt by anyone who is bombarded on a daily basis about matters for which he or she has no direct experience. Of course this function can be distorted or, simply, revised by each of us individually, but it makes no sense to scorn it on principle. A minimum of ideological integration is necessary to organize a coherent political will and a political action with some small degree of consistency. Ideologies allow us to determine political objectives and establish solidarities among various agents; these categories allow us to know who we are and what we should do, establishing fundamental distinctions that let us sketch out a first draft of our position in the public space. The fact that the main concepts provided by ideologies – whether right- or left-wing, social market economy, welfare state, humanitarian intervention, liberalization, pluralism, solidarity – are not very precise is not a failing, but a way to make their political efficacy possible. Their generality allows them to adapt to the unforeseen through adequate interpretation in every case. It is precisely their lack of exactitude that allows us a minimum of guidance without which political action would be impossible: they establish opinion, create a sense of belonging, establish complications, mobilize or dissuade us. Politics would be unthinkable without this lack of exactitude in the language that has its primary expression in the inevitability of rhetoric and in the orienting effect of ideologies. Political language is not precise because the political world itself is imprecise. And the fight against this confusion begins with the first ideological schematism that we complete as we are able to manage our learning of deception.

Doing things with words Aristotle recommended not discussing words, something along the lines of declaring perpetual peace regarding words. He was obviously referring to the discussion about words that replaces the discussion about things. It does not seem that Aristotle would have overlooked the evidence that words are often the things we need to discuss. Aristotle himself, although he advised against

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discussing words, said that we do not deliberate about things that we do not believe can be changed. By categorizing political matters as contingent, he was recognizing that politics cannot be anything other than discussion. In The Eumenides by Aeschylus, politics is characterized as agathon eris, or the fight for what is good. The polis is closely related to that which is polemical. The political is polemical, and politics is a special case of the discussion of words. The Aristotelian recommendation of not arguing about words cannot be followed in any situation. This would only be possible in depoliticized semantic spaces. There is even the paradox that the very call for consensus presumes that it does not in fact exist, that we are instead in the midst of a disagreement about political things, where peaceful evidence does not hold sway. There is an insistent mistrust of the rhetorical side of politics, from the old conservative criticism of parliament to the modern populist or technocratic criticisms of the representational institutions that are, deep down, institutions meant for discussion. An activity that consists fundamentally of speaking, discussing and criticizing may seem suspicious to those whose job makes them accustomed to clear and undeniable results, and they expect something similar from politicians. In this long-standing criticism, they lament the fact that the political system is a space where one speaks rather than does. They prefer to act without having to give explanations; their objectivity is unquestioned and they attempt to spare themselves from discussion so as to be as efficient as possible. They prefer to free themselves from the nuisance of having to persuade anyone; they know what people want without needing to ask or waste time in a long deliberation to create political will. In the end, this would mean replacing discussion with expert judgement, in its technocratic or populist version. It presumes the existence of an objective reality in the face of which the speaking politician appears as a fabrication and showman, lacking effectiveness and decision-making abilities. There is also a populist version, which coincides with the technocracy in that there are things that they take for granted; in this case, the immediate will of the people is as little subject to discussion as the authority of the experts is in technocratic thinking. Whether or not some people like it, whether it seems too much or too little, politics is action through linguistic channels, to borrow the title of the famous John Austin book (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Politics is carried out through the medium of language. When it stops being spoken, politics is over. That is why language means something different for the politician than it means for a surgeon or a soccer player. There may be excellent surgeons or soccer players who do not know what to do with the language, and this may not make much of

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a difference to them since what is decisive in their profession is not played out in the realm of language. But in politics, it is not easy to distinguish words from actions. Political statements always have the nature of actions and always have a practical context. They refer to political circumstances and, by the very act of being enunciated, they intervene in those circumstances. The rhetorical tradition has always known this, and it has provided many clues to understanding the meaning of political speeches: when there is an attempt to join or reject, when they seek change or stability. It would be a mistake to understand the rhetorical element of speech as a subsequent, cosmetic or decorative application, with words whose only function was to reflect an objective situation. This means, in the first place, that in politics language has a performative nature; speaking is a form of doing. There are recent examples that show the power of speeches and words: consider, for example, the 1960 speech in which de Gaulle declared that Algeria was a part of France but simultaneously opened the path to self-determination; consider the I Have a Dream speech given by Martin Luther King in Washington in 1962, which was decisive in mobilizing the struggle for civil rights or Draghi’s magical words on 25 July 2012, when he declared his intention to do whatever it takes to save the euro and thus effectively managed to calm the markets. A single word from a finance minister can mobilize a great deal of money on the market and devalue a currency; a careless affirmation by a foreign minister can damage the relationship between countries for many years. When political language fails to reach citizens, is incomprehensible or means nothing to them, it is the nature of politics itself that suffers. Politics also means doing things with words because in politics there is always something more than mere description. Political language almost never transmits neutral information; instead, speaking becomes an assessment and an action. For that reason, politics is a space for promises, aspirations, commitments, assessments or mobilizations, operations that go far beyond the simple description of objective realities. Of course, in politics there is also information about objective facts. But within politics, things are not concluded, but begin, with information. Actions always aim to modify the situation, to the extent that those who inform also want to do something with the situation. These informants are more than simple recorders of facts and even when their full role is not obvious, they are doing more than recordkeeping: conserving, earning acclaim, encouraging change or giving themselves an air of respectability. In politics, there is no such thing as a non-action, a mere description, neutrality; those who do nothing are also doing something and thus incurring responsibilities. Those who

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are simply describing exclude from their descriptions any assessments that present them in less than a favourable light and those who brag about neutrality are thus taking a side while pretending not to take it. Another area of political discussion is the struggle for appropriate words. Anyone who says that politics is nothing but talking seem not to understand that words are not only words but positions. The struggle for words is something more than a fight for words alone. As Rorty said, we change our way of thinking when we begin to use different words and true political combat often consists of winning the battle about how to name or recount certain things. This is the context in which the struggle over ‘the retelling’ of a particular event or the use of euphemisms to name a reality is carried out. Political confrontation is a struggle for words, around what things are called or to save particular words from the usage to which adversaries have subjected them (Lübbe 1975). The choice of words is actually a very subtle issue and a fight against one’s political adversary includes the fight against the political usage that person makes of language. There is also a struggle to rescue words from the adversary, determining their ‘true sense’, which, more than a verification of facts, implies a performative language: we want the word to mean something different than what the adversary intends. Politics is the art of procuring acquiescence in an environment of public confrontation, and in order to do that, we must use words that represent something of value for the person being addressed. Not using those words because the rival employs them with a different meaning would mean conceding that the rival has the right to make an exclusive determination of the values that are alluded to with those expressions. Of course, we could say, ‘We will leave those words to the enemy and instead focus on the issues named by them.’ In any case, we should refuse to let others take away our right to do what we want with words. At any rate, a change in vocabulary cannot be decreed, and it takes place within a struggle in which others propose different words and meanings. This is not like that Woody Allen movie in which a guerrilla leader in a Latin American country decrees that the new language is going to be Swedish from this point forward. Within a space of public controversy, political agents propose a certain use of language, a retelling of events or a certain meaning for particular terms and so forth, but the final result of that struggle, the public acceptance of the retelling or meaning is as indeterminate as democracy itself. There is another facet to doing things with words: doing things with gestures or political dramatization. Politics has the tendency to develop in the world of ‘appearances’; it is not carried out in the private realm of the conscience, nor in

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the hidden profundities of authenticity. Politics cannot be done without a certain amount of dramatization; it is continually being staged. All encounters between human beings have something of the theatrical to them. We must represent ourselves in order to be understood, especially in politics, where issues that affect many people are in play, where there is an attempt to convince and objectivity is generally not indisputable. Decision-making politics is inseparable from politics as representation. The same suspicion that has taken hold against the rhetorical side of politics finds motives to distrust its theatricality and to denigrate it as mere spectacle or simulation. The staging is considered inauthentic, like an appearance without reality. However, politics is a series of actions in which there is content, expression and gestures, and it seems impossible on principle for politics to be carried out in the absence of any of those elements. Anyone who wishes to transmit certain contents convincingly has to find the most appropriate forms of expression, which also includes certain gestures. The staging can be criticized when it attempts to deceive or when it is in contradiction with the issue being addressed. This is one of the ambivalent aspects of politics today: it cannot be analysed without considering the communicative and symbolic elements. These factors make a complex reality more comprehensible, but they often expand the theatrical side of things to the point where expressive excitement ends up as a substitute for the shape and depth of the issues. To judge the articulation of all of these aspects of politics correctly, one must reflect upon the ways in which the value of truth should be judged within it.

Truth and lies in the extra-political sense In the same way that Nietzsche (1999) extended the suspicion against truth as a construct to name other things, we could say that there is a certain use of the term ‘truth’ that is used to pretend an objectivity that some people believe they wield. Political logic is only understood if truth and lies are conceived in an extra-political sense or, better yet, only in agreement with the logic that defines the specific game of politics and not with the parameters of other activities. Democracy is a regime of opinion and not a conflict between truths in search of scientific ratification. ‘Democracy is government by discussion because it is government by opinion’ (Urbinati 2014, 31). The objective of democracy is not to achieve truth (although many citizens think it is and many politicians say it is) but to make a decision with the contribution of all citizens, on the basis that

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no one – triumphant majority, privileged elite or the untainted populace – has privileged access to the objectivity that would spare us the long haul of public discussion. In this sense, one can understand why Rawls said that a certain conception of ‘the whole truth’ was incompatible with democratic citizenship and legitimate power (1999, 579). The specifically political form of battle is the result of a complex tension between subjects. The interpretation of this result belongs to the very object of that fight. That is why politics is a struggle for interpretation and, because of that, it is perfectly reasonable to dispute how electoral data or the economic situation, for example, should be interpreted. The attempt to impose certain criteria to assess them is rather depoliticizing and useless, since in politics there is generally no judge or objectivity beyond the discussion itself. Democracy is not a system to resolve given problems, but to identify the problems and turn them into something that should be publically discussed. The very concept of the ‘political’ is a political concept; in other words, it has a polemical sense. The decision about whether something is political or not, about whether it should enter into the political agenda, is always a political decision. This also means that, strictly speaking, there are no political problems; there are problems that are labelled as such and confronted politically. The political is constructed precisely by how the situation is defined. From this perspective, one can understand that the task of political institutions is not to configure procedures to make a ruling on the truth of opinions in conflict. The cognitive element is essential here, but it is not an end in itself, and more importantly, it is not lacking in assessment. It is not ‘objective’ the way some judgements about the natural sciences can be, but it is instead in that typical normative way of judicial procedures. Those who are upset because politics is riddled with rhetoric, very close to pretence and demagoguery, are forgetting what distinguishes it from science. What is in question in science is the truth; in politics, the focus is instead on what is correct (that which is opportune, just, viable, economic, unifying etc.). The question of truth only has a place in politics at the centre of a group of values that are in conflict; the determination of what is correct takes place within the group. A particular tax is not true or false but just or unjust. The determination of whether or not it is opportune can only take place if a variety of aspects are taken into account: the government’s financial necessities, the economic possibilities of individuals, criteria of justice and redistribution and so forth. That is why it is normal that political actors assess the same facts in different ways, and their conclusions about what is correct are different as well.

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All of the preceding should help us put the current judgement that politicians lie or fail to fulfil their promises into context. There are those who claim that current politics involves more lies than in the past, to the point that they affirm we are living in a post-truth environment (Oborne 2005). If I take issue with this affirmation, it is not meant as a defence of any particular actor, but as a defence of the profession, which is another matter entirely. I do not mean to excuse politicians from their obligations but to avoid the simplification of the contract that connects those elected with the electorate and to give that contract all the strength it has in a democratic society. What can it mean to speak about truth and lies in an extra-political sense? In the first place, that politics does not speak the truth in a simple fashion because there is often no simple truth to tell. For many political matters, trying to judge them with this parameter understood in the manner of an adaptation to an objective reality is a crude simplification. What we can and should expect from our politics is something much more demanding that hearing the truth. On the other hand, the question of truth or lies in politics has to be weighed in the midst of a muddle created out of the complicity of untruthful politicians, citizens who do not always want to hear the truth and means of communication that would destroy anyone who stated the truth. This is the context in which politicians find themselves forced to be on the defensive and moving within a state of ambiguity because they know that citizens have gotten used to navigating the political arena within frameworks of polarization, while the media barely offer space for balanced discussion, seduced as they are by anything that generates scandal and disagreement. I am not denying that politicians lie, but I believe that the word ‘lie’ is too crude to describe their communication practices. Political speech has its own logic that cannot be reduced to other types of acts or languages. One must distrust, as Bruno Latour advises, those who accuse others of lying in politics. The lie is a category that belongs to the arena of morality. It is, for example, very common that after having made a promise, reality, in other words, the balance of power, the limiting context, impedes or conditions its realization. This does not mean that there is no sense of ‘truth’ and its opposite in politics. Truth exists in politics ‘scattered throughout institutions, written into its practices, captured in our indignations and judgments…. There is a whole savoir-faire of speaking well and acting poorly in politics’ (Latour 2012, 348). We should focus on these practices of political speech in order to formulate our judgements accurately. I do not mean with this to reduce or remove the importance of political responsibilities: quite the opposite. If we maintain a criterion of truth in politics

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as something reductively linked to objectivity, we exonerate from responsibility all uses of the language that, like promises or commitments, have a very indirect relationship with objectivity and which are only held accountable with other registers that are different from the question of compliance with an objective reality. The judgement we render about musical works is not less demanding than that of scientific declarations although the question of objectivity does not make much sense in music. Therefore, the political task of doing things with words can be more difficult than telling the truth. We have the right to demand much more from the political system precisely because we do not have to lose time demanding that it tell the truth.

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Politics of Emotions

One of the oldest contrasts in our culture is between emotions and reason, and politics has been constructed on the basis of this dichotomy. Modernity has been a time for rationalizing the social space, which is primarily understood as a need to make feelings serve the nature of reason or subordinating sentiments to bureaucratic logic. Madison warned against irregular passions that place ‘the cool and deliberate sense of the community’ in danger (1995, 371), and Max Weber famously affirmed that politics should be done with the head and not with other parts of the body (1992, 62). The Weberian concept of the ‘disenchantment’ or ‘rationalization’ of the world is nothing but the attempt to neutralize the dark world of the emotions: thus the prestige accorded to impersonality, objectivity and distance, which characterize the modern bureaucracy. This way of thinking has suffered profound transformations that have also affected the role given to emotions in the political process. The contrast between objectivity and feelings, between arguments and emotions, which was so well-loved by the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers of the American Republic, is in reality profoundly suspicious. Claiming that dispassionate discourse is more neutral and more rational is nothing more than a rhetorical strategy that wants to conceal interest under the mask of a fictitious neutrality (Young 2000, 63). For democracy, the problem of rhetoric stems not from introducing emotions into the political game but from the fact that the relationship between the elites and common citizens is constantly dominated by plebiscite tendencies, which simplify problems and reduce possible choices to binary ways of thinking. What we find in contemporary forms of populism is a type of sentimentality that ends up filling the gap of a politics without passion or enthusiasm. We will be unable to avoid sentimental instrumentalization as long as we fail to grant emotions a dignified place in the political processes of democratic societies.

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Rationalists and sentimentalists Emotions are hugely important when it comes to configuring the public space (Camps 2011; Nussbaum 2013). Those who see in emotions only an element that would distort the rationality of political processes are mistaken. In the first place, the rhetorical and hypothetical aspects of a decision, which focus on the future, make political deliberation something more than a cognitive function; it is a complex, emotional process where, more than the coupling of true/false, there are criteria of just/unjust or opportune/inopportune. This process sets in motion actions of identification and mobilization. On the other hand, while it is true that emotions can act as elements of de-politicization, they can also contribute in an irreplaceable fashion to the shape of public goods. For example, we need trust for the smooth functioning of the economy and collective hope for political mobilization; traffic authorities try to ensure that drivers are not too intrepid and may even encourage a little bit of fear, while the people in charge of encouraging innovation want citizens to be less fearful and to risk more. These examples illustrate the extent to which political action has to do with governing social emotions. Politics should be able to impact these emotions, in the same way as it attempts to manage other aspects of civic responsibility that are relevant for the achievement of the general interest. It is true that we come from a culture that is not very sure about what to do with emotions and that there is, on this topic, a sharp division between those who are deeply mistrustful of the presence of emotions in politics and those who, with the knowledge of that sentimental vacuum, use feelings in a populist fashion. As so often occurs with polar opposites, the two sides feed off of each other: one side’s insistence that politics should be emptied of emotions is seen by the other as an opportunity for filling the empty space through sentimental mobilization, which increases the mistrust of the first group and continues fuelling the spiral of dissent. The secret point of agreement between the two groups is the conception that feelings are irrational motivations outside of the realm of politics that invade and distort the political process. The only thing that differentiates rationalists and sentimentalists is that one side fears this invasion and the other celebrates it, but both coincide in their belief in a depoliticized emotional arena and a self-sufficient political sphere. They understand feelings as something that individuals possess, but not as something that is socially constructed. Conceived in an essentialist fashion, feelings remain outside of the political sphere and of

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public discourse; they are thought of as a resource that can be had at any time and that could be integrated into a de-democratizing political project; in other words, they view them as a latent threat. This de-politicization of the emotional is one of the things that most impoverishes our public life. Emotions can be placed at the service of renovating democracies, although we need to think of another way to articulate them for that. One of the modern myths that we should revise is that politics and feelings are mutually exclusive. This is a corollary of other contrasts such as reason– feeling, knowledge–emotion, culture–nature, man–woman, public–private. The simplicity of these dichotomies does not lead to anything good, whether we seek to understand our social reality or to intervene in it in a positive fashion. One of the collateral effects of these dualisms has been to favour masculine hegemony. The bureaucratic–rationalist model has not lead to the triumph of neutrality and impartiality but to an enshrining of the polarization of the genders; in other words, the public world of men is de-emotionalized and the private world of women is hyper-emotionalized. This way of thinking continues to be dominant in spite of the promotion of quotas and the division of labour. In addition, the bureaucracy is not neutral from the point of view of gender but is instead a de-feminization of the public order. The Weberian idea of rationality presumes the construction of a particular type of masculinity based on excluding the personal, the sexual and the feminine from any definition of ‘rationality’ (Pringle 1988, 88). Our model active citizen is a man without emotions who rationally pursues his self-interest based on a calculation of utility. Expressions of emotion in the public arena are devalued as a display of incompetence. Institutions and political processes are viewed as removed from the personal or sexual condition of their ‘authors’, as instrumental and devoid of emotion. Emotions or gender have, at most, the rule of external variables of the public space. Feelings are politically dysfunctional, and lead to chaos to the extent that they prevent knowledge and make it hard to make decisions. How is it that people are surprised that we pay attention to the way female politicians dress? Is it not because it awakens, upon the background of our dominant stereotypes, the atavistic suspicion that women, like emotions, distort the nature of politics? One of our greatest challenges when it comes to rethinking the role of politics consists precisely in examining how feelings shape the public space and what role they play in it. Only then can we establish when and why emotions weaken democracy and under what conditions they serve, on the other hand,

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as democratic and liberating resources. We should consider feelings as a form of political experience and of social knowledge. Emotions are present in all fields of life and in all actions. There is, for example, no knowledge without emotion. Feelings and rationality are not mutually exclusive. Both are social practices, and both are specific forms of knowledge. We also know through fear or trust, which are ways of relating to reality in a cognitive fashion. Norbert Elias’s idea that the process of civilization implies control over affectivity is very likely true (1978), but this cannot be interpreted as if feelings were something wild and purposeless in our personal and collective lives. Feelings are not reactions that emerge out of people’s deep and irrational spaces, bursting into the space of politics. Feelings cannot be imprisoned in a private sphere in which they could be ‘satisfied’. The public arena is also an area where the emotional can circulate legitimately, and the politicization of emotions can lead to democratic renovation. The public space is not revitalized by de-emotionalizing it, but by re-politicizing and democratizing feelings. The weakening of institutions that used to provide identity and integration has left a void that is frequently filled with populist emotional discourses. A new order of feelings is being configured, and governing them adequately is a task that is as difficult as it is inescapable. It is very similar to what Marcuse proposed when he spoke of eroticizing politics, which is perhaps the only way to take it away from those who are self-interested and to make it interesting again.

Emotional–populist disorder The advance of populisms is a problem that should be considered as a symptom. Populism is credible because something is not going well and the populist seismograph helps us identify it. For populism to become something more than the sectarianism of a few marginalized fanatics, there must be both an unresolved problem and weak institutions. The success of charismatic outsiders is only explained by a weakness in the leading elites, such as a failure of their speeches, which are neither intelligible nor credible, without forgetting that populisms would not be successful if there was not a society prepared to believe in them. What are the structural conditions of our current political culture that explain this emotional–populist disorder? We could begin with the following observation: social spaces today – which are shapeless and diffuse, increasingly less governable by the states, unified by the

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media and overcome by a process of globalization that still does not bring them together institutionally – are very vulnerable to sentimental announcements. In every country and every global space, there are events that provoke a strong emotional release. When political spaces do not delineate or protect, then there is no one to stop emotional globalization. Emotional release flows freely without anything limiting its deployment. Deregulation, in addition to being an economic process, also affects the register of emotions. For example, think concretely about the emotional effect of tragedies, which are no more dramatic today than they were at other times, but they now move us in an unprecedented fashion. There is a commonality to the response provoked by a tsunami, terrorist attack, war or stock market panic: an emotional electricity that creates communities of indignation, as powerful as they are ephemeral. Fear and its rhetoric occupy a fundamental place among these emotions. We live in a world of open spaces, which also signifies a certain lack of protection. The wealthiest citizens have celebrated this vulnerability as a victory for freedom (like less regulated markets or greater mobility), but those who are most vulnerable feel insecure and abandoned, which makes them fertile ground for populist promises. Many of society’s emotional outbursts have to do with the fact that people feel fear, a fear that is more closely related to a lack of economic protection on the left and the loss of identity on the right, although it all blends together, leading to emotions that are hard to interpret and manage. In this world, the types of security that only work in closed spaces are no longer effective, but people have the right to similar protections under the new conditions. As long as politics is unable to provide equivalent security, societies will have reason to trust the empty promises of populism. Emotional spaces originate with a particular social susceptibility; we live in a culture of affectation, in a ‘society of emotions’ (Schulze 1992), that dramatizes everything, turning it into a spectacle and an emotional experience. The means of communication place society on a permanent emotional alert and thus maintain the attention necessary to awaken the corresponding emotional content of every particular case. The emotional space is now space par excellence, the replacement of the space we imagined guided by ideological confrontation and articulated by corresponding institutions. Catastrophes now have an enormous capacity for bringing people together. The spontaneous expressions of solidarity they provoke have modified our moral sensibility as well, giving way to an ethics of long-distance assistance that is typical of the unified world (Chatterjee 2004). This solidarity leads to

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an authentic relationship with ‘the generalized other’ (Mead). In addition, catastrophes have great political significance, to the extent that they are at times the only thing that can provoke electoral upsets when the public is, at the same time, both politically apathetic and emotionally agitated. There are many examples of electoral changes that would not have taken place if there had not been an emotional event of this type, leading voters to sanction corresponding reactions. As is logical, wars are another source of dramatization with a special ability to encourage participation. At a time when identifications are rather weak, indignation seems to be the most powerful social connector. It is also worth noting how politics becomes victimology: it is the art of dramatizing in a convincing fashion and benefitting from the emotional strength generated by the victims of injustice. All these phenomena reveal the institutional weakness of our societies, the difficulty politics has in expressing collective emotions in a reasonable manner and providing an adequate course of action. We should probably take Luhmann seriously when he notes that ‘modern society is more threatened by emotional excess than is assumed’ (1984, 365). The diverse ethical, affective and emotional contents – which confer their subjective and distinctly human meaning to the relationships between people – have not disappeared, but they tend to express themselves on the margin, against institutions, in spaces of intimacy or on an emotional register when specific events, such as a catastrophe or terrorist attack, take place. In our society, collective sentiments ‘float’, dis-articulated and dissociated from the mechanisms regulating social life. There is a kind of subjective energy that is not anchored and has no sense of responsibility. Emotional deregulation seems to unfold in parallel with similar processes of the globalized economy, and they reproduce, in spite of their simultaneity and universality, the same lack of a common world. The emotional burden that dramatic events generate would not be possible without our current means of communication. While London and Paris only found out about the Lisbon’s 1755 earthquake two weeks later, the current ecumene of TV viewers makes catastrophes into immediate and simultaneous events. In contrast to the ideas put forth by Rousseau, who could not imagine a society with the means of communication that exist today, the feeling of humanity is not weakened when it is extended across the whole world; misfortunes do not affect us less when they are more physically distant. Distance and closeness are measurements that have been disrupted in the global world and because of the media (Ritter 2004). One of the distances that have been suppressed is emotional

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distance, which does not always correspond to geographical distance. A society, whether domestic or worldwide, remains connected to the extent and in the manner that the means of communication keep it united. In other words, it is connected with the same characteristics that surround the world of media, and with the laws that govern that particular market of attention, which is selective, unpredictable, sensational, simplifying, emotional and schematic. For the means of communication, the world exists as a scandal and catastrophe. That is why feelings of vulnerability, lack of protection and insecurity are permanently on alert. In media spaces, the news and their corresponding affective charges flow very quickly, without the modifying effects of distance or compartmentalization. This excess has a lot to do with the institutional fragility of a world that is unformatted and lacking in protocols; the amorphous nature of feelings corresponds in turn with the properties of a ‘risk society’ (Beck 1986), with a type of socialization that is not based on shared values and norms, but on common threats, such as risks, catastrophes or crises. Our connections are constituted more by what we fear or what upsets us than by a positive integration. Compassion, which is a sign of humanity, also has its vagaries (Lipovetsky 1992; Béjar 2001). Our emotional spaces, like our attention towards the world, is frequently selective, arbitrary and inconsistent. The attention agenda is configured in a rather capricious fashion and tends to prioritize whatever is most sensational. It also has a bad memory. The most intense emotions tend to be the most quickly forgotten. This ease of forgetting, when it comes to other people’s tragedies, was pointed about by Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. In any case, dramas exist before the media notices them, and they persist when the media stops paying attention as well. Indignation or the feeling of compassion is a particularly valuable reaction that can also turn extravagant. It is true that society would be poorer without the compassion that is provoked by other people’s problems or without the wrath generated by injustice. But emotional currents, when they are not articulated politically and institutionally, raise both waves of generosity and fits of hysteria. It is not that human beings have become more selfish or insensitive; we have never stopped being interested in other people and promoting very powerful movements of solidarity. But it is not possible to place these amorphous measures in the service of society without institutional interventions. Politics, so reviled at times and for sentimental reasons, is precisely the way to give all of it a concrete, lasting, reasonable and efficient form. Politics consists of civilizing the emotional and impeding the instrumentalization of emotions, transforming feeling into

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action and assigning responsibilities where they were lacking or where there was nothing but generic accusations. Politics does not repress emotions because it lives off of them; the history of many social advances begins with a particular indignation. But without the work on emotional immediacy, the background anxiety that pulsates within our best emotions would remain unsatisfied. That is why the struggle against the emotional–populist disorder is not loosed as much in the call for intangible values as in the mobilization of emotional resources, from fear to hope. Politics is a way in which to give social emotions a path forward such that they can be constructive and not destructive. Populism is precisely a reaction to the lack of politics, which in its current configuration does not allow a political articulation of emotions. The success of populism is explained because politics has not managed to institutionally translate feelings that are widely spread throughout certain sectors of the population, which now only trust those who promise what they cannot provide. If we expel emotional excesses and the incalculable moments from politics, we are destroying politics itself, since it is partially made up of emotions. The public space is not a drawing room conversation among intellectuals; emotions and a certain amount of dramatization are a part of the society of the masses. If moderate politicians ignore these emotional conditions, they are welcoming the taboo breakers, leaving the stage at their disposal.

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The Importance of Reaching Agreement

Former Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol was tireless when it came to seeking agreement. It was said that he was such a supporter of compromise that, when asked whether he wanted tea or coffee, he would answer, ‘half and half ’. At times, the desire to find a compromise can disguise the fact, so indicative of our political condition, that we must often choose between good causes that are not entirely compatible, that agreement is not always possible and that we often have no choice but to make a selection. More than a regime of agreements, democracies are systems for coexisting when there is profound and persistent disagreement. Nevertheless, on issues that define our social contract or when there are especially serious circumstances, agreements are very important, and it is worth our while to make our best effort to achieve them. Even if continuing to disagree can be better than giving in to a bad compromise, even if compromises are (sometimes correctly) considered a mere question of a balance of powers or the result of negotiations among people with no principles, there is one reality that stubbornly prevails: disagreements are more conservative than agreements, and the more polarized a society, the less capable it is of transforming itself. Being faithful to one’s own principles is admirable, but defending those principles without any flexibility means condemning oneself to stagnation. Democratic politics cannot produce changes in social reality without some type of mutual surrender. If agreements are important, it is because the costs of not agreeing are very high, essentially assuring the status quo, which is particularly germane in a world where serious problems get worse when they are abandoned to inertia. We should reject stagnation more today than ever before because the costs of delaying opportune decisions are very high.

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The dramatization of antagonism Disagreement in politics enjoys an exaggerated prestige. Radicalizing criticism and opposition is the most helpful way to get noticed, which is a compelling need in the attention-getting struggle that is typical of today’s societies. It is true that democracies would be poorer without antagonism and dissent, but that is not a testament in favour of any and all disagreements, nor does it always honour the opponent. The majority is not necessarily right, of course, but neither are those who are opposed on principle. Disagreeing is often an automatic reaction that is less imaginative than striving for agreement. Ritualized, elemental and foreseeable antagonism turns politics into a battle where it is not a question of discussing relatively objective issues, but dramatizing necessary differences in order to maintain or achieve power. The antagonism of our political systems functions in this way because public controversies are less dialogue and more a struggle to win the public’s favour. Those who disagree do not conduct a dialogue among themselves but fight for the approval of a third party. Plato believed that this triadic structure of rhetoric made true dialogue impossible, replacing it with a competition that was finally decided by applause. To understand what is truly in play, we should remember that the litigants are not talking among themselves but are ultimately addressing the public and competing for their approval. Communication among actors is feigned, a mere occasion to be recognized before the public, which is the true target of the performance. Speeches are not given in order to argue with one’s opponents or to try to convince them; public discourse takes on the nature of a plebiscite, of legitimation before the public. Political communication represents a type of elemental confrontation where the event takes precedence over the argument, the spectacle over debate, the dramatization over communication. The public sphere is thus reduced to what Habermas has called ‘spectacles of acclamation’ (1968, 138). One’s own political opinions are presented in such a way that they cannot be answered with arguments but with support or rejection of another kind. This would explain the tendency of politicians to overact, to emphasize the polemical to extremes that can be outlandish or unrealistic. Social actors live off of controversy and disagreement, which they use to try to obtain not only the attention of the public but also leadership over their fan base, which rewards intransigence, victimization and steadfastness. This often leads to a style that is dramatic and full of denouncements, which keeps the faction united around a fundamental axis but makes it very difficult to reach agreements

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beyond one’s own flock. The potentialities of this method also collide with its limits. Those who prepare themselves only with the argument of their radical coherence will not have much of a trajectory in politics, because this is an activity where one needs to seek the space for encounters, compromise and sharing with other people. There is a profound democratic reason in favour of a different type of discourse. When leaders directly address the people and radicalize issues, they make negotiations between the parties more difficult; ‘this makes the terrain of politics naturally fertile for leader activism, which does not, however, entail people activism’ (Urbinati 2014, 171). It may benefit politicians, offering them an index of arguments and attitudes that require less subtlety and imagination, but it does not give the people more control of their own destiny. What we could call ‘negative publicity’ tends to work from the beginning, but it distances the common people from politics and creates a climate of mistrust that tends to contaminate everything. The inability to come to an agreement may significantly delay progress with results such as blockades and vetoes. More importantly, it is a very rudimentary way of doing politics, which could be characterized, following Foucault, as power that is ‘poor in resources, sparing of its methods, monotonous in the tactics it utilizes, incapable of invention’. In contrast, a politician’s skill at resolving apparently irreconcilable positions in a way that is acceptable for everyone affected depends on his or her ability to reformulate problems and disagreements in such a way that reconciliation is possible. In other words, ‘the politician must possess the essentially aesthetic talent of being able to represent political reality in new and original ways. And we can expect little of the politician who does not have this talent and who can only give us snapshots of political reality’ (Ankersmit 1997, 117). Politics should be able to turn representation into synthesis; it should no longer be a mere confrontation between the fixed interests of those who are represented and become a construction of something truly common. Faced with the topic of the creativity of dissent, there are particular fictions of opposition that are as monotonous as they are lacking in originality. In contrast to what tends to be said, defining one’s positions with the automatism of confrontation and maintaining them intact is an exercise that does not demand a lot of imagination. There is a concentration of clichés and stereotypes in the negativism of opposition and in the hooliganism of those who support the government. Antagonism also has its affectations and its standardization. Many historical experiences reveal that parties give the best of themselves when they have to come to an agreement, rushed by the need to understand each other.

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The best products of political culture have had their origin in agreement and compromise, while imposition or marginal radicalism generates almost nothing interesting. One of the most unproductive things about these rites of disagreement is that they exacerbate, within the heart of political organizations, the dualism between those who are hard and soft, those who are uncompromising and those who focus on achieving what is possible, those who fight to preserve core values and those who give in. It is a division of ideological territory that makes political agreements enormously difficult or, when agreements are produced, they create guilty consciences, negotiator breakdowns and generalized deception. Antagonism in the social space is reproduced within groups, leading to just as much simplicity and impoverishment. That is why dualism is often created in the heart of political groups, between those who prefer external prestige and those who live from internal acclamation. This polarization has a tragic, almost inevitable element about it, like the longstanding tension between convictions and responsibilities. In the decisions that political parties habitually have to make, this drama becomes a law that is practically inevitable. Anything that favours internal coherence tends to prevent growth towards the outside; those who are radical – which is not a large group – remain united, while flexible policies allow for greater support, although unity is less guaranteed. Radicalism always has a positive result and wins in the short term, although it is often disastrous in the end. Flexibility is more risky; it only has positive results from time to time, but when it does, it provides extraordinary results. How then does one decide between one and the other? The choice a party confronts does not tend to be so dramatic and often allows diverse combinations and balances. In any case, what we should never forget is that a party is worth the sum of its votes and those of its potential alliances; power comes from both. With friends inside and enemies outside, almost nothing is done in politics. Nothing lasting ever comes from immaculate integrities that no one can share, homelands where differences cannot coexist or values whose only purpose is to attack.

Principles and compromises In any case, we should not trivialize this question because agreements are not easy and they demand sacrifices from all parties. The idea that we can give in

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when it comes to incidental matters while remaining firm in the essentials is pie in the sky. If you want to make progress, you have to be ready to let some things fall by the wayside. Of course there are ‘integrative’ agreements, positive sum games and ‘win–win’ situations that do not make us give anything up and in which everyone wins. This does not present difficulties, although it takes an effort to discover solutions that are not always evident at first sight: increasing the size of the pie, creating symbolic compensations or discovering new options. In any case, the possibilities of reaching these types of agreements are rarer than the advocates of consensus believe. The difficulty of coming to an agreement stems from the fact that nearly all agreements require some kind of renunciation and, in many cases, also the sacrifice of some principle. At the very least, coming to an agreement necessitates an understanding that there is a big difference between expressing a goal and deciding between possible alternatives, keeping in mind that, in politics generally, no alternative lacks inconveniences. On a personal and a collective level, we do not generally achieve everything we propose or that which is first on our list of priorities. Circumstances force us to be satisfied with less and, at times, with much less. Avishai Margalit suggests that we value people (or political parties, labour unions and institutions) not for their ideals but for their compromises, in other words, for what we are prepared to accept as sufficient, for our second best option (Margalit 2010). Our ideals say something about what we want to be, but our compromises reveal who we are. We all have things we especially value and that it would be hard for us to give, especially when we believe that something that affects our principles is in play. This call to principles can be an intractable exaggeration at times or an excuse for not moving, but it is also an expression of loyalty towards the central values that one defends. Resolving this difficult question is the true dilemma of political agreements, the limit that separates reasonable compromises from unworthy agreements. We should be capable of combining the necessary firmness in maintaining our principles with an openness to change and the ability for selfcorrection without which the whole process of political deliberation would be nothing more than a simulation. Remaining faithful to one’s own principles is a very noble attitude in politics. The most famous speech in this regard may be the one by Edmund Burke in Bristol where he defended following one’s conscience even in the face of constituent opinion ([1774] 1987, 1, 391). Burke represents the conservative version of this loyalty, but there are many others. In a democratic society, there should be space for those who do politics without the will for compromise,

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safeguarding principles or expressing values that should be kept in mind. Various social movements, protests or civic organizations move within this realm. However, entrusting the responsibilities of governing to them would be an error as serious as banning the type of vigilance and expression at which they excel. Some misunderstandings around the movement of the Indignados (the ‘Indignant Ones’) in Spain stem precisely from this confusion between two equally legitimate roles, each with their own grandeur and limitations. There is a place for those who are attempting to transform reality by attempting to govern and for those who prefer to safeguard particular values from exchange and politically shady deals. Of course this type of tenacity is easier if your vote is not decisive, which is why we more often find it in the small parties, which have no vocation for governing. This radicalness does not mean that they are morally superior but, most often, that they are politically irrelevant and can, therefore, take the liberty, so to speak, of maintaining a larger dose of principles than the parties that tend to be in power. There are those who, in order to encourage agreements, recommend treating principles as if they were interests, instead of considering interests as principles, thus making agreements more difficult (Wolff 1965, 21). Turning disagreements on principles into disagreements on negotiable interests seems to make things easier, but it presents some problems because, first of all, the distinction is not clear-cut and, more importantly, because it is not self-evident that it is easier to negotiate material questions than questions of principle. There are some material problems (including the most important ones) that are inseparably connected to questions of principle, like everything that has to do with redistribution of wealth, health care, equality or the labour market. On the other hand, it is normal for questions of principle to be more or less realized, admitting a gradation, while almost never achieving everything or nothing. One of the things that a good politician must do is to try to discover the opportunities and limits for agreement. In this context, it makes complete sense to employ gradualness, the democratic patience that knows how to renounce not only the maximalism of one’s own principles but also the grandiloquence of monolithic rhetoric. Consensus agreements, although they are not impossible, are rare and calling for them tends to complicate modest agreements, which are more necessary for democratic coexistence. Calls for consensus can frighten followers, who intuit a betrayal of their own values and, therefore, a handing over of their identity. It is better to limit the will for agreements to some concrete and especially decisive spaces. What makes it most difficult to carry out the sacrifices

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that any agreement demands is giving the impression that one is willing to sacrifice everything. We cannot forget that compromises are very vulnerable to criticism. We need to show that an agreement has benefits for everyone involved; otherwise they might be seen as capitulation.

The weight of campaigns on governments The greatest difficulties for political agreements do not come so much from the way we relate to principles but from a structural element of our political culture: the campaign’s dominion over government (Gutmann and Thompson 2012, 24). There is structural opposition between campaigning and governing: attitudes that work for one make the other more difficult. This contradiction is exacerbated when the style of campaigning complicates future (and inevitable) agreements, such as when unconditional promises are made or rivals are discredited. Campaign rhetoric is a part of our democratic practices, but governing is something different, and it requires making pacts and concessions; those who govern need opponents with whom to collaborate, not enemies who must be discredited at all times. ‘The animosity that is created during electoral processes does not favor the establishment of the relationships that candidates will need to govern effectively later on’ (Gutmann and Thompson 2012, 151–2). ‘Protect yourself from what you want’ is the lesson that can be taken from the difficulty of governing through agreement when one has exaggerated differences for a long time and the partisan spirit has polarized society (Brownstein 2008, 367). A campaign is competitive, a zero sum game, and that is why it is inevitably characterized by the goal of defeating the adversary. But some things that serve for the campaign (like excessive promises or dramatizing polarization) are later not very helpful for good governance. The more the attitudes of the campaign enter the legislative process the more respect for the adversary is weakened and the more improbable are agreements between competitors. The fact that we have turned politics into a permanent campaign reveals that the mentality that is opposed to agreements has been strengthened in our societies. Those who govern are obligated to keep in mind the previous campaign (the things to which they committed themselves) and the one that is upcoming (in which, logically, they want to be re-elected). But the system has come unbalanced, and we govern with the spirit of the campaign, with its attitudes and vices. The permanent campaign has nearly completely erased the difference

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between campaigning and governing. To say it in another fashion, politicians campaign too much and govern too little (King 1997, 180). This is even revealed by the minimal division of labour between the two tasks; those who advise on how to win elections frequently continue advising about how to govern. Democracy needs institutions that moderate the weight that campaigns exercise on government, the cynicism and mutual distrust they generate. In any case, for there to be a good political culture, we must economize disagreement (Gutmann and Thompson 1996, 84), not exaggerate it, defending one’s own positions in a way that does not necessarily imply rejecting different positions. Assuming the worst intentions of those who oppose us can at times be psychologically gratifying, but it erodes the bases of mutual respect that are necessary to construct compromises in the future. Campaigns are not an appropriate space for deliberation. Of course we must improve the arguments and discussions of campaigns, the quality of their debates, as is continuously demanded. But let us recognize that there is not a lot of hope for them: campaigns barely provide the possibility for constructive dialogue because they serve fundamentally to sharpen the contrast and polarize by simplifying the election that will come later. We could say that there is little room for improvement in campaigns and that it is better to look for deliberative processes elsewhere, essentially preventing the spirit of the campaign from taking over and colonizing the whole political process. What should concern us is that campaigns and their competitive style, which is sometimes irresponsible and affected, occupy excessive space in democracies. It would be ideal to ‘restrict the competitive spirit of government in order to reach compromises and moderate the deliberative ideal in campaigns to facilitate elections’ (Gutmann and Thompson 2012, 157), making government more deliberative and campaigns more competitive, because both have their role in the democratic process. Politicians should be able to govern without having to continuously watch poll results or prepare for upcoming elections. In order to reach this objective, some people propose term limits in order to let politicians dedicate themselves exclusively to governing rather than focusing on preparing for re-election. But it is not a magic formula and can even have the opposite effect: the confidence and mutual respect that agreements require need to be cultivated over time. It may also facilitate the absolute breaking of promises or a lack of deliberation on the consequences of one’s decisions. For this reason, a politician’s last term in office may be an opportunity for magnanimity, but it may also lead to irresponsibility.

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The political culture in relationship with ‘others’ The existence of a democratic culture given to agreement depends not only on the political system. Educational institutions play a fundamental role in the solidification of habits that allow democratic procedures to work well. Contemporary society favours a type of social fragmentation that is the precursor to political polarization: we live in very homogenized communities, and we tend to strengthen our prejudices in school, through the media and friendships, removing ourselves from the benefits of contrast and diversity (Bishop 2008). Education is very important, among other things, because within it one can offer an image of adversaries and ‘others’ in general that can be just or caricaturized. Education can also reveal the value of agreements in the history of societies. Perhaps the media is the institution that has most contributed to our living in a permanent campaign: it tends to inform us about the government as if it were a campaign and to inform about campaigns as if they had little to do with the government. Politicians and the commentators that the media prefer for debates tend to be the most extremist or combative, those who best represent the conflict between positions. Those who are most inclined to compromise do not do well on television. This is another of the effects stemming from the intense competition for audiences. In terms of information, more attention is attracted by politicians in a fierce battle for survival than by the complexities of a subtle negotiation. The media’s best contribution is to make the informational load richer when it comes to political content than what is in play and to limit sordid, personal or extreme aspects. Let us not play into the hands of those who put all their efforts into attracting attention. The objective is for the media to present a more balanced image of politics, with less campaigning and more governing. As always, democracy is a balance between agreement and disagreement, between mistrust and respect, between cooperation and competition, between what principles demand and what circumstances allow. Politics is the art of correctly distinguishing in every case between the things about which we should come to an agreement and those about which we can and even should maintain our disagreement.

9

Democratic Disappointment

There is failure when there is action. (Sartre 1983, 450) We should start getting used to it: politics is essentially an apprenticeship in disappointment (Innerarity 2002). Democracy is a political system that creates disappointment, but that is never so true as when it is done well. When democracy works as it should, it becomes a system of unveiling, where there is vigilance, scandals, criticism, mistrust, protest and challenges. Unlike political systems where dissidence is repressed, alternatives are blocked and errors are hidden, a system that enjoys political freedom will endure democratic battles where the public space is filled with the negative: one side criticizes the other, scandals are magnified, protests are organized, no one praises their adversary, honesty does not make the news, individual interests are asserted as loudly as possible. It is important that we draw the correct conclusions from all of this. Let us think about two of the most common sources of citizen dissatisfaction towards our representatives: corruption and disagreement. Those who are less focused on politics may have an excessively negative impression of politics, and they may fall prey to the typical perceptual error created by corruption that is uncovered or by the institutionalized disagreement that is characteristic of democratic antagonism. Corruption is always intolerable, of course, and the inability to generate large-scale agreements is at the core of many of our collective blunders, but we should be sincere and recognize that much of our discomfort with politics corresponds to an undetected nostalgia for the comfort of living in a place where evil is not known and disagreements are repressed. Political anthropology teaches us that there is an atavistic feeling, which we never fully overcome, of nostalgia for the forms of social organization in which placid ignorance reigns and politicians, as the typical complaint goes, do not spend all their time arguing.

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There is another source of democratic disappointment that has to do with our practical incompetence when it comes to resolving problems and making the best decisions. Politics is an activity that revolves around negotiation, compromise and accepting what economists often call ‘suboptimal decisions’, which is nothing but the price one must pay for shared power and limited sovereignty. Unless one lives in the delirium of omnipotence, without constrictions or counterweights, all political decisions imply a certain type of claudication even if only to a small degree. In the real world, there is no initiative without resistance, action without response. Ultimate goals or absolute ideals concede or surrender when faced with the difficulty of the matter and the aspirations of other people, with whom one must play the game. For that reason, there is nothing strange about the fact that those who are the most militant claim that this was not what they wanted. If we keep in mind that political competition creates incentives for politicians to inflate public expectations, a high degree of disappointment is inevitable. Those who have not learned to manage failure or partial success are not fit for politics, because absolute success does not exist. Politicians must, at the very least, know how to accept the habitual failure of not being able to fully attain what they set out to achieve. Politics is inseparable from the willingness to compromise, which is the ability to be satisfied with something that does not completely fulfil one’s goals. In a similar fashion, pacts and alliances do not affirm our own power but reveal our need for others and the fact that power is always a shared reality. An apprenticeship in politics increases our ability to coexist with these kinds of frustrations and invites us to respect our limits. This all leads to a revolving parade of promises, expectations and frustrations, tricks and disillusionments, which spin at a speed to which we are not accustomed. The beginning of dissatisfaction – the time it takes for us to be disappointed by a new government, for us to be disillusioned by charisma, for projects to lose their shine or for competence to deteriorate – seems to appear dramatically faster. What rationality can we introduce in the midst of such agitation? I believe it is best to begin with a very freeing observation: politics is a limited, mediocre and frustrating activity because thus is life: limited, mediocre and frustrating. But that does not prevent us from trying to make both politics and life better. Additionally, our best aspirations should not be incompatible with an awareness of difficulty and the limits of governing in the twenty-first century. What politicians do is too well-known and too little understood. Society does not comprehend much about the conditions under which politicians must operate and the complexities of public life. This should not be understood as

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an excuse: quite the opposite – it is the element of objectivity that allows us to sharpen our criticisms, preventing them from setting up their own lawless camp in the space of impossibility. It may seem like a provocation to recall these things in the midst of this time of indignation, when multiple cases of corruption are being discovered and politics is revealing its inability to resolve our fundamental problems. If my readers are willing to reserve judgement for a bit, I hope they may end up agreeing with me on three theses: (i) politics does not measure up to what we expect of it, (ii) it is not inevitably disastrous but (iii) we should not be under too many illusions about it either. Complaints about the first (regarding the incompetence of politics) are weakened when we imply that we accept the second (that there is no solution for politics) and when excessive expectations about politics are revealed. In this way, I do not intend to excuse anyone, but to create the space for more accurate criticism, because nothing harms actual existing politics more than excessive expectations on the part of those who have not understood the logic of politics, its limitations and what we can reasonably demand from it. Now that there are many proposals for democratic regeneration, it is a good time to make a cool-headed assessment about the context in which our political disappointment is produced, to be in a position to evaluate it properly and not commit the error of drawing mistaken conclusions. We should be able to target a normative framework that will allow us to be critical without simply surrendering to illusory dreams and to expand what is possible in the presence of those who administer realism. We should be able to do this without forgetting the limitations of our political condition.

The bewilderment of Leviathan From the most sceptical to the most enthusiastic, both those who are indignant and those who do not know who is to blame for their uncertainty, everyone shares the impression that something serious is happening to our political system. It is not that the past was especially peaceful from the political point of view. There were probably more wars and conflicts, political institutions were more problematic and the situation did not give us much room for hope from politics. But basic positions may have been clearer: the framework and rules of the game, the national state as a steering wheel for social change, even the identification of friends and enemies, were simpler than now, with the contemporary world’s diffuse violence, common threats and pressing need for cooperation.

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Greater uncertainty leads a larger emotional charge. In recent times, the political landscape has taken on negative emotional hues: suspicion, indignation, fear, uncertainty, despair and so forth. It is not a very daring prophesy to venture that the coming years are going to be characterized by disappointment. A time of democratic disillusionment is approaching. The phantom that is currently traversing Europe is dissatisfaction; democracy is not what we had imagined: participation is low, our opinion is not sufficiently taken into account, we are always being governed by others (even when our side governs, they turn into others). Like any disappointment, this one can make us cynical and less starryeyed, but it can also be the source of collective learning and political innovations that we would not have realized in less tumultuous times. Disappointment is logical, not because we are doing things poorly, but because reality moves more quickly than our concepts and governmental procedures. Leviathan is more uneasy than ever, in the face of an economic system that seems ungovernable, confronting challenges that exceed his range of effectiveness and legitimacy, accustomed to a style of addressing problems that is not characterized by modesty and the disposition to learn. Political power has often been excessive, arbitrary and even despotic, but now it is appearing for the first time in a situation of weakness and disorientation to which it was not accustomed. The pressure on political representatives is double: on the one hand, the problems generated by a deregulated financial system demand rapid and coordinated national and intergovernmental reactions, but at the same time, our critical citizenry demands more democratic procedures when it comes to configuring the political will. The old dilemma between effectiveness and democracy, between demos and cratos, reappears pointedly at the most critical moments. All of it coincides in time with the constitution of knowledge societies, which are anything but an unformed mass of incompetent citizens. They also have knowledge and technologies that have had an enormous impact on their ability to monitor and control. For that reason, no one can deny that we are in the midst of a political crisis, although all the solutions to these crises cannot be right, quite simply because they are different and even conflicting. Some are reasonable, but others are frivolous and senseless. Nor is it the case that citizens know exactly what they want and demand nothing else. Bewilderment does not assault the powerful alone, while leaving the general populace in peace, as if the people enjoyed the privilege of being the depository of certainties that the elite have lost. In fact, the citizens demand things of the powerful that are at times difficult to reconcile;

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we want Leviathan to fulfil his promise to protect but prefer to be left alone; we demand leadership but reject an authoritarian style; disaffection has not led us to decrease our demands or our expectations regarding politics; we insist that attention be paid to our most immediate and sectorial interests at the same time as we assign the political system responsibility for the long term or the general interests of society as a whole. As is the norm for any critical situation, whether it be for change or for agitation, there is an element of ambivalence that makes the task of futurologists difficult. Are we at the gateway to democratic radicalization or at the threshold to its degeneration? While we resolve this and other questions, we might do well to abandon the rhetoric of large changes that are taking place because certain unstoppable forces have been unleashed and replace it with an investigation into the possibilities of collective learning that all of this affords us.

What if democracy were like that? In her very lucid book Why We Don’t Love Democracy, Myriam Revault d’Allones attempted to explain (2010). She offered a series of answers that I would like to reformulate into the idea that democracy is not something that one can love, strictly speaking. It is never presented as a resounding reality with which one cannot help but express deep satisfaction. The inevitability of political disengagement has to do with the impossibility of democracy making itself loved. In the age of disenchantment that, according to Max Weber, is a general property of the modern world, democracy seems to differentiate itself from other forms of government because it is the only one that raises the suspicion that it may not exist or, to state it less audaciously, it is most likely fleeting (Wolin 1996), unfinished and unreachable (Rosanvallon 2000), always on the verge of ‘coming’ (Derrida 1991), incomplete or incapable of maintaining its promises, and phantasmagoric (Mori 2014). Democracy is a disappointment as a political system because it points towards unreachable ideals. It is part of its very nature to always be unfinished and perfectible, just as the course of history is open. Unlike other forms of political organization that claim perfection or the end of history for themselves, democracy is a space where disappointment, protest, mistrust, alternatives and criticism are freely developed. The history of democracy is the history of its crises; the crisis of democracy is not an occasional phase, but a permanent situation, to the extent that it is an open system. The democratic condition is

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always disappointing, always face to face with a problematic reality, a process that is perennially incomplete. There are those who have radicalized this point of view and interpret this imperfection as an elegant way of resisting the recognition of democracy’s inexistence. We do not lack reasons today to speak of ‘post-democracy’ (Crouch 2004), if we remember the erosion of our systems of democratic legitimacy by the presence of forces that impose or condition the playing field and seem to turn free self-determination into a chimera. I personally believe that this diagnosis, in spite of having many arguments in its favour, describes things based on a polarization between victims and perpetrators and ignores the extent to which the political system itself has collaborated in its own weakening, which only leads it to accept defeat before the new social reality. In this way, it spares itself the effort of thinking about how democratic ideals can be realized in much more complex arrangements than the ones in which they arose. That is why I prefer to carry out diagnoses, think critically and weigh political solutions in the framework of what could be called ‘post-heroic democracy’ (Innerarity 2009) or ‘complex democracy’. The first designation invites us to think about the exercise of democracy from the point of view of contingency, in other words, less epically, avoiding comfortable oppositions and more emphatic leadership. Linking democracy with new complexities implies understanding that governing in a democracy, self-governing democratically, is precarious, even disappointing, but there is no alternative that does not end up leading to greater future disappointments. However, what if democracy were like that? Why do we have to relate to it only through love or hatred? Why describe it with that nostalgic tone, which is nothing but the precursor to frustration? Do we need to always refer to an unreachable horizon so that our normative expectations are adequately stretched? Is it not more reasonable to describe it without sacred resonances, as a reality that is simultaneously secular, banal and improvable? This is why the fact that the increase in the number of democracies coincides with democratic disillusionment should not shock us. How could it possibly be any other way? Why must we understand this disappointment as the beginning of a disaster and not as an indicator of maturity? To continue with the similes of love, we could say that eroticism has evolved into coexistence and the lack of passion indicates that the system can work without that powerful motor. Democracy does not allow itself to be loved for practical reasons and because of its own nature. The practical reasons have to do with what we could call ‘the improbability of good government’. Democracy is a successful form of

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government in spite of the fact that, if we keep in mind the incompetence of its representatives and the ignorance of those who are represented, it should not work at all. It would make more sense for it to work poorly, but it turns out that democracy works relatively well if we keep in mind that our starting point consists of superficial judgements about the candidates, errors by the experts, insufficient or mistaken information, a lack of transparency, the media’s lack of neutrality, insurmountable prejudices and an imbalance of interests (Oppenheimer and Edwards 2012). How is it then that things turn out reasonably well? It is because of participation and the electoral contest, the possibility of removing people from power, the monitoring of those who govern. All of that establishes a series of pressures and incentives to make it better. Of course it is true that no one wants a regime that works well only because of its negative characteristics; we may love a sovereign but not balance; people may feel attraction towards an instrument that allows us to choose, but no one falls in love with an application that only allows us to deselect; we may be fascinated by a possibility, but never by a limit. In any case, the most powerful reason to explain our lack of affection is that democracy cannot be loved because there is nothing to love. The explanation for this state of affairs comes from Claude Lefort, who defined democracy as the experience of an unmanageable society, where we undergo ‘the dissolution of markers of certainty’. Democracy inaugurates a history in which human beings experience ‘the final indetermination as to the foundation of power, law and knowledge’ (Lefort 1986, 29). There is no incontestable knowledge or foundations that cannot be placed into question or order that cannot be modified. What is known is always besieged by the unknown, and identity never frees itself from the experience of division. Democracy is a space of doubt, of conflict and of unpredictable invention. Power does not belong to anyone; it is an empty space that is only occupied provisionally. Since democratic power does not enjoy a transcendent guarantee, it is continuously constituted by the debate about its legitimacy and has no choice but to gather and institutionalize conflict, whether it deals with social division, the collision between diverse logics that characterize every one of the political, economic or legal spheres, the insurmountable opposition among values. Homo democraticus exists in an environment of uncertainty that, far from responding to an absence or lack of meaning, is connected to its pluralization: contradictory elections that are not imposed with absolute evidence, surrounded by different ways of life, multiple belongings, possible alternatives, criticism and responses. The poles of identification that take charge of designating ‘commonality’ – the nation, the people, the state, Europe, humanity – are never fully realizable

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and they are not expressed except through the conflict of their interpretations. All power stems from the people, certainly, but this is only done in a plural and conflictive fashion; its identity is never realized, but reiterated and expressed through division. Democracy is a form of the political organization of society in which conflict is never definitively reabsorbed in the unity of a common will. It will be very hard for those who have not understood this to think in ‘political’ terms. Those who still think that democracy is something that can and should be loved, something that will languish if we do not show it affection, have not understood the logic of politics in a democracy and may be condemning themselves to unproductive melancholy. What most captures my attention about the current state of disaffection towards our democratic way of life is the fact that there are so many antidemocratic predictions that are echoed by a generation devoid of memory and political culture. Today’s dominant political sensibilities do not accommodate themselves productively towards this secular form of democratic coexistence. Neither the melancholy of the left nor the cynicism of the right has been able to build the type of affection that our democratic institutions deserve. We have, on the one hand, the difficulty of the reformist left in elaborating instruments of understanding and analysis, and the obstinacy of the extreme left that is happy to make critical gestures without any practical consequence. That explains the temptation of democratic radicalism to intone the litany of an insufficiently realized democracy, of lost objectives and betrayed aspirations, of the mediocrity of what is in comparison with what could and should be (Revault d’Allones 2010, 138). In this regard, the right is better off because their regime of expectations and their subsequent achieved results are flatter, related to a cost–benefit rationality, less likely to swell with pride over un-fulfillable aspirations, thus less likely to be disappointed. Secularizing our relationship with democracy, not idealizing our affections, is a necessary condition for us to abandon our hypercritical attitude about democracy without cynically surrendering before a presumed objectivity.

A regime of negativity One of the reasons democracy inevitably promotes disappointment has to do with the very game of political competition. Years of collective apprenticeship have led us to implement procedures to control power, and these very mechanisms of control tend to transmit excessive suspicion and a fundamentally negative

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view of politics. Democracy is a political system that makes power switching possible, and for that reason, it promotes criticism. In other words, it favours a political discourse that is habitually characterized by negativity. Of course our political systems are not fulfilling the expectations that we can reasonably lay at their feet, but the perception of politics is also too negative and could very well be explained by the ‘blame game’ that our democracies have become (Hood 2010). Political competition, which is essential in a democracy, is developed within discourses of a fundamentally negative tone: criticisms, recriminations, complaints, displeasure, accusations and so forth. This could not be any other way if we want democracy to continue being an open struggle where criticism is expressly protected, but those who are less well informed could get a mistaken idea from it. Governing is an activity that is developed in environments of low confidence and high criticism, where success tends to be barely recognized, while failure is amplified by the large number of actors who have something to gain by adopting a cynical attitude. The internal tensions of the democratic system tend to create a ‘blameworld’, a world of complaints and accusations that transmits the impression that the government always fails and politicians are not trustworthy. In this context, the tendency to perceive all political questions in terms of conflict and opportunism seems inevitable (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000). If we add to this the fact that the problems are especially complex and our collective capacity to intervene in them very limited, the result is a game that cannot help but be the source of continuous disappointment and frustration. This whole game, which is beneficial for democratic life, is potentially harmful if it sweeps away other mechanisms that should intervene in politics, such as cooperation or confidence. It is also deceptive of the true nature of politics. I do not mean to suggest that politics should not be criticized – quite the opposite – but that a certain style of doing so magnifies its failures and transmits an image of it that is too negative. As is well known, the democratic struggle is increasingly developed within the space of the means of communication, which contribute both to making it possible and to exaggerating some of its defects, especially the potential cynicism that tends to promote a system based on negativity. At a time when citizens need information to understand what is happening and to make appropriate decisions, the media is distorting the view of the political in a way that generates cynicism and desperation. The media feeds disillusion and mistrust to the extent that they emphasize crises and conflicts instead of explaining democratic normality. People would be surprised to know, for example, that the majority of

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parliamentary votes are decided unanimously or that the habitual relationship between representatives is one of trust and cordiality, except when a moment of confrontation has to be staged in view of the public. At the same time, it is not unusual for citizens to pay more attention to trivial details about the people in parliament than to central political affairs and that these are not exposed in their full complexity. The scandal of the directors’ remunerations attracts more morbid fascination than an explanation of the irresponsible management that led to the bailout of certain financial institutions. This preference for the sensational is explained by the fact that politics is generally a boring subject; it is a challenge for the media to present it in an interesting fashion without trivializing it. In addition to their necessary function as observers and critics, the means of communication amplify disagreements and scandals; they simplify matters around confrontation, personifying to the point of caricature complex responsibilities or giving in to the lure of conspiracy theories while presenting themselves, consciously or not, as heroic fighters who protect the defenceless public in the face of evil politicians. All this gives politics a high degree of negativity. Are we still surprised that people hate politics if their opinion is inspired by this type of information alone? The political scene is described by binary distinctions – heroes and villains, triumphs and disasters, innocents and perpetrators, dominators and the dominated – at a time when there are many grey areas and other frames around which there is hardly any debate. In colloquial language, ‘politicizing’ implies tension in a binary space, but it is just the opposite; in the most noble sense of the term, politicizing means arguing about diverse options, making the complexity of matters intelligible, searching for alternatives and so forth. A binary political space is, at heart, a depoliticized space. Organizations of protest are essential for the good functioning of democracy, but to the extent that they depend on the means of communication, the ideas they express about political matters tend to be too simplistic. The priorities of mobilization demand simple messages for complex questions. Politics is necessary precisely when conflicts do not establish clear battlegrounds and solutions are not obvious. We would not have any insight into what is going on at this time that is so convulsive for politics if we did not pay attention to the role of the means of communication. It is not possible that if politics, as we claim, is doing everything so badly, the media and those who consume it are doing everything right. The triangle that is formed by politicians who are overcome by circumstances, the media that gives consumers juicy titbits for their entertainment and citizens who act as passive spectators is fatal for democratic life.

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Let us think about the concrete case of corruption, which is one of the motivations for political disengagement and regarding which there can be an error of perception. In any established democracy, there are a multitude of political representatives who carry out their jobs honourably, but the only news is that some of them are corrupt. The feeling we are left with is that politics is synonymous with corruption, and we do not realize that scandals only become news when the norm is that things are done moderately well. The same thing happens with medical errors: the media never talks about operations that are carried out successfully, but about the failures, and from there, it is only a tiny step to believe that doctors are doing a bad job. Thanks to the media, power has become more vulnerable to criticism, but its tense language and the background message that the media transmits have extended an anti-political mentality. It is one thing to reveal a lie, mock arrogance and provide a forum for different voices, but this insistence on the negative tends to hide other important dimensions of politics such as, for example, the value of agreements or the not very spectacular norm of honourable behaviours. We should not worry so much about the cases of corruption as the ordinary weaknesses of politics. Furthermore, we should be concerned that focus on the first may prevent us from paying attention to the second. Corruption is intolerable, of course, and in addition to the act itself, it has two derivatives that we tend to overlook that have serious political consequences: that we often do not look where we need to look and we draw mistaken conclusions and contribute to destroying our ailing political culture even further. In the first place, we pay more attention to lurid details than to the political failure that they imply, to the scandalous anecdote than to bad political decisions. In the second place, we tend to get a negative impression from the fact that a case of corruption is discovered, while we barely pay attention to the fact that we have a political, judicial, communicative and policing system in which it is possible to discover corruption, without realizing that the worst corruption is the one that is not seen and the worst thing that could happen to us is for the scandal to remain unseen. When we hear news of corruption, it is inevitable that our first feeling is negative; it places us face to face with unjustifiable acts and reminds us of the problems caused by someone who deserved our trust as a popular representative. Justice is almost always tardy and incomplete, as has been the case throughout human history. But our negative reaction also stems from the fact that news of one scandal makes us believe that there are other people who will get away with something similar, and this suspicion tempts us to generalize.

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What I am now going to propose means going against the current grain of uncontrolled feelings of indignation; but let me suggest that we put some positive emotions into play precisely at this time. I realize that this sounds very odd, but we should be happy when the guilty are pursued or punished and we should value the self-esteem that we owe ourselves as democratic societies a little more generously. When a society punishes those who deserve it, there are reasons to feel satisfied. We should not react unjustly to institutions whose work has made it possible for cases of corruption to come to light. There will always be those who prefer to remind us that the scandal should never have taken place, that justice should be automatic and the reparation of damages should be absolute. But, more than anything, let us not be unjust with ourselves, with our critical vigilance, with the learning we have undergone as a society. If it were not for the fact that we have monitored the behaviour of our representatives, if it were not for the fact that we have democratically measured the confidence that they deserve, those who are corrupt would not know that, in addition to criminal punishment, they can anticipate our most complete scorn.

What can we expect in a democracy? Scepticism towards politics can represent an enormous opportunity, a requirement for politics to reflect on obligations and recover public esteem. In order for that to happen, we need to revise our expectations regarding politics and examine whether what we want from politics is contradictory or whether we expect something from it that it cannot provide. We still have not managed to balance these three components of democratic life: what politicians promise, what the public demands and what political power can provide. I would like to conclude with a brief reflection on how we should manage our public expectations. How do we manage to maintain a reasonable attitude towards politics, with demands that are not excessive and moderate scepticism that does not turn into corrosive cynicism? What is probably happening is that politics is providing less of what citizens have the right to demand at the same time that people are expecting too much from it. One of the best books on political philosophy is In Defence of Politics written by Bernard Crick (1962), in which he sustained that politics is an activity that has to be protected both against those who want to corrupt it and against those

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who have disproportionate expectations of it. It may be that we are demanding too much or too little of the political system, expecting it to make us happy or assuming it is beyond repair. Both expectations are politically unproductive and instil us with melancholy or cynicism. Much of our unhappiness with politics is explained by a series of misunderstandings about its nature. There are accurate criticisms about the ways in which politics is carried out and others whose radicalness stems from our lack of personal experience with what politics implies. Many people feel resentment towards politics, which they disqualify globally as dirty business, because they have not had the direct experience of having to ‘get their hands dirty’ by having to make a political decision in the midst of a complicated web of interests and values that are in conflict. We should particularly distrust those who promise a simple solution to complex problems. Those who have not understood the process of politics can cling to exaggerated and even extreme expectations. Attempting to achieve happiness through politics is as absurd as expecting consolation from our banker, doing business with the family or searching for friendship among party colleagues. These places are for other things. Every realm has its rules and its logic, according to which we should formulate our expectations. As I have already noted, democracy always disappoints, but this disappointment can remain at an acceptable level depending on how we have configured our expectations. The fact that we have not achieved this point of balance explains the simple way the battleground has been established in our democracies. The political landscape has been polarized around a pack of cynical technocrats and another of dreamy populists; the technocrats use the complexity of political decisions to belittle the obligations of legitimacy, while the populists tend to be unaware that politics is an activity that is carried out in the midst of a large number of constraints. Some people seem to recommend that we limit our expectations as much as possible and others that we unfurl them without any limitation. This is a point of ideological identification that is now, in my opinion, more explanatory than the right–left divide. Finding a way to reasonably balance these two aspects is the political synthesis around which our debates are going to revolve from now on. I hope that these reflections help us understand politics better because I believe that only in this way can we judge it with all the severity that is opportune. I do not mean to excuse anyone, neither the representatives nor those represented, but to calibrate precisely what the obligations are for each side and what each group can do to improve our political systems.

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I do not share the dominant pessimism regarding politics, and not because there are no reasons for criticism but precisely for the opposite reason: because a horizon of open optimism that believes in the possibility of something better is the only way we can reasonably criticize the mediocrity of our political systems. Optimism and criticism are attitudes that go hand in hand, while pessimism tends to prefer the company of cynicism or melancholy.

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The Age of Limits

If I had to synthesize in one phrase the general nature of this new age in which we live, what it has that is unprecedented and that must be understood in order to act within it, I would say we are entering into a period characterized by the growing presence of more limits for government action than we were used to, which forces us to reinvent politics and the role of government. We are still going to need some time in order to understand this new situation, communicate it and manage it. My generation had – and to some extent, still has – an ambitious conception of politics; it marched in favour of the transformation of society and has mobilized over major causes, while sometimes ignoring certain minor responsibilities. There was, of course, no lack of errors, and there have been many simplifications regarding demands for the exercise of power, but in general, we overestimated our abilities to intervene in social reality, at the same time as we underestimated the limits and conditions. A good deal of the disaffection that is currently felt towards politics has to do with this contrast between what we want and what we are capable of doing. When we verify the number of government failures, we tend to make the mistake of thinking that they are due to governmental incompetence, and that alone, without realizing that they are also largely due to certain expectations regarding politics that the political system can no longer satisfy. At the heart of our dissatisfaction is the contrast between a politics that is increasingly inept and is, at the same time, more overloaded than ever. One of the greatest problems of politics today is that the states’ oversight capacities have been enormously reduced while expectations of them were maintained and even grew. This divergence has a lot to do with the fact that there has been a change in the mentality of people. This change could be summarized by saying that the description of processes and events has shifted from unhappiness to a sense of injustice. What was at other times understood as the result of contingent circumstances that were not under our control is now interpreted as the result of actions or omissions for which

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someone can be held responsible. Where chance or destiny used to work as an explanation, we now have political responsibility, whether we are dealing with epidemics, natural catastrophes or poverty. Instead of communicating this divergence between what is desired and what can actually be accomplished, which would lead to some understanding of the states’ limited abilities for action, politics has done just the opposite: it simulates the ability to take initiative when it is merely reacting. The political system has bought into the idea of omnipotence suggested by the media, and it is now the norm for competing political actors to accuse each other of failing to do enough. This trap affects political actors in different ways and explains why current circumstances generally strike the left harder. While the right tends to feel comfortable in this scenario of minimalist politics, the left does not distinguish between unjust impositions and inevitable constraints, which makes it difficult for them to find a position that defines them, knowing that a mistake in determining the range of what is possible might situate them outside of the realm of real solutions. The political stage has been populated by conservatives who have turned limitations into their great excuse, progressives who do not know how to manage these limitations and a public that does not fully understand what is going on and is thus increasingly disillusioned. When I talk about limits, I am not referring to the limitations of growth or budgets, but to something that arises from a more general type of constraint. We are not revisiting the ‘limits to growth’ as referenced in the famous Club of Rome report in the early 1970s. That report emphasized natural resources and demographics, rather than the political system. I am primarily referring to the weakness of our instruments of government in the face of technologies that are initially powerful but end up revealing a fragility for which our political systems are barely able to compensate. A crisis is precisely that: the transformation of power into weakness. The case of the current financial markets is the best example of sophistication that ends up manifesting as something unstable. The repetition of financial crises shows that the system of state authority, according to the model of territorial sovereignty, no longer allows us to guarantee the stability of a creation economy and circulation of credit. The state cannot guarantee economic development when the financial risk is systemic, in other words, when it could weaken economic activity as a whole. It has been a while now since Susan Strange first diagnosed this gap between the space of authority and the mobility of capital as the cause of a triple weakness in politics: environmental, financial and social. Politics is incapable of addressing larger environmental problems, avoiding financial crises and maintaining social

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equilibrium within states (Strange 1988). This inability or failure does not suggest an imminent collapse but that politics only retains its ability to shape society if it is able to understand new circumstances and modify its practices of government. In my judgement, this is closely connected to politics developing the ability to manage its own limits. The problems generated by debt, ecological imbalance or the growing complexity of the world are too complicated for political actors to be able to simultaneously consider the global dimension in which they move, propose realistic policies and present them to citizens in a convincing fashion. It has always been hard for politics, but there used to at least be assured knowledge, limited space, recognized legitimacy and respected sovereignty that were sufficient to sort out the difficulties of governing. Politics nowadays is besieged by unforeseen constraints that stem from an imbalance between realities that have exceeded state limits and are now articulated in global contexts. We still do not have instruments to govern these political systems, and their limited ability for self-regulation has been simultaneously revealed. The first tremors of the financial crisis generated an optical illusion that seemed to presage a return of the state, and that illusion now survives in the current discourse that heroically contrasts state and market. This neo-Keynesian euphoria prevented us from understanding that the returning state is not the one we knew but one that will only gain the ability to shape society in exchange for its sovereignty. In addition, it must move from unilaterality to cooperation, and it is not defined in contrast to other states or a civil society that would be subordinate to it. It is not possible to save the state in what has until recently been its tradition as a social hero. As a heroic form of history, it has aged, as a guarantor of the common good, it is overburdened, as a social benefactor, it lacks resources, as the center of government, it is no longer seen before a periphery but in front of an army of other centers. (Willke 1997, 347)

In any case, the returning state is no longer in any position to adopt sovereign decisions; its dependence on shared knowledge, on the capacity for shared decision-making and shared financial resources, is too large. It is a semisovereign actor. The constraints to which I am referring could be grouped into three categories: knowledge, power and money. There are cognitive limits, limits of authority and limits of economic resources, in other words, limitations that refer to knowledge as a resource of government, limitations that have to do with the resource

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that we tend to understand as power and limitations that stem from this lack of resources that has become particularly sharp in what we could understand as an age of austerity. Governing is an operation that is realized with limited certainties and that demands a precise delimitation of what is possible and that exists within a realm of disputed authority and restricted resources.

The limitation of knowledge as a resource of government: The cognitive competence of politics The cognitive limits of government action refer to the fact that we are entering into a time with greater uncertainties in general, and this is particularly pointed in the case of politics. We should be clear here: the knowledge society constitutes a veritable explosion of available knowledge, and we are living in an age with greater possibilities for knowledge than any other. But at the same time, it is also true that it places us face to face with an abyss of ignorance regarding the knowledge we should have to resolve the problems that are generated, for example, as a consequence of the technologies that we have created. Our energy or financial technologies reveal great knowledge, but that is compatible with an enormous amount of ignorance about their side effects or the way they should be regulated. Particularly unsettling is the ‘systemic ignorance’ (Willke 2002, 29) when we refer to social risks, future risks and groups of actors. We are dealing with too many events that are related to too many events, overwhelming the ability of individual actors to make decisions and all too often, the political system as a whole is overwhelmed as well. When it comes to complex societies, where everything is densely interconnected, the larger question is how we can protect ourselves from our own irrationality, from disastrous chains of events. These limitations are particularly revealed with certain cognitive asymmetries to which the political authorities are absolutely not accustomed. On the one hand, in a knowledge society, states no longer face an amorphous mass of inexperienced actors but widespread intelligence, a more demanding citizenry and a humanity that is keeping watch. A large number of international organizations are involved, not only evaluating states but frequently enjoying more and better expert knowledge than they do. On the other hand, the increase in the complexity of the problems that politics should resolve yields a decrease in the cognitive competencies of political power, many of whose difficulties

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proceed not from being unable to do something, but from not knowing how. To use the acute case of financial governance, the entire difficulty stems from the dramatic fact that regulators must regulate based on expert knowledge that is provided by those who are going to be regulated. In these and many other cases, it turns out that, subtlety aside, those who are in charge are no longer those who know the most. At the same time, the political system has some ill-advised practices that prevent it from acquiring the clairvoyance needed to understand the issues it must govern. Politics is devoted to the short term and ruled by the logic of legislative periods and the electoral calendar. This, combined with social acceleration, leads it to act when it is already too late, legislating on the past, practising gestures of sovereignty that have no effect. The huge distraction of the present limits the exactitude of foresight, prevents certain matters from being removed from the immediate political debate and complicates the prevention of catastrophic chains of events that cause many of our problems. The ‘new obscurity’ (Habermas 1985) is probably a fatal consequence not only of the complexity of things, but of the limited vision that the political system has embraced. How can we improve this government resource? The fundamental challenge of democratic societies in this age of limitations is managing uncertainty and ignorance when complex systems are governed. This cognitive challenge of governance stems from the fact that governing the global knowledge society demands different capacities, processes and rules than needed to govern an industrial and state-organized society. There will be no true solution for the problems we are confronting as long as public actors are not capable of generating necessary knowledge (Innerarity 2013). Until this point, the emphasis on the role of the states and hierarchy as a means of control has prevented sufficient attention being paid to the cognitive and cooperative aspects of governance. There is a significant battle for power, but also a battle for knowledge; our societies’ most important problems demand forms of governance with a high degree of knowledge and with more intelligent ways of decision-making. This challenge takes place at a time in which politics has to learn to make decisions with incomplete knowledge, in environments of uncertainty. Our governmental procedures necessarily include decisions in areas where ignorance is unyielding (Collingridge 1980). If we examine things thoroughly, we will confirm that our fundamental democratic controversies revolve precisely around the ignorance we can allow ourselves, how to reduce it with procedures of foresight or the risks it is useful to accept. From this point of view, ‘governance

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means living with uncertainty and designing our institutions in a way that recognizes both the potential and the limitations of human knowledge’ (Stoker 1998, 26). Politics, which was accustomed to control and hierarchy, finds itself obligated to manage new limitations, develop cooperative intelligence, reconstruct confidence and think about the systemic effects of decisions. Especially important is the government of systemic risks, in other words, of those that proceed from an interaction that is not transparent among the components of a linked group. Much of our collective failure when it comes to governing the global financial system, for example, is due to all regulatory action being directed towards singular components, while the way in which those elements interacted has remained non-transparent. Of course systemic risks are characterized by an enormous amount of uncertainty, but there are ways to manage uncertainty; there is political life – margins of action, possible decisions – anywhere there is limited rationality, knowledge, resources and authority.

The limitation of power as a government resource: Another political authority At the beginning of the 1990s, Rudolf Scharping, the then leader of the German Social Democratic Party, was visiting Ulrich Beck in his house alongside Lake Starnberg, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps. The topic of conversation was the risk society and the changes that the left should undertake to understand and govern new realities. They were speaking in the garden and Scharping was unable to light his cigarette because he could not figure out where the wind was coming from and protect himself from it. Beck described the scene to me a few years later. It struck him as an eloquent image of the bewilderment that has overtaken the political system in the midst of the storm. On the one hand, it symbolized the current lack of protection in our unpredictable, unstable and contagious world. Meteorological phenomena like the winds defeat any protective mechanism. Politics seems more and more like a subfield of climatology or oceanography; elections are won or lost according to movements that are as uncontrollable as gale-force winds or the tides. On the other hand, Scharping’s difficulties reflect the current volatility of political institutions, which is less a practical problem of political leadership than an inability to know where the wind is coming from, in other words, a problem of comprehension. In this case, it was an urban Social Democrat, educated in the

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orthodoxy of defined spaces and the hierarchy of recognizable leadership, but the same thing could be said of anyone who obeys a traditional political logic. In addition to the cognitive limitations of politics, there is another series of constraints that references the difficulties of exercising power, of representing recognized authority, of deciding or being effective in a world like ours and at a time like the present. In a situation of open spaces and dense interdependence, sovereignty is a very limited instrument, as borders barely protect, risks are mutualized and we enter into this realm of volatility and contagion that has become more unsettling since the economic crisis and its consequences: chains of events, corruption, turbulence, toxicity, instability and so forth. Politics everywhere is confronting obstacles to its reform capabilities and other deficiencies in government function such as crises of governability and the inability to come to an agreement (Mayntz 1990). How do you govern a society in which the problems lack limits while the instruments are very limited? In the first place, we must confront a paradox that has left us perplexed and that explains the current impotence of governments. Without the nuances that will need to be added later on, we could say that the market has failed, but this has not led to a strengthening of the states. How can we explain this circumstance and what consequences does it have for what we should do in the future? The global crisis has destroyed the myth of the free self-regulation of the markets. The market cannot produce its own preconditions – for example, the rule of law, the institution of private property or the prevention of monopolies – and that is why it needs the regulatory power of politics. This necessity is more essential at a time when globalization has increased the instability of markets, especially the volatility of the financial markets. In this context, there are possibilities and spaces for the government of the markets that, although limited, allow the political system to safeguard the long-term interests of both society and the economy. Markets depend on an institutional framework and this is where politics can act: facilitating and complicating economic transactions according to institutionally designed political objectives. However, the collapse of the markets does not imply a neo-Keynesian return of the state. The global economic crisis has crushed the budgets that believed in the self-regulatory stability assumptions of the markets, but it has not confirmed the superiority of politics or the state either. It has been incapable of limiting credit, regulating financial innovations, limiting public debt or making the banking system more transparent. Nor are the states in a position of strength regarding the decisions that should be taken to get out of the crisis. The state’s

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ability to govern is increasingly subject to international dependencies and global constraints in what has come to be called ‘disaggregated sovereignty’ (Slaughter 2004, 266): the diffusion of power in a multilevel political architecture, with states that are overburdened and have lost a good deal of their prerogatives (especially regulatory authority), in the midst of powerful fluctuations and transnational networks. Sovereignty is no longer an absolute category but a concept that designates the authority held in a context of mutual dependencies. The efforts made by democratic societies to control the markets and externalities by intervening directly in the economy have been of very little use. The lesson we need to draw from this experience is that the political governance of capitalism is more complicated and should be more indirect in order to establish a balance between the autonomy of the economic system and the framework of political orientation. While Adam Smith famously demanded that states provide ‘peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice’, the requirements nowadays are more complex and sophisticated. The sooner we abandon the tone of moralizing simplicity that searches for those responsible and calls for a generic change of values, the sooner we will begin the task of understanding and governing an especially complex reality. If we can draw any lesson from the current state of the crisis, it is that neither the market alone nor the isolated state authority is capable of establishing the type of complex regulatory framework necessary to confront the opacity, volatility and uncertainty that characterize the function of global finances. This means that the governing of the marketplace should not be understood as a simple strengthening of governments in the face of the markets. The global financial system is too important and has too many consequences to be abandoned in the hands of private organizations, and it is too complex and sophisticated to be managed by public institutions. For that reason, the objective consists of configuring a mixed system of governance that includes components of selforganization and public supervision. It requires a hybrid type of the exercise of authority in those cases in which neither the public nor the private authority can do the job because, essentially, the public authority lacks knowledge and the private authority lacks power. Imperative styles of governance are of little use in global markets. Although it is true that we should improve the power of global institutions, we should not forget that many of the components of governance are not an exercise in power but a series of incentives that are realized through rational argument, the expectation of mutual benefit or fear of damage to one’s reputation. For that reason, in addition to the regulatory institutions with a regional or global

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reach, ‘watch-dog’ organizations are very important. This includes groups such as Transparency International, consumer organizations or global monitoring efforts carried out by diverse social movements. We talk about the global governance of capitalism precisely to refer to a complex system in which there are elements of self-regulation, global institutions, the authority of the states, cooperative procedures and informal regulations that stem from international business or global monitoring associations. Hard power (without knowledge, without persuasion, unilateral, as an order) is not an appropriate procedure for systemic processes of elevated complexity. The more politics depends on the development of processes to form an intelligent political will, the more antiquated the idea of sovereignty appears. Let us return to the example of the financial crisis: the financial markets are developed upon a transpersonal aggregation of knowledge and lack of knowledge (uncertainties, risks and ignorance) that no single person or institution is in any position to direct. In order to govern the financial markets, a profound transformation of both the ideas and the procedures of government must be undertaken in order to open them to a greater horizontality, both regarding the society that should be governed and towards other states with which it is important to cooperate more intensely. It is true that markets are conditioning the states in a brutal fashion, but could it not be that the states are so vulnerable to these attacks because they maintain an anachronistic structure, and they would be better suited to resist if they took the path to cooperation seriously? What better counterpoint for financial globalization, for example, than a Europe that had completed its postsovereigntist transformation?

The limits of money as a resource of government: Politics in the midst of austerity One of the fundamental principles of our political theory asserts that democracy primarily consists of having the ability to choose. We tend to think that this capacity refers to the citizenry, which should be able to influence the government through free opinions and elections, even managing to change them at times. This principle is commonly accepted and what we can argue are things such as the degree of delegation, procedures to fulfil the corresponding accountability or the most desirable articulation between government effectiveness and citizen participation. The economic crisis has introduced a new version of this principle and what we are now asking ourselves is not so much (or not only) whether

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citizens can assert their opinion but whether governments can govern, whether it is possible to do politics in the midst of austerity. The management of the economic crisis has flowed into a new orthodoxy that some people qualify as a ‘state of austerity’ (Pierson 2001). The ‘age of austerity’ (Schäfer and Streeck 2013) is a historic time when fiscal prudence and budgetary consolidation are the new norms, while the very idea of the public deficit prolonged in time seems like a thing of the past. Since the 1990s, the lack of growth and the increase in social expenditures (partially due to the aging of the population, as well as because of public expenditures that required confronting the social consequences of the crisis) has led us to a situation in which the idea of austerity is imposed as proof. The ‘easy finance era’ (Brownlee 1996, 416) is no more, and we still have to measure the extent to which all of this is going to impact our political practices. In the first place, the crisis’s principal impact on our democracies is that governments do not seem to have any other possibility or room to manoeuver, nor the actual ability to decide. As a consequence, deficits and accumulated debt have had a drastic decrease in available spending and social investment. It is very difficult to change resources from one objective to another, given that obligatory expenses tend to consume the full budget. The decrease in discretional spending means a decrease in options and political alternatives. When a new party comes into power, it finds itself bound by decisions made by previous administrations (probably to a lesser extent than they say, but greater than the previous government recognizes). The crisis has done nothing but aggravate the decrease in governments’ space for manoeuvring. As long as states keep needing credit, the financial markets will continue to keep them under supervision, even if they have reduced debt and balanced the budget. This pressure is of such magnitude that it notably conditions our political systems and their decisions. Financial capitalism presents an enormous challenge to our model of democracy to the extent that democracy now has to deal with two electorates: that of the people and that of the markets (Schäfer and Streeck 2013, 19). The emergence of the financial markets and their negligible regulation have turned market pressures into something as or more important than citizen pressures when it comes to making political decisions. This pressure is placed on both current governments and future ones. Opposition parties in countries that are heavily in debt are in no condition to promise that they will not cut spending to consolidate public finances, which decreases the possibilities for the electorate to choose something truly different. This lack of alternatives discourages voters and is one of the reasons that populist

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parties emerge. These parties (probably because they do not dream about the real possibility of governing) do not worry about making promises that are impossible to fulfil. For parties that want to govern, making promises they cannot fulfil is as deadly as giving the impression that they would do nothing different than their rivals. Either there is no alternative or the alternative is so irrational that it may as well not exist. Citizens have realized this and, within the general sense of bewilderment, they react in different ways but with the same tone of democratic fatigue: they vote for parties they do not want to see in government, thus expressing their displeasure; they decrease their electoral participation, and all of this is done within a general feeling of growing dissatisfaction. What is at the heart of the current democratic distress is the difference between responsiveness and responsibility, between what the citizens expect of their governments and what the governments are required to do or, if one prefers, between the governments’ ability to explain their decisions and the citizens’ ability to understand them. As if that were not enough, in Europe, adjustment measures are imposed in such a way that no one can connect them with a free and democratic decision; they are presented instead like a diffuse and overpowering demand. As a consequence of the dictates that markets exercise over the states, people have more and more of a sensation that governments are not acting in their name, but in the name of other states or international organizations, which are beyond electoral pressure. All of this generates general perplexity, when it does not reach the level of indignation. The battlegrounds in which the crises of capitalism develop have become increasingly complex, to the point that it is very difficult for those who are not part of the financial elite to recognize the interests that are in play and identify the ones that belong to them. One of the most urgent tasks of political reflection consists of determining the nature of this influence and investigating the possibilities that, in spite of everything, continue to be open. One commonly used strategy consists of pointing to globalization or European integration as the primary cause for the current limitation in the room to manoeuver enjoyed by politics. It is convenient to be able to blame others, the euro, Germany, the troika or globalization in general for what is happening to us (especially when the complaint is supported by good reasons), and this allows us to elude our own responsibility. From a formal point of view, it is true that the ability for public authorities to act on the economy was greater when globalization was not as dense or the euro did not exist. They could, for example, protect their own markets or devalue their currency. It is undeniable that global interdependencies decrease the scope

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of action and that, in Europe, the Member States have little effective control on macro-economic variables. Monetary policies are under the authority of the European Central Bank (ECB) and fiscal policies are increasingly supervised by the European Commission. However, the concrete use that is made of this reduced capacity varies from country to country. Let us consider, on the other hand, the fact that Great Britain is not in the euro zone, and even though it has made use of devaluation, it has not managed to increase economic control very much. It is true that the euro crisis was largely provoked by its incomplete design rather than by the behaviour of the Eurozone states. The governance of the euro should have been designed to regulate the increase in interdependencies that would be produced within the European economies. Without negating the difficulties that current realities represent for politics, the problem is often that states need an excuse to mitigate their responsibility. On the other hand, it is difficult for us to compare the current situation with the alternative hypothesis: what would our situation be outside of the euro, whether a non-globalized world would be more just and so forth. The judgements we make have to keep this possible flip side in mind and, based on that comparison, assess the current state of affairs. The limitations of interdependence are the other side of the coin from the advantages of cooperation. Acting in cooperative scenarios has allowed the states to recuperate possibilities that would have been lost if they had maintained their autarchy. Managing interdependence rather than closing in on oneself is the real way to maintain political autonomy. Sharing sovereignty restricts one’s own power, but sometimes less that the obstinacy of maintaining it intact. Recent history affords us thousands of examples of political actors who have increased their ability to act in places they could not have arrived on their own, while others have preferred not to participate in the game of exchanging sovereignty for power and seem unaware of the logic of that position. This is no longer a time when tensions between the economy and society could be resolved within national political communities. No government can govern without paying a lot of attention to international constraints, especially the financial markets that oblige them to impose sacrifices on their people. The crises and contradictions of capitalism have been internationalized; they no longer take place only within the states but between them, simultaneously at both levels and with combinations that were unknown until now. What consequences does that have in the current ideological framework? Perhaps the principal result is that there is a new debate between austerity and

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growth, which we should interpret correctly, since neither can guarantee that it is an automatic recipe for job creation. I would propose thinking about it like the formulation of a new axis of ideological polarization drawn around the question of who we trust with the economic recovery, whether we expect it more from markets or states and which of the two we distrust less, or better yet, which do we fear more: the impediment on growth caused by excessive debt or the market’s lack of consideration towards public goods and social protection. If this diagnosis is correct, we have an explanation for the fact that the right is currently winning in Europe. The right tends to win because people trust the state less than the market. (That is why the current lynching of the political class, even when there is good cause, particularly benefits the conservatives, since it weakens confidence in the state and comparatively strengthens confidence in the markets.) This hegemony is also due to another ideological asymmetry. What destroys the left is the lack of input, the belief that their governments do not do what voters desire. The worst thing that can happen to the right is ineffectiveness. In these times, the feeling of insecurity for the economic future is stronger than indignation over unfulfilled promises, which is why the right is preferred in times of austerity. The electorate feels safer with the right and does not fully buy the promises made by the social democrats. For example, those who reject the idea of the ECB to act as a lender of last resort do so because they continue to think that market pressure is the best way for everyone to act in a disciplined fashion, while the mutualization agreed upon by the states would be equivalent to returning to irresponsible debt. Others believe that sharing risks is the only thing that can protect us in the face of financialmarket volatility and that it is this vulnerability that prevents growth. In any case, the attempts to politicize the public space by offering a new alternative between austerity and growth have failed, from the outset, because both the right and the left coincide in the necessity of pursuing both objectives. They are both attempting to make markets function. The question of whether this is better handled through fiscal contraction or through more direct economic incentives is a debate that has barely made the voters’ perplexity disappear. As is revealed in the language of politics every day, job growth and creation is a shared objective; what separates us is the way to go about achieving that goal and the distribution of sacrifices that seems most reasonable to us in the meantime. However, it is important that we do not mistakenly think that this distinction is going to return all the splendour to the classic division between the left and the right. We have entered into a period in which the traditional distinction between left and right will continue making itself visible with great difficulty. We can

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call it de-ideologization, pragmatism or political post-heroics (Innerarity 2012), and modulate the tone with which we receive this new age, from technocratic enthusiasm to social democratic melancholy, but this is the backdrop upon which we are going to be moving for some time and in which we will have to reinvent political possibilities. Of course we should continue cultivating what Freud called ‘the narcissism of small differences’, but this polarization is not as strong or as exclusive as some people would like. The reason the differences between groups have been mitigated is not ideological weakness or a desire for convergence, but the hard fact that the political parties have less room to manoeuver on economic results than they tend to admit. No one champions economic dirigisme or completely deregulated markets. There are differences, of course, but they are increasingly a difference of emphasis. Each group places their expectations on an economy that can at most be incentivized externally, and they differ as to the degree of the stimulus. Who will lead fiscal consolidation, market pressure or institutional will? In Europe, there will most likely finally be a compromise that will balance both approaches. For some time now, clear ideological differences have disappeared from the political system, and it is increasingly difficult to make a distinction between what we call the major or conventional parties, the classic or mass parties. We are not going to return to the debate between state and market as it was presented last century – the minimal state versus socialism in a single country – but to a more sophisticated and less clear way of configuring political alternatives. Is there, in spite of everything, some possibility of politicizing, of doing politics, which is always something that has to do with difference and alternatives? From my point of view, there are three huge opportunities for ideological debate in which, without abandoning what Guattari called ‘the residual realism of history’ (1974, 175), a certain re-politicization of our societies is worth carrying out: giving greater importance to the personal properties of representatives, understanding the complexity of new conflicts, accepting our limitations when it comes to controlling economic results and discovering the possibilities that are offered to us in an economically conditioned space, which tend to be more than we are used to recognizing.

Personalization of leadership Paying attention to the personal characteristics of those who represent us is, at the same time, the result of the current de-politicization and an opportunity for re-politicization. It is logical that when ideological profiles are weakened,

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there is a decrease in large legitimations and the excuses they provided, making personal information about those who dedicate themselves to politics occupy almost all our attention. When one has the feeling, even if it is not completely true, that the way governments act on society and affect our lives is not filtered through an ideological commitment, then the personal characteristics of politicians occupy the foreground when it comes to determining our preferences. Confidence, trustworthiness, honesty and competence are what make the difference, not abstract ideological discourses. The choice between left or right is better explained by the personal characteristics of their leaders and the values they symbolize rather than by their ideological allegiances, by what they think about the market or the state. This circumstance would also explain the fact that current political debates refer more to questions of style and democratic quality – transparency, participation, responsibility and so forth – than to classical ideological values.

Transformation of conflicts The second space in which political actors have to find their possibilities for differentiation has to do with the current transformation of conflicts that are no longer limited to the typical redistributive disagreement in the heart of the welfare state. In fact, if we pay close attention, class conflicts have been nationalized and converted into international conflicts and the conflict between society and financial markets is slipping towards conflict between one nation and another: in Europe, the north against the south and even countries with a Protestant culture against those with a Catholic culture. The countries that are incapable of settling their debts are presented as collective sinners in opposition to economic logic and fiscal prudence; the lazy are contrasted with the hard workers. This way of seeing things seems to view societies as united communities that are not run through with internal conflicts or classes or differences. Rich and poor now seem to refer to countries and not people. The supposed transnational solidarity of the workers has collapsed in the face of national identity. If the left does nothing more than complain about the unfavourable playing field, they will achieve nothing more than an exercise in melancholy. The problems of redistribution have not disappeared, but people’s preferences have diversified. The socio-economic factors have now been supplemented with a series of values that have to do with cultural and identity matters, with lifestyles, equality of rights and personal liberties. The conflict has become something multidimensional. The emergence of new lines of conflict is inconsistent with

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the perception that there is no space for politics; the reality is that other ways of responding have appeared, but the traditional parties have not known how to adapt very well to these possibilities. This inability largely explains the appearance of populist or single-issue parties that articulate new demands and of certain social movements that express demands to which the dominant political choices are scarcely paying attention.

Possibilities in the midst of strongly conditioned economic policy Economic policy continues having a third realm for the configuration of political options. Austerity, which can sound like simple common sense, is, in the dominant formulation, a political option that benefits certain economic interests and is sustained by an ideological framework that exalts the values of frugality, especially in the public sector, in spite of the enormous social costs that it implies, while it stops seeing the spectacular benefits in the private sector, for example, in the field of pension plans. Beginning in Europe, we can argue, for example, about many of the current frameworks for our economic configuration, some of which were imposed without sufficient debate or have been revealed as clearly ineffective in the midst of the crisis, like the function of the ECB, whose exclusive mandate of combating inflation was a political decision. It is worth redefining its function and interpreting the treaties in another way so that European monetary policies can be different. In the domestic realm, although fiscal possibilities are limited and even if we accept that governments should not allow large deficits, there are diverse ways of obtaining balanced budgets. The highest incomes could be taxed, and we could debate whether there are ulterior motives for exaggerating the flight of investments. It is also possible to fight more decisively against fiscal evasion, especially keeping in mind that many tax havens are European countries or overseas territories that are a part of the Member States. When it comes to expenditures, doing politics is not impossible either. It is true that the possibilities for governmental discretional spending become limited when a large portion of public expenditures must go to pensions or to financing debt. Given that most fiscal consolidation is carried out through cuts in expenditures rather than increased taxes, the definition of priorities is fundamental. Given that we must decrease expenses, cutbacks can affect non-productive expenditures rather than investments to stimulate growth; redistributive spending can be allocated to the poor and young people more

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than to maintaining the income of middle-class pensioners. Not debating these possibilities openly and making mistaken decisions is a political error and not the result of constraints that the globalized economy imposes.

The new tasks of politics We will not manage to govern effectively if we do not move towards a transformation that we must begin by asking ourselves about the purpose of politics. We should stop replying to this question with a proposal for administrative reform. The question we should ask ourselves is what politics can do that no other social system can do. Rather than needing to mourn the disappearance of politics, we can see that, if it could strengthen its cognitive ability, politics would have an enormous task to do, when it comes to regulation, systemic risks, the protection of the future and social coherence (Innerarity 2016, 148–55). A modern society is one whose social systems (law, science, the economy, culture and so forth) respond increasingly to their own logic, but if that logic is not coordinated with others, it can throw the whole system off balance. The true benefit of politics in a complex society is as a counterweight to the centrifugal dynamic, turbulences and self-threats of those social systems. However, those systems are so complex, dynamic and expert that they preclude authoritarian state control. Politics can provide those social subsystems with a reflection that allows them to overcome the self-destruction that would result if every one of those realities did not take into account the fact that they exist in a limiting environment. To be able to fulfil this task, politics has to also be simultaneously conscious of its limitations, of the negative effects that a type of excessive intervention would have. It is not a question, therefore, of arbitrating between more or less state (which is an old debate that we have gotten past), but of conceiving of it in another fashion. We should think, for example, about a state that does not deny market forces but stimulates them, organizes them and places them at the service of an improvement in collective well-being (Aghion and Roulet 2011). That is why it seems ill-advised and unjust to insist on formulas of market intervention that disregard the systemic effects they can have, to the point of making the maintenance of the welfare state unviable. Saving this social accomplishment today largely means suppressing those benefits that have been introduced in its name but that make it unrealistic or that generate greater inequalities, such as

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the inequality that is increasingly found between those who are in the labour market and those who have not been granted access to it. We need a new wisdom about limits and intelligence to understand them as an opportunity to carry out politics in which we once again combine effectiveness and democracy. The ability of politics to learn this new language depends on whether it is guiding new transformations or continuing to complain about the lack of play that new circumstances allow it. In any case, as Disraeli recommended to the politicians, it is not a good idea to complain too much; limitations and conditioning are part of politics. In democratic politics, there are external limitations as well as internal self-limitations that limit the power to protect freedoms or other people’s right to intervene in a decision-making realm that is always shared. Politics is always conditioned decision – action in context. Today this context is defined by an austerity that is partially reasonable and partially ideologically self-interested. It is the task of politics to delve into the realm of the possible and expand it as much as possible. If politics today enjoys so little prestige, it is because deep down we are getting used to thinking that everything is controlled by necessity.

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The year 2011 has perhaps gone down in history as the year of indignation; this word synthesizes a movement that has transformed the generalized disaffection towards politics into a new type of protest. Are we experiencing a new version of what was a familiar revolutionary practice? How do institutions and the people relate in a dis-intermediated world? Does distrust announce a crisis in democracy or a new stage of democratic consolidation? In any case, the very idea of representation is being questioned from a space of protest that may give rise to populism to the extent that it does not seem to understand the limitations of democratic self-determination or of our political condition. Politics has been held in great esteem and subjected to utter scorn. We have judged it by a task to be carried out by a small minority, then by everyone, and finally by no one. It has been considered the solution, and now it seems to be the problem. Esteemed at certain moments in history as the most noble pursuit, even overvalued as if it were a means to salvation, feared as a consolidation of power and accepted at times as a profession that at least strives for respectability, it is currently tolerated as irrelevant or even openly disparaged as the cause of our worst ills. Politics probably never deserved to be held in such high regard, and it may be that the disdain to which it is currently subjected reveals society’s lack of sincerity with itself. In any case, there is no question that there is room for improvement in politics as it is currently practised. The aversion towards politics today is compatible with the fact that more is now demanded of it than we ever previously expected. This is revealed both in the way citizens scrutinize power structures and by contemporary protest movements. Groups such as the Spanish Indignados (‘Indignant Ones’) contradict those who used to believe that disaffection towards politics was a sign of indifference. This situation raises any number of questions about the role politics can play in the world today and about the quality of our democracies. In the first place,

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it is important not to misinterpret the meaning of our dissatisfaction. Should we view the current protests as revolutionary, or are they actually less significant insurrections? How are conflict and protest expressed in contemporary society? Does a lack of trust strengthen or undermine democracy? Is mediation unnecessary and representation impossible now that public spaces have been transformed by globalization and the new technologies of communication? In short, is this a time of crisis or exhaustion or could it be an opportunity to transform our democracies?

From revolution to indignation When a system makes revolution unattainable or unnecessary, that system is necessarily stabilized. This does not mean protest is made impossible: just the opposite, in fact. Only senseless regimes fail to understand that protests afford them stability. What happens is that at some point protests are no longer revolutionary, and they become a means of expression. That is why it makes no sense to criticize the current Indignados in Spain or similar movements elsewhere for not having a concrete plan of action or for not offering specific alternatives. Their role is to express dissatisfaction, to call attention to something, not to compete with the political parties’ electoral platforms. In the imperfect democracies that currently exist, the proliferation of protest movements is not a sign of democratic weakness. Instead, it signals an increase in the level of demands that the people are making of those who govern them. We can see this in the competition the Indignados have unleashed for the most ingenious slogan. This supplants a debate that would have previously focused on determining the most appropriate action for sabotaging or subverting. It is essential to understand this fact in order to respond appropriately. An expressive protest does not necessitate the intervention of the authorities to restore public order, but it does require thought in order to properly interpret what the movement signifies or reveals. Conflict has become a mode of expression; its purpose is to communicate and comprehend. We have not entered a new phase of the great revolutions that characterized the transformation of democratic societies; rather, we are facing a phenomenon linked to the spectacularization of our public life. The term ‘post-democratic’ was recently coined to denote a state of stability in contemporary democracies. For the most optimistic among us, this implied a celebration of the definitive establishment of democracy; for the pessimists,

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it suggested a period characterized by mediocrity and decline. The two perspectives, rather than being contradictory, may simply be different ways of looking at the same reality that, while strengthened, is also trivialized. Analyses by Crouch, Rancière, Zolo and Guéhenno have traced every detail of this debate. At the most fundamental level, are we faced with a situation where change is no longer possible? Or could it be that change can only be made from within the system we mean to transform? In order to resolve this enigma, we must understand how dissatisfaction is handled in contemporary society. We must take note of some events that could be called ‘post-revolutionary’ insofar as they are expressive insurrections rather than destabilizing revolutions. A Spanish Indignado is not a revolutionary, just as stirring something up does not necessarily imply an ability to transform. There are no revolutions for the same reasons there is no true political antagonism: there are differences and changes, of course, but political time has stopped being regulated by uprisings. Political confrontation is not a collision between competing models. There is no revolutionary contrast to be found in the rivalry between parties, where time is flat and the competing roles are played by a government that resists change and an opposition that awaits it (the best reason for a change of government is to clean house, not to reap the benefits of the opposition’s alternative plan). Everyone who is not a part of the government represents ‘change’, which is not a value of the left or the right but of the opposition. The language relevant to change, along with everything it presupposes about historical time and political intervention, is faulty. In progressive discourse, revolution has been replaced by modernization, adaptation and innovation; the idea of reform generally belongs to the right; and on the extreme left, there are critical gestures, but no critical theory of society (much less a plan of action). A good deal of what is said and done is nothing but a simple display of melancholy or of ‘heroism in the face of the market’ (Grunberg and Laïdi 2007, 9). There is no revolutionary distinction outside of the political system either, in the external forces that the protest or Indignado movements may represent. The current ideological disillusionment is revealed in the fact that neither the extreme left nor the extreme right is particularly interested in intervening through the normal means of representation. Both conservative individualism and radical leftism conceive of themselves as ‘parapolitical’ or as ‘anti-establishment’ movements. In the ideology of both, pirates take on the status of role models in the fight against the rigidity of the state or against the neoliberal order. For different and even conflicting reasons, piracy is considered the most appropriate response to the economic and cultural development of capitalism.

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Some call for a civil society and others, on the post-communist left, for the multitude (Hardt and Negri 2000). Both concepts are very liquid and not very political. This is no longer the age of the right and left as institutions, but the age of the Tea Party and social movements. The right prefers the market to the state, and the left – rather than the traditional struggles (labour union, social, institutional or armed) – substitutes other fighting responses such as exile, defection or nomadization. As Deleuze and Guattari have suggested, the nomad, more than the proletarian, signifies resistance par excellence (1972). On the left, the most innovative strategies reflect the decline of revolutionary ideals. The most we can hope for is ‘détournement’, the satiric parody that is posed by contemporary art, making use of a term coined by the Situationists; it is quite simply an attempt at sabotage, derailment, distortion or subversion. According to Deleuze, it implies interruptions or mini-insurrections, nothing, of course, that recalls the ancient goal of seizing power. The most ambitious proposal is to benefit from gaps or from areas not controlled by the state. Naomi Klein, one of the principal advocates of the anti-globalization movement, calls for ‘culture jamming’ as a form of resistance. This is an interference that attempts to transform brand advertising without altering its communication codes in order to spark a re-evaluation of the values those brands transmit (Klein 2000). It is easy to note the contradiction of this alter-globalization since employing piracy clearly reveals a failure to believe that ‘another world is possible’. Whenever we see these attempted aggravations, there are those who interpret them as a revelation of some type of truly political action, in contrast with a political system or class, both considered depersonalized realities. Following the lead of Guy Debord and Giorgio Agamben, Zizek recently documented this expectation in his book Living in the End of Times (2010). It is an evocation of an entirely different world order that fails to give us the slightest indication of what it might involve, what social agent could provoke a change of such magnitude and the most appropriate course of action. This pop-Leninism corresponds to the hope that the change towards a new world order will arise from the selfdestructive processes of the existing order. This millenarianism does not include a single factual, critical description of contemporary society. When we wield almost nothing of diagnostic value, it is clear that we cannot do anything, beyond awaiting the apocalypse. All of this is symptomatic of a time when we have stripped politics of its active nature that could have produced a change towards something better. And it takes place within a context where cultural, social and technological changes are unstoppable constants, but we have lost hope in change of a political nature.

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Of all the social domains, politics gives the greatest impression of paralysis; it has stopped being an agent of shaping change and become a place where deadlock is administered. This situation is judged differently by liberals who lament the slow pace of reform and leftists who complain about the lack of alternatives. Indignation, generic commitment, utopian alter-globalization or expressive insurrectionism should not be understood, in my opinion, as the harbinger of radical change but as the symptom that none of this is feasible outside of the realm of unexceptional democratic normality and modest reformism. The problem with large critical gestures is not that something different is proposed, but that things tend to remain unchanged when the desired modifications are outside of the domain of politics.

Democratic tension Charles Taylor has stated that democracy is a tension between institutions and the public. In addition to the type of politics we could call ‘official’, there is a whole sub-layer of processes that condition institutional realities. Among other benefits, the tensions that result from this coexistence help ensure that the political system is enriched, corrected or more forward looking. We cannot depend solely on the skill sets of professional politicians to achieve political progress. A good deal of the progress that has already been accomplished by politics was triggered by external forces: it is probably true that most social advances were not dreamt up by politicians; these results were achieved because of very concrete social pressures. The political system requires a certain degree of social energy as well as resources it does not independently possess to perform its tasks. These requirements sometimes inconvenience or even subvert the established order but inevitably influence its exercise of power. That being said, the assumption that ‘the public’ is necessarily better than institutions is a huge one; the public also includes regressive movements, pressures and lobbies, irrational emotions, illegitimate or insufficient representation. ‘The public’ can be worse than institutions, and may even be reactionary. We should not forget that the world of social movements is as plural as society itself and that social initiatives can be expected to provide one thing and its opposite: advances and retreats, right-leaning and left-leaning movements. Many who invoke society’s participation are thinking only of those who suit their needs, but society, naturally enough, affords participants with a wide range of perspectives. There are those on both sides of the political spectrum who hope to step outside

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of the framework of representative democracy: the meaning that the social movements of the 1960s hold in left-wing imagery is matched by the neoliberals’ demands for civil society in the 1990s. This concurrence should at least give us a pause. Democracy is a regime that accepts not only that tension, but other tensions as well, because we assume that no person or group is always right. What saves us from the damages produced by bad decisions is that they are balanced out by other agents, limitations and procedures: there is government, but fortunately there is also opposition; opinion polls help us know what people want at present, but the political leadership can also focus on less popular criteria. There are things about which one should consult and others about which consultation is forbidden; the administration protects us from politicians who are too original, while the daring decisions made by those very politicians compensate for the bureaucracy’s lack of imagination. Experts limit the frivolity of certain politicians, and those same politicians help us escape the tyranny of the experts. Without the rules of the game, we would be in no position to discuss different goals, but it is not uncommon for the discussion to lead to a demand for a revision of some of those same rules. ‘Protest provides something that nothing can provide. It [calls] attention to themes that no functional system recognizes as its own … . It compensates modern society’s manifest lack of reflection’ (Luhmann 1991, 153). The dualism between institutions and the public is one of those balances that should be taken into account, like the balance between representation and participation or between obedience and protest. But what if the greatest threat to our democracies was not so much the strength of institutions as their weakness in the face of the capriciousness of public opinion? What does political regulation of the marketplace mean except obstruction of the inevitable chain of events stemming from investors’ free decisions? The problem we face is the populism that, with all its demands for balance and responsibility, impedes the creation of the public good. Our democracies’ fragility stems not from the distance between the elites and the people but from what we could call their excessive closeness, the instability of a politics that is vulnerable to existing pressures at any given point in time, paying attention only to temporary changes of opinion (Bardhan 1999, 95–6; Calhoun 1988). In a democratic society, politics is at the service of the will of the people, of course, but that will is just as complex, as in need of interpretation, as is the reality of ‘the people’ to which we are constantly making reference. Like everything that is considered self-evident, bringing up ‘the people’ almost always serves to block

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discussion. But as soon as we go a little deeper, the disagreements begin. Are ‘the people’ the ones reflected in polls and surveys, the ones the representatives represent, a reality pervaded by globalization or an autarkic unit safe from all interference? They are probably all those things; democratic procedures are nothing but ways of verifying what or whom we are talking about in every case. ‘The people’, from the outset, is a fuzzy reality, something that needs to be elaborated; that is the purpose of representation, public discussion and the institutional procedures that define boundaries or modify and transform them into democratic decisions. Institutions protect us against the demagogic appeal to ‘the people’. They represent them and pull together their constituent plurality and the complexity of their demands. Because of political representation, the people’s will is operative and integrative of the times that constitute it. This is important to remember, especially when commonplaces suggest the opposite and when there is such fascination with popular ‘spontaneity’ that we are made to assume that those who protest are always in the right and those who promote participation necessarily strengthen democracy.

Ballot boxes and dreams One of the slogans most frequently shouted by the Spanish Indignados was ‘Our dreams don’t fit into your ballot boxes’. As with all utopian demands, this takes its cue from the comfortable prestige of the impossible, which saves us from asking whether our dreams are, at times, private delusions or nightmares for other people. I am not going to focus my attention here on the fact that the electoral slate from which we have to choose clearly admits improvement. Instead, I will attempt to emphasize a reality that defines our political condition: no one, especially in politics, gets what he or she wants. This is, incidentally, one of democracy’s great achievements. A society is democratically mature when it assimilates the fact that politics is inevitably disappointing and continues to make political demands. Politics is inseparable from a willingness to compromise, which is the ability to accept that something is good even when it does not completely satisfy one’s particular goals. A person who does not have the ability to live with these types of frustrations and respect his or her limits is unsuited for politics. We have been taught that this is what makes politics irresponsible and fraudulent, but we should get used to seeing that this is what defines it.

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In a democratic society, politics cannot be a means for achieving goals designed at a distance from real circumstances, beyond institutional realities or without keeping other people in mind, including those who do not share the same goals. Any political dream is only achievable in collaboration with other people who also want to participate in its definition. Pacts and alliances reveal that we need other people and that power is always a shared reality. Democratic coexistence affords many possibilities but also imposes a good number of limitations. In the first place, there are limits that stem from recognizing that other groups or interested parties have as much of a right as you have to try to win. That is why political action always implies making concessions. Those who confront any individual problem as a question of principle and those who speak constantly of doctrines or of things that cannot be conceded or of conflict are people who doom themselves to frustration or authoritarianism. Politics fails when rival groups advocate positions that they consider completely incompatible and contradictory or when they refuse to admit any concessions. All zealots believe that their opponents are beyond political persuasion. Those who are unable to understand the plausibility of the other side’s arguments will never be able to think, much less act, politically. One of the symptoms of the poor quality of our public space is the growing influence of groups and people who have not understood this reality and who practice an insistent de-politization. The fragility of our democracies in the face of populist pressure is revealed through phenomena such as the Tea Party movement, a true stronghold of inflexibility. I am not merely referring to the movement in the United States, but to a much more widespread tendency in our democracies. We could say without exaggeration that we all have our own Tea Party now. Political parties, churches, labour unions and the media are overwhelmed by a series of movements that are generated around them and that try to influence their habitual practices or directly question their representativeness. Each of these groups endures its own particular siege against the moderates, a friendly fire that creates a solid impasse so no compromise will be brokered and no ground ceded to the enemy. In this sense, Tea Party movements are strongly ideological yet disorganized power structures that live like parasites off a different ideological power structure, this one official but weakened. They demand that the official groups guarantee absolute loyalty to a number of political objectives that must be achieved without compensation to or compromise with the enemy. In this way, the idea of consensus or the value of making deals is discredited. Those who belong to the Tea Party are guardians of principle who, rather than

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fight their enemies, lie in wait for those who resemble them the most. They fulfil the adage that the worst enemy is always within our own ranks. We can reflect, then, on the political significance of labels such as ‘without hang-ups’ or the proliferation of displays of ‘pride’ that are currently used to describe many ideological renovations. Among the most depoliticizing characteristics of these movements is their lack of a sense of responsibility, their unwillingness to come to an agreement and their inability to engage in intelligent self-limitation. They defend an ideological nucleus (the family, the nation, the welfare state, the market, values) that they view as continually under assault, and their strongest suspicions are directed at the moderates within their own ranks. They are especially vulnerable to populism, and they carry a good deal of emotional weight. ‘Single issue movements’ (on either extreme of the ideological spectrum and focused on various matters: the environment, women, the nation, abortion etc.) are particularly given to bringing these extreme ideological influences to bear. These movements, since they are very concerned about a single issue and care almost nothing about anything else, tend to focus on whichever particular issue they consider essential without considering its viability, the urgency of its timeline or a framework of compossibility. The combination of institutional weakness and a number of social and technological factors has destabilized the space for demand and protest, which is as deregulated as the markets. The social networks, which have unleashed great waves of mobilization, communication and instantaneousness, have played a decisive role in all of this, but they tend to offer a de-structured world in which everyone links to whomever else they choose. Because of this, these networks are less and less social since confrontation with someone who is different tends to be replaced with indignation alongside those who are similar, an emotion that is nurtured by communicating with other people who share the same irritations. This probably indicates that we need to reconsider politics in societies that are largely de-institutionalized, whose conflicts do not have the structural function of previous social conflicts and where citizen demands do not find a clear outlet through labour unions or political representation: because the world is now defined by anti-politics, not by democratic equilibrium. What we have are alternative authorities that intend not to balance the official power structures, but to neutralize them. Politics has always disciplined our dreams; it used to define them within a political reality and translate them into programs of action. For that reason, when politics is weak, our expectations regarding the collective future explode, and we

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become more vulnerable to irrationality. What do we then do with everything we hope to achieve through politics? Should we concede that, considering the disappointing nature of social coexistence, there is no sense in formulating ideals or fighting for them? Instead, it is a question of making a distinction without which there can be no democratic coexistence. What does fit into ballot boxes are our aspirations; what comes after that – if we do not want to turn our own dreams into someone else’s nightmares – is the democratic interplay that often limits and frustrates our desires, but that also enriches them with other people’s contributions. If a person were able to realize all of his or her aspirations, he or she would not share our human or, especially, our political condition.

Democratic deception It is a paradox that at the time when democracy has reached its greatest geographic extension, when it is most valued by the citizenry and there is no alternative model, we observe persistent symptoms of weakness and dysfunction. Polls reveal a growing disillusion that some people interpret – mistakenly, in my opinion – as absolute disinterest, but this should be analysed more precisely. We are not facing the death of politics, but we are in the midst of a transformation that forces us to conceive of it and practice it in a different way. We should not allocate suspicion to outdated categories or relate current disappointments to the anti-parliamentarism that dramatically weakened democratic governments at the beginning of the twentieth century. We are not on the verge of a democratic crisis, but entering a new era of democratic stability. The disappointment people feel is in no way subversive; it is perfectly compatible with a respect for the democratic order. It is a mistake to think this feeling is anything other than fully democratic. We should also not forget that a lack of trust (towards absolute power) is central to the very foundation of our political institutions. Democracy has always been construed as a system of limited and revocable trust; it is a regime that institutionalizes suspicion. Is it not true that what we generally bemoan as de-politicization simply does not correspond to the type of political leadership to which we were previously accustomed, that is, an emphatic, hierarchical style of leadership that tends not to be ultra-democratic? The current state of suspicion stems from the logical transformation of a society that is no longer heroic and whose political system has been stripped of its previous theatrical quality. A lack of trust is not the same as indifference; it is a ‘weak’ disappointment that produces more distance than destruction (Lipovetsky

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2006, 62). It is one thing for democracy not to foster too much enthusiasm and another for this disappointment to mean indifference to our form of political life. Even if we dislike our newspapers or political parties, for example, that does not mean we would let them be suppressed. The demystification of politics does not mean that we do not care about anything; it simply means that our fondness for our political system is not awash in passion or enthusiasm. It is not true that people have lost all interest in politics; we live in a society in which we feel a greater sense of political competence. We are now better educated and feel capable of passing judgement on public affairs; thus we are less tolerant of having that ability appropriated. Numerous studies show that the more education we have, the less confidence we feel in institutions or leaders (Dogan 2005, 14). One of the ways in which society expresses an opinion about politics is precisely through the intensity of its participation or interest. If we respect political pluralism in all its manifestations, why not accept that there is also plurality regarding degrees of participation and public commitment? Why should everyone have to be equally involved in political issues? And who determines the desired level of commitment? When citizens express a greater or lesser interest in politics, this is a sign that requires political interpretation. A lack of interest is a respectable way of stating an opinion or making a decision and not necessarily a dearth of political commitment. It is important not to err on this point if we want to understand the society in which we live. We are not facing a time of de-politicization, but a time of the demystification of politics. A society that is interdependent and heterarchical tends to de-totalize politics. What some people hastily interpret as a lack of interest stems from the fact that we live in a society where the public space cannot absorb all the dimensions of subjectivity. Although it may be true that politics now only mobilizes passions in a superficial fashion, that does not mean that our demands on politics have disappeared. Just the opposite. The same people who are absolutely uninterested in politics do not stop expecting to reap the benefits of the political system, and they are no less vigilant in seeking the fulfilment of their demands. But their expectations are no longer inscribed in the heroic framework of a totalizing politics. For that reason, we can see that deception is not the opposite of legitimacy, but a subtle means of managing legitimacy. A lack of interest can be a completely practical response on the part of the citizens (Luhmann 1993, 191). Some even believe that a certain amount of political apathy is a good sign. Democracies can withstand a high degree of disinterest; in fact, the sudden interest of people who are generally apathetic about politics tends to indicate that something is

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not working as it should. A certain amount of boredom is part and parcel of democratic normality, and excitement about politics does not always bode well. Much has been said about the way contemporary societies transfer sacredness from established religions to political projects. This picture could be completed by noting that, after the transfer of sacredness from religion to politics, we have reached an era where it is the nonconventional forms of politics, what we could call ‘alter-politics’, that are consecrated. It is surprising to see this evolution of social expectations; we trust that alternative forms of politics will help us achieve that which we have stopped expecting from conventional politics, reactivating pure energies that, it seems, remained intact in the domain of depoliticized society. We could call this civil society, active citizenship, social movements or ‘counterdemocracy’, to use the term coined by Pierre Rosanvallon (2008). In my opinion, those who expect the same things from non-politics as they previously expected from politics reveal that they have not grasped the transformations that have taken place in society. We live in a society that could be called post-heroic, where heroic appeals and the mindsets of resistance have lesser repercussions. If politics is no longer what it once was, neither is nonpolitics. Alternative political activities (participation, protests, social movements etc.) no longer offer us the heroism that has faded from institutional politics. ‘Alter-heroism’ is a nostalgic refuge for those disappointed by politics in its current form, but like all forms of nostalgia, it is a remnant of the past.

Indignation is not enough In a society with low intensity citizenship, soaring estrangement from politics, flat debates and non-existent discussions, any appeal to jump on the criticism bandwagon receives immediate approval. If the person writing the statement is someone like Stéphane Hessel (2010), a former French Resistance fighter and one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is impossible to contradict him or attempt to modify the specifics of his position without coming across as a stooge of the system. Nevertheless indignation is a necessary, but insufficient, civic virtue. With apologies to Stéphane Hessel and his Indignez-Vous!, I see things differently, and I believe the fundamental problem lies elsewhere. In the first place, rather than a lack of indignation, we suffer the complete opposite. There is indignation everywhere; simply flipping through the channels affords a vision of people who are almost all indignant (particularly on the extremely conservative stations).

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We find indignation among those who believe that the welfare state is being whittled away, for example, as well as among those who believe it is going too far. The ‘indignant’ label applies to those who believe that there are too many foreigners, to zealots of all types and to those who have allowed their fear to be activated by the people who hope to channel it. Our societies are full of people who are ‘against’ while there is a dearth of those who are ‘for’ something concrete and identifiable. The problem is how to confront the fact that the negative energies of indignation, exaggeration and victimization are what energize people. This is what Pierre Rosanvallon has called ‘the age of negative democracy’, where those who object do not choose to do so in the manner of previous rebels or dissidents, since their attitude does not specify any desirable horizon or plan of action. In this situation, the problem is how to distinguish regressive anger from justifiable indignation and how to make use of the latter in favour of movements with transformative capabilities. But what if the people who listen to these curses with pleasure are not the solution but part of the problem? Asking people to get indignant implies telling them that they are right and that they should continue to respond as they have been doing until now, living a mixture of conformity and unproductive indignation. The revolutionary stance would be to effectively break with populism, with the immediacy and adulation that is the cause of our worst relapses. In addition, these populist appeals keep offering us simple explanations for complex problems. Indignation will stop being a harmless broadside that is incapable of improving the objectionable situations that provoke it when it provides some reasonable analysis about why that which is happening is happening, when it successfully identifies problems instead of being satisfied with identifying guilty parties, when it proposes some form of action. And what if indignation is benefitting those who are satisfied with or even responsible for the state of affairs that makes us indignant? It may be that these bursts of violent protest are less transformative of reality than an ongoing, sustained effort to formulate good analyses and make patient efforts at introducing improvements. One could discuss a conservative function of indignation in that it stabilizes systems just as letting one’s hair down or employing escape valves do. It may end up being the most practical approach to keeping things just the way they are. We need something more in order to move towards a better world, but that something is not greater dramatic exaggeration of our dissatisfaction; it is, in the first place, a good theory that helps us understand what is happening in the world without falling into the comfortable temptation of concealing its complexity. Only at that point can programs, projects or leaderships be

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formulated that will afford a type of efficient, coherent and capable social intervention that is able to attract a majority of the people, and not merely those who are angry. Now that there is a trend of authors exhorting others to do something political – to become indignant or to get engaged – I would propose, in spite of almost never knowing what other people should do, an alternative slogan: Comprehend! I am using ‘comprehension’ in both its senses. On the one hand, recognize the complexity of the world and the restrictions our political realities impose on us and, on the other hand, be understanding about those difficulties. Any criticism that does not find a starting point in both these attitudes – respect for the challenges of politics and benevolence towards those who undertake it – will not be as profound as it could be in challenging the political system’s evident deficiencies with solid analysis.

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The dominant narrative affirms that we live in a post-democratic age (Crouch 2004). This denouncement comes in various forms, such as the superiority of the executive over the legislative branch (Habermas 2013), the distancing of the elite from those who are governed, the displacement of the parties towards a centre that eliminates choices (Mouffe 2013), a lack of consideration for what society really wants and so forth. That is not the way I see it. The precaution that is learned when one is barely capable of anything other than philosophical suspicion leads me to look at things differently. Could it not be that we have democracy that is open and politics that is weak? Democracy is an open space where, in principle, anyone can make his or her opinion known, which makes a thousand types of pressure possible, and we even have the ability to remove governments. This works relatively well. In our democratic societies, there is no lack of open spaces of influence and mobilization, social networks, protest movements, demonstrations and possibilities for intervention and obstruction. What is not going so well is politics, in other words, the possibility of converting this plural aggregate of forces into projects and political transformations, giving direction and political coherence to those popular expressions and configuring quality public spaces where everything is deliberated, discussed and synthesized. The fact that it is increasingly difficult for those who act politically to formulate alternative agendas has something to do with this. We are in a post-political era, an era of democracy without politics, which Rosanvallon has called ‘impolitic democracy’ (2006). People are aggravated and the political system is agitated, but their interaction barely produces anything new, as we would have the right to expect, given the nature of the problems that we must confront. I am going to briefly examine the workings of this ‘negative sovereign’ that has become a force that is as strong as it is ambiguous. I will attempt to reconstruct the ideological assumptions of those who have celebrated this phenomenon as a triumph over politics in its traditional form (but which I interpret instead as an

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attempt to triumph over politics in and of itself). One of the most disagreeable effects of this democratic vitality is that it de-politicizes the public space, a phenomenon that can be seen in several concepts that have recently been all the rage following the crisis of representative democracy: there is a demand for direct or plebiscitary democracy, an expectation that citizen participation will grant us things that cannot be obtained from representative delegation, a belief that the establishment of transparency as a universal principle will fix everything. Based on these assumptions, the progress of populism is not the solution, but it is not merely a problem either; it is instead a symptom of the fact that we have not yet properly considered the place of democracy in a political society. We will only be able to overcome some of these failures if we engage in a critique of depoliticized democracy or, to formulate it in a positive fashion, a defence of politics against depoliticized democracy. Democracy can seriously harm democracy not only because democratic procedures allow those who are interested in destroying its power to access it, but also in a less obvious sense: certain procedures that are irreproachably democratic, if not correctly articulated, can damage democratic quality. Given that they are defended in the name of democracy and we have no intuitive sense of danger when they are demanded, what harm is there in promoting more participation, in carrying transparency to the extreme, in governing based on opinion polls, in increasing consultation, in always doing what the people want, in presuming that the closest thing is necessarily the most democratic? Politics is especially vulnerable to this type of demand. We will only be able to combat the things that are apparently democratic if we point out how they can have anti-political effects if they are not integrated into a balanced understanding of politics. That is why I will conclude with a defence of what we could call ‘indirect democracy’, a territory that deserves to be explored, even when it does not make the direct forms of democratic intervention superfluous.

An intermittent citizenry Experts say that the decrease in electoral participation is not accompanied by a lack of interest in the public space (Dalton 2004, 191). Citizens are avoiding classical types of organization, which is compatible with growing modalities of individual commitment, an activism that is not ideologically articulated in an ideological framework that affords coherence and totality, as could be

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the case with traditional, all-encompassing ideologies. The new activism is individualist, isolated, oriented towards questions that refer to lifestyles and increasingly apolitical growth (Norris 2002, 188). It is true that ‘the proliferation of opportunities for individual access to government has substantially reduced the incentives for collective mobilization’ (Crenson and Ginsberg 2002, 2–3). In order to fully understand this new situation, we should abandon the simplistic framework that contrasts classical activism with apolitical indifference. As various scholars have suggested, the people who seem most indifferent to politics in its traditional format are the most committed in alternative or extra-parliamentary arenas. They often believe that their non-participation in elections is a markedly political decision (O’Toole, Marsh and Jones 2003). The very shape of political activism is changing. The possibilities of exercising what Pierre Rosanvallon has called ‘counter-democracy’ (2006) have increased because of citizens’ self-awareness and technological advances. It is significant that most of the new political questions raised in the last thirty years have been furthered more by demonstrations and direct action than by conventional political activities through parties and parliaments (Budge 1996, 192). During the first half of the last century, the activities of civil society took place in the arena surrounding political institutions, but currently they are at a distance from the places of power. We live in a society that no longer seeks to constitute power in order to configure social processes; rather, it aims to prevent an abuse of power. Contemporary society prefers present transparency over future responsibility and exercises the distrust of the negative sovereign. We have not achieved the ‘optimal level of distrust’ (Dahlgreen 2013, 17), and its excessive levels have made it a creator of anti-political distance. What both the mobilizations on the internet and more classical protests in physical spaces have in common is their isolated and negative nature (not in a moral sense, but in the sense of principally aiming to prevent something). They are, for that reason, apolitical acts, to the extent that they are not inscribed in complete ideological constructions or in any long-lasting structure of intervention. Political activity today generally appears in the form of a mobilization that barely produces constructive experiences, is limited to ritualizing certain contradictions against those who govern, and they in turn react by simulating dialogue and doing nothing. The nature of political compromise is generally episodic. People want to be implicated in the political process but with the terms that they choose, which are intermittent, partial and sporadic (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002).

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Digital space has opened new possibilities for political activism. Platforms for mobilization around concrete causes – such as Change.org or Avaaz.org – allow the exercise of concrete ‘clicktivism’ in favour of good causes; this contrasts with following abstract ideologies that are the object of general incredulity. For broad sectors of the population, the reality represented by the hierarchical parties is no longer attractive, while the internet’s virtual culture allows them to comfortably articulate their fluid and intermittent political dispositions and even take themselves off-line at any time. Another manifestation of the new political mobilization has to do with the consumer world, increasingly employed to express political preferences. This activism has increased enormously since the mid-1980s (Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley 2003). The OECD reports that the annual value of the global market of ‘fair trade’ products was 700 million dollars in 2003 (Vihinen and Lee 2004). This type of mobilization reveals the emergence of a new lifestyle in which informed citizens make decisions through which the fragmented masses can express themselves politically. There are numerous examples of activism and ‘negative sovereignty’ in the physical space as well. This is now also connected to digital mobilization: demonstrations and movements that gained a certain degree of celebrity, such as alternative forums at world summit meetings, Occupy Wall Street, ‘We are the 99%’, the entire 15-M movement in Spain, demands against housing evictions, protests against the privatization of public services, the intervention of individual accusations in judicial trials, the successful resistance against certain public works and infrastructures: from Burgos to Stuttgart passing through Nantes. I am not questioning the value of these acts of civic resistance or online campaigns; I am simply pointing out that, since they are not inscribed into any political framework that gives them coherence, they can seem to imply that good politics is a mere aggregation of social accomplishments. The articulation of social demands in coherent programs that compete in a quality public sphere does not work; in short, there is a breakdown in the political and institutional construction of democracy beyond the emotion of the moment, beyond immediate pressure and media attention. Of course, when we demand something that strikes us as fair we do not need to require that it be accompanied by a complete political program and an economic memory. But the public space cannot be reduced to the mere apolitical accumulation of incoherent preferences, grouped together as if there were no priority and even certain incompatibilities among them. Someone should be in charge of organizing these demands with political criteria and managing any

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possible incompatibilities in a democratic fashion. But, is there anyone there? If politics (and the parties that are so despised) are good for anything, it is precisely to integrate the multiple demands that continuously arise in the space of an open society with democratic coherence and authority. The construction of infrastructures is blocked, and they probably should not be built anyway, or at least not in that fashion, but we still do not know what should be done regarding infrastructures; we stop the evictions – because we can and should do so – but that in and of itself does not incentivize credit and make housing policies more fair; we can stop the privatization of public hospitals, but that does not determine the type of medical policy that should be in place. The politics I miss is of the kind that begins when society’s good reasons come to an end, where the task of the negative sovereign ends and the responsibility of the positive sovereign begins. In addition to the fact that social demands are dis-articulated, we add the circumstance that such demands are of course plural and at times incompatible or contradictory: some people want more taxes and others less, some free software and others protection of privacy and property; some are concerned that there are less freedoms and others that there are too many immigrants. Without political assessment, it is difficult to know when we are confronting an obstruction of necessary reforms or a protest against representational abuse. Protests against certain infrastructures can be motivated by ecological beliefs, as well as by other beliefs that are less easily acknowledged, such as the famous NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) or by xenophobic sentiments if the proposal is to build a mosque. In any case, those who tend to celebrate social spontaneity should be reminded that society is not the kingdom of good intentions. The legitimacy of society’s ability to criticize its representatives does not mean that those who criticize or protest are necessarily right. Being indignant or a critic or victim does not make anyone politically infallible. It is true that the difference between the representatives and the represented is too large, and politicians are criticized for this distance, often justifiably. There are demands that politicians listen to the people, which is an unassailable recommendation, but we must also understand that citizens rarely share the same demands, desires and interests. The political system is continuously bombarded by different types of demands. The difficulty consists of needing to accept some demands and reject others because of the limitation of resources, impracticality, equity, the defence of certain less outspoken social groups or the rights of future generations. And it often turns out that what people say they want and what they are willing to allow politicians to do are two very different things: people want

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to combat climate change but may not want to modify their lifestyle, they want better services but they do not want to pay higher taxes, they would like lower labour costs but are not willing to accept more immigrants and so forth. There is another phenomenon of anti-political social resistance that deserves special attention. I am referring to the fact that ‘Tea Parties’ have formed around or at the extremes of the parties. They present themselves as protectors of values, representatives of victims, spokespersons for the crowd or for some upcoming revolution. From these apolitical trenches, they seem to master things with a clarity not available to those who regularly deal with the principle of reality. The wrath of these groups is directed less at adversaries than at their own side when they show signs of decreasing the number of things that are politically non-negotiable. They spread an anti-political mentality because they have not understood that politics always entails certain compromises and concessions. The extreme wings of the parties set the tone to an extent that is probably not their due. They determine criteria for representativeness without having the corresponding democratic authority. This makes certain reforms that require negotiation with one’s political adversaries more difficult.

The ideology of the negative sovereign At the ideological extremes, there is a contempt for politics that is in no way a criticism of a concrete way of doing politics but is, instead, a total rejection of politics, the profound desire that politics should not exist, or that it be, at most, irrelevant. The political space of democracies is besieged, on the right and on the left, by extreme forms of resistance against politics, which some people exercise from the market and others from society, both of them – market and society – understood as realities extraneous to the political process, from the autonomy of self-regulated markets, in the first case, or from the sovereignty of a society constituted at the margins of the procedures of institutional representation. Financial neoliberalism and ‘wiki-communism’ share a similar distrust of politics, while they celebrate ‘the wisdom of the masses’, as market agents or as members of the crowd. At heart, the illusion of a self-governed society without institutional and juridical mediations is barely distinguishable from the liberal myth of the self-regulation of the markets. We already knew that neoliberalism is an anti-political ideology, but we should not lose sight of the fact that, at the other extreme of the ideological spectrum, there are attitudes that have similar effects.

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For that reason, I am going to focus more on the non-social democratic left, because the liberal right’s indifference to politics is more obvious. Today’s dominant political theory in this realm conceives of popular sovereignty as something external to the institutional political system, very similar to the forms of premodern resistance against authority; it is not seen to be actively implicated in the procedures of representative politics. Constituent power inevitably has an anti-institutional dimension. That is why they emphasize conferences, occupations, protests and movements in which they appear to exercise truly anti-establishment power and stage forums of ‘true democracy’. In this way, they are searching for an immediate efficacy of popular will, which could only exist politically in negative and anti-political terms. Society is not structured by the right and by politics, but by sentiments and convictions. Interpreted in this way, with this anti-institutional scorn, protests are limited to staging a moment of democratic sovereignty without practical structural repercussions. We can see in this a certain mythology of ‘pouvoir constituant’ (constituent power) as a crowd, resistance, conflict, expression of democratic antagonism, a left-wing that, rather than advocating a concept of political intervention, is limited to radical gestures and an aestheticization of politics. One of the most curious factors in the current non-social democratic left’s thinking is the adoption of certain elements of Carl Schmitt’s political theory and its resignation in the face of dominant social structures. The citizenry is considered sovereign in resistance and in exceptional cases, but not in democratic normality (which makes it seem destined to hand the management of that normality over to the right). The other thing that is curious about many of the current political theories of the alternative left is that they offer an involuntary ideological justification for deregulation. The radical democratic conception collaborates in consecrating the excommunication of a politics understood as the administration of objectivity and a society mobilized negatively, the normality of constituted power and the exceptionality of constituent power. The more the ethical value of resisting politics is emphasized, the fewer obstacles dominant politics finds against constituting itself as the only possible objectivity. In this way, a division of labour is established between bureaucratic politics and isolated politicization. In spite of what is sought by those who demand an agonistic vision of politics (Laclau and Mouffe 1991), this framework does not make the construction of transformative alternatives possible, but turns protests into something politically irrelevant, to the satisfaction of those who want politics to continue as is.

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A curious ‘division of labour’ regarding the depoliticization of politics has taken place between those who, on the one hand, defend a technocratization of politics and, on the other, those who celebrate forms of social protest as something external to the political system. The most extreme versions of the right and the left collaborate in this way in the de-politicization of politics when they coincide in scorning its logic. One side seems unaware that it is not a technical question or the antiseptic handling of an unquestionable objectivity; the other seems to have forgotten its pragmatic and institutional dimension. There is a tacit division of territory, shaped by the arrogance of the first group and the resignation of the second. The marriage between neoliberalism and radical democracy has other chapters. Many of those who mobilize against certain large infrastructures, for example, believe in non-ideological objectivities and brandish arguments that they attempt to enhance by presenting them, just as the technocrats have always done, as if they were above politics. Facts, common sense and popular indignation point in an unanswerable direction. Both neoliberals and radical democrats fail to comprehend that the logic of the political system works. Within it, the questions that are aired are not limited merely to truth and objectivity, but have to do with power relationships, irrationalities, risky bets, cognitive uncertainty and ideological proposals. It is curious how both sides of the ideological spectrum have a similar conception of politics (or rather, of a society without politics) according to which, everything comes down to giving decision-making capabilities to those who claim to have privileged access to objectivity. So then, who will put an end to capitalism? Well, the truth is that, in spite of the dominant rhetoric, there are no true enemies of capitalism who can be taken seriously, precisely at a time when they would be more necessary than ever. The recent spread of capitalism has caused many victims, but victim status does not in and of itself turn anyone into a political actor. Social injustices do not by themselves engender the conversion of suffering into a transformative force. There are many disadvantaged groups, but they are fragmented and one of the things that is missing is a narrative on the left that articulates them politically. Let us admit it: the crisis of financial capitalism and the erosion of its legitimacy are not the consequence of harsh attacks by social movements or the political left, but the result of an implosion stemming from its own contradictions. And while its legitimacy will be damaged, it will most likely emerge victorious, assuming no political force appears that can force it to transform.

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Involuntary de-politicization The great challenge of current democratic societies is to not leave its representatives alone. It should monitor, criticize and, if it comes down to it, replace them, but without destroying or depoliticizing the public space. It is clear that we have not managed this balance, and we either abandon ourselves blindly to the competence of those who represent us (as, for different motives, the technocrats and populists want), or we reduce the trust and amount of delegation to such an extent that we subject politics to the register of immediacy (which also has both a technocratic version, of immediate efficacy, and a populist one, as government by survey, politics subjected to public opinion polls). In both cases, social activism can have depoliticizing effects to which we must pay special attention, because they are not obvious. What is obvious, what is politically correct, is understanding representation as a falsification, assuming that those who protest are right or presuming that the more participation and transparency there is, the better. There is a way of understanding democracy that reaffirms itself as a battle against institutionalized or representative politics but that simultaneously destroys the spaces that are necessary to political life. This indirect de-politicization can be corroborated in the current crisis of representation. We can see good examples of it in certain demands for direct and plebiscitary democracy or the appeals for participation and transparency when they stop being corrective procedures for representative democracy and present themselves as candidates for overcoming it. Let us begin with the crisis of representation, so frequently invoked lately, but which indeed forms part of political normality. There has always been debate in democratic societies about the nature of representation. A democratic society cannot set its procedures for representation in stone – such procedures are always debatable and improvable – but it slips towards the sphere of the antipolitical when what it challenges is the very fact of representation. Representation allows us to guarantee the plurality of the political, which does not happen with direct democracy. In a complex and differentiated society, only representation manages to allow a plurality of subjects to act without annulling that plurality. In this sense, representation is not an inconvenience, but the ability for society to act politically while simultaneously guaranteeing that diversity is maintained. If there is political representation, it is because we must simultaneously maintain the pluralism of society and its capacity to act, the demos and the cratos of democracy.

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There is no other formula that guarantees effectiveness, pluralism and fairness better than representative democracy (which does not mean that it is always achieved or is not manifestly improvable). All the other forms of democratic intervention tend to do much worse. For some time now, we have been fantasizing about types of direct democracy, but their representativeness is much more debatable than our current electoral systems and their effectiveness at decision-making is incomparably worse. Calls for more participation do not attain general consent, as if we had learned that these procedures are as necessary as they are limited. The universe of organized protests frequently reflects artificial polarization and reproduces new forms of elitism. Those who have a greater interest in participation or a louder voice tend to end up imposing their views (Mansbridge 1983, 248). Scholars claim that those who generally participate the most are the rich and those with higher educational levels (Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley 2004). On the internet, as in other areas of society, people’s abilities and possibilities for participation are distributed very unevenly, and institutions need to keep this in mind. In spite of our digital enthusiasm, online forums, for example, are characterized by great homogeneity and a greater presence of extremist positions. Just as politics has become professionalized, so too have protests and activism. At times, it is not easy to differentiate this type of involvement and the lobbying that represents a small minority. Even when lobbying defends interests that have not received a lot of attention, they are issues to which the most privileged do pay attention. In general, direct democracy is attractive for the passive citizen, in other words, for those who are not much interested in exposing their opinions and interests in front of others in the public sphere and who prefer plebiscitary decision-making, where they can assert their will in the political system without filters or deliberative modulations. Direct democracy and plebiscitary decisionmaking are instruments of an apolitical nature, and if they enjoy greater prestige than they deserve, it is because they are a part of that general tendency towards democracy without politics that characterizes our societies. Plebiscites are as important in a democracy as they are incapable of replacing profound and open debates. Plebiscites are worse than representative relationships at reflecting the plurality of opinions and interests of a society. This imprecision is due to the fact of reducing decision-making procedures to binary possibilities. Within each camp, there are many heterogeneous positions that only coincide in the yes or no. In this way, direct democracy acts in a less representative manner than representative procedures of opinion making. Paradoxically, technocrats and the partisans of direct democracy argue that reducing a problem to a binary

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code makes the solution more transparent and less ideological, but both groups simplify the space of the game of politics, reduce the possibilities of political creativity and prevent the free use of nuances. Let us think for a moment about the meteoric journey of the concept of transparency, in which we can find, in addition to unquestionable assets, some anti-political results. Let us allow its virtues to be trumpeted and receive general acclaim; I would, however, like to point out the anti-political backdrop behind some of the ways in which it is demanded, which imply that the whole problem of politics consists of politicians hiding something whose revelation would resolve our problems. I wish it were so. The political system is more banal reality than secret-monger and, even if it revealed its private affairs to us, we could not completely dispel the uncertainties with which we are surrounded. The indirect result of this way of thinking is to give the impression that politics has to do with objectivity and evidence, a place where there is, in the end, nothing to discuss. Understood in this fashion, transparency is a concept that recalls the pre-political demand of objective facts. This objectivist prejudice is very widespread on both extremes of the ideological spectrum; it is shared by technocrats and libertarians, the defenders of the authority of experts and those who maintain that the people are never mistaken, those who trust everything to the self-regulation of the markets or to the wisdom of the crowd. A completely transparent space would be one that is completely depoliticized.

The great rift Political societies have a very particular dynamic that we must understand correctly in order to avoid mistaken analyses. Traditional political forces, whether establishment or mainstream, want to administer the principle of reality, which they read in ways that are essentially different. This is the arena in which the right and the left debate. At times of crisis, this difference is reduced, as is logical, since crises diminish options and force the sober management of promises. When this happens, a good portion of society becomes disoriented or irritated, and phenomena appear where it is no longer a question of choosing between existing possibilities, but rather of impugning the range of options presented to us. There are new differentiations and an explosion of forces that ignore the principle of reality and attempt only to manage the pleasure principle. The tragedy of contemporary politics is that those who have some responsibility – in other words, both the electorate and those elected – are

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continually forced to choose between rationality and populism. For the representatives, the first of these is not understood and makes re-election impossible, while the second places political stability in danger but is socially lauded. Those who govern frequently confront the dilemma of doing what citizens expect from their governments or what they are required to do. There have been so many political decisions adopted in the midst of this type of dilemma. That is the drama that politicians tend to reference: they know what they should do but they do not know how to be re-elected if they do it. This situation has altered the classical framework of ideological identification and its corresponding antagonism. Another axis is being superimposed on the right–left axis that confronts, in the broad sense, populists and technocrats; there are right- and left-wing versions in both categories. The new ideological spectrum can be explained by the diverse combinations of these four sensibilities. What we have is basically technocrats on the right and on the left, and populists on the right and the left, giving way to alliances and antagonisms that are not intelligible from the classical ideological polarization. The new polarization that is brandished is one that confronts the elite with the general population, thus understanding society to be divided into two homogeneous groups. This is, in my opinion, what was revealed in Spain in the 2014 European elections and explains the success of a political party that defines itself as people who can in the face of those who administer limitations. (I am specifically referring to the emergence of the Podemos (We Can) movement in Spain.) The classical parties have governed and are going to govern, which means that they know about the limits of government and the extent to which unfulfilled promises take their toll; they may hate their adversaries, but they are also conscious that they will end up having to count on them for numerous matters; they know that they represent the people but that they are not the people, because in a democracy we can only attempt to speak in the name of the people in a representative fashion, in other words, without monopolizing it, in the midst of a plurality of voices and constantly exposed to the verification of that authority. I believe that this is the great novelty, the new rift (although it is in no way unprecedented in the history of politics): the excision of responsibility and possibility. In contrast with what is often repeated, it is not so much a rebellion stemming from the alienation between unhearing elites and the innocent masses who disdain their representatives, as all the polls that point to the political class as our primary problem seem to claim. These new actors fill the stage with a language that contrasts with the calculated cardboard-like quality of traditional discourses, which has an unquestionable appeal for a large portion of the

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electorate. But, more than anything else, there is the appearance of a multitude of promises that become more attractive as they move further and further away from any plan of feasibility. Accusing them of being naive is a sort of disparagement that makes no sense in the open space of a democratic society; the only inexperience that defines them is that they do not know how difficult it is to be re-elected, and this experience is what gives political actors maturity. The appearance of the new is as ancient as humanity itself. Only a lack of memory explains our bewilderment or excessive enthusiasm in the face of this rift that forms a part of the old cycle of our democracies. This unpredictable human history teaches us that everything that emerges also awaits contradiction, which stalks it as it does all mortals. History continues, and it is driven by a succession of promises and disappointments. Audacious promises are welcome, because our political systems require these jolts to show that no one can block the path to new actors and unusual agendas. It is better for them to work within political institutions than to protest indignantly at the margins. Because politics is a pathway that sooner or later leads all of us to reality, which we will always interpret differently, a pathway that, as an environment that conditions us and that we share with others, is always somewhat limiting. Politics is the place where each of us manages that frustration the best we can.

A defence of indirect democracy Representative democracies have two enemies today: the accelerated world and the predominance of globalized markets on the one hand, and the hubris of the citizens on the other, in other words, the ambivalence of a people that politics should obey, of course, but whose politically rather un-articulated demands are often contradictory, incoherent and dysfunctional. It is taboo to mention this second danger because many members of the political class and those who write about politics tend to worship the people, and do not charge them with any responsibility. Few speak about ‘democratic’ threats to democracy, those that stem from public opinion polls, participation, exaggerated expectations or transparency. In noting this lack, I am not attempting to invalidate the principle that people are the only sovereign in a democracy; I am simply emphasizing the fact that representative democracy is the best invention we have come up with to reconcile, though not without tensions, that principle with the complexity of political affairs. Even if it sounds paradoxical, there is no system other than indirect and representative democracy when it comes to

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protecting democracy from the citizenry, against their immaturity, weakness, uncertainty and impatience. Some authors have called attention to this paradox in a provocative fashion: Philip Pettit, when clarifying how he understands republicanism, declares that ‘democracy is too important to be left to the politicians, or even to the people voting in referendums’ (2001, 746); Fareed Zakaria states that ‘what we need in politics today is not more democracy but less’ (2003, 248); Bryan Caplan asserts that ‘democracy fails because it does what voters want’ (2008, 3). Other theorists propose a classification of contemporary democracy – along the lines of classic republicanism – as a mixed government, as a type of mechanism that combines democratic and non-democratic components (Manin 1997, 237). Democracy is not the presence of citizens in places where decisions are made, but refers to the fact that elective institutions and those elected can be judged by the citizenry. The anti-establishment power of the ‘negative sovereign’ is in no position to replace constructive power. It can politicize the public space in an isolated fashion by expressing indignation and staying on the margin of any construction of responsibility. Deep down, our democracy without politics has enthroned the citizens as independent evaluators who see themselves outside of any political arena, like consumers. Open societies have unleashed the liberties of consumers to such an extent that politics is also considered from the point of view of the client, who is wilful, impatient and demanding and so forth. The ideal of popular sovereignty has been transformed into a ‘sovereignty of the consumer’. The growing number of boycotts, expressions of dissatisfaction and other forms of activism seem to be currently driven by a consumer sentiment and there is a danger that activism will adopt the form of a lifestyle-statement rather than a serious commitment … . Activism seems to be nothing but a refined form of consumerism for those who are well-intentioned, who are allowed to access public resources and decision-making processes. (Stoker 2006, 88)

However, does this figure use up all the democratically responsible critical potentiality inscribed in the concept of citizenship? When we complain that the markets condition politics excessively, we should not lose sight of the fact that this conditioning is not limited to global financial markets but is also verified in the relationships between representatives and those who are represented. At every level, on the global and the domestic plane, the power of consumers is greater than that of voters. When the logic of the sovereign consumer is established in politics, politics tends to melt with the immediacy of the short term. Politics is especially vulnerable

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to this, given the permanent electoral contest and the weight of public opinion, which has an ever shorter time span now because of the growing importance of polls and surveys, which in turn forces politicians to attend to the demands of the present moment. Politics is enormously weakened if it is not capable of introducing other criteria to balance the possible tyranny of the present. If the institutions of representative democracy serve any purpose, it is to establish procedures that at least make debate possible, as well as the consideration of alternatives and constitutional guarantees. A democracy cannot function well if there are no institutions of indirect democracy that serve as regulating, referring or judicial authorities (which tend to deteriorate when they remain in the hands of the parties), if the dimension of delegation that any government should have were completely suppressed (which is compatible, of course, with that delegation being limited in time and being held accountable), if the public opinion at any time is imposed on other expressions of popular will that are less instantaneous and more extended in time and so forth. This is most likely one of the problems that makes politics so dysfunctional and leads to so many irrational situations (Innerarity 2012). Politics must free itself of the ‘demoscopic fear’ (Habermas 2012), without giving way to elitist and technocratic arrogance. To respond to this incapacity and to the blockades generated by some demoscopic forms of government, political systems have been generating a series of procedures, sometimes in a furtive fashion. There is a well-known process of de-politicization that is due to the fact that there are increasing numbers of functions, responsibilities and decisions that are directed towards spheres that are non-governmental, parastatal, hybrid, regulatory, transnational, non-majority, independent or judicial, that are beyond the reach of democratic elections and supervision. The European Union is one of the institutions that fulfils that function. The idea of ‘quasi-governments’ (Koppell 2003) or the increase of the ‘non-elected’ responds to this new reality, in what constitutes a new division of power (Vibert 2007). There are other versions of this ‘functional de-politicization’: an epistemic correction of procedural democracy to introduce expert knowledge into our decisions in some way (Estlund 2009), the proposal of depoliticizing certain institutions such as bureaucratic practices or the negative power of judges in the face of partisanship (Rosanvallon 2008) or the defence of a deliberative space depoliticizing some questions (Pettit 2001). There is also the fact that those who govern increase their discretional capacity and their powers of intervention – even their very possibility of acting – by privatizing or by emergency procedures. I will not make a judgement here about whether these forms of displacing power are justified or not; I am simply noting that there is

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a displacement of power towards locations less subject to public scrutiny and control and that this displacement is not always motivated by bad intentions, but by functional necessities. Paradoxically, while our political systems do not introduce into their own functioning a perspective that overcomes electoral short-sightedness, we will be promoting this systemic cunning that we later lament as lacking democratic legitimacy. The polls say that politics has become one of our principal problems, but I wonder whether this opinion expresses nostalgia for the politics of the past, a criticism of its mediocrity or anti-political scorn towards something whose logic has not been fully understood. In any case, we citizens could criticize with more authority if we would put the same effort into educating ourselves and into personal engagement. And perhaps then we would realize that we are in the paradoxical situation where no one entrusts politics with those things that only politics could resolve.

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The solution that is currently universally suggested for our political troubles is proximity. Closeness, real or simulated, is invoked against the absolute political evil of distance. Most of the strategies suggested as a solution to disaffection revolve around bringing politics closer to the citizens. I believe the central objective of the new politics we need should be a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power … from Whitehall [British central governmental administration] to communities; from the EU to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy. Through decentralization, transparency and accountability we must take power away from the political elite and hand it to the man and woman in the street.

The person who pronounced these words was not a radical anarchist or a representative of the digital left or a confessed populist, but the conservative British prime minister David Cameron (The Guardian, 26 May 2009). The feeling of fatigue offered by our institutional labyrinth deserves profound reflection. It is a crisis that cannot be confronted with technological remedies or by simulating greater proximity towards society, lowering salaries or an increased presence on social networks and so forth. The best marketing techniques are not enough to overcome the misunderstanding and distrust that have arisen in recent times between citizens and their representatives. All the strategies of approximation can be useful, even indispensable, but what we should understand is that we are undergoing political transformations that should, first of all, be well understood and must subsequently be adapted into adequate governmental procedures. The idea of proximity is as necessary to this renovation as it is limited; there is also a democratic distance that we must protect and an idea of representation that we should rethink in a world in which the possibilities for immediacy and disintermediation have increased.

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The desire for disintermediation The current fascination with social networks, participation and proximity reveals that the only utopia that continues to be in force is that of disintermediation. A lack of confidence in mediation leads us to automatically presume that things are true when they are transparent, that representation always falsifies and that every secret is illegitimate. There is nothing worse than an intermediary. That is why we immediately feel closer to someone who leaks information than to a journalist, to an amateur than to a professional, to NGOs than to governments. For this reason, our greatest scorn is aimed at those who imply the greatest degree of mediation: as the opinion polls remind us, our problem is the political class. What has led to this way of thinking? First off, technology is having a profound impact on relationships between people, the configuration of public spaces and our relationship with the institutions of authority. The new information and communication technologies appear as instances of salvation in this shipwreck of distrust. This is the impulse that led to the beginning of the current democratizing wave which is based on the new possibilities for communication. And these same possibilities are what allow a disintermediation that previous technologies did not support. The new modes of disintermediation and training that new technologies made possible some time ago cannot help but modify our way of understanding and practising politics. These new information and communication technologies allow us to live in a type of ‘consecration of the amateur’ that has produced a true democratization of skills (Flichy 2010). The new image of a citizen is that of an amateur who informs himself or herself, expresses opinions freely and develops new forms of commitment without needing authorization or instruction. These new skills make citizens as suspicious of experts as of their representatives. Experts no longer state irrefutable facts or use their knowledge to put an end to all controversy. In a knowledge-based society, people possess greater cognitive abilities. New organizations and interest groups arise that help to weaken the authority of the experts. The knowledge that was once an exoteric power is now publically debated, controlled and regulated. That being said, the elimination of mediation is an ambiguous reality: the desire to ban it is fuelled by democratic dreams of free spontaneity, more transparent markets and the unlimited accessibility of information. It is the dream that opinion polls can make political wishes perfectly apparent,

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making it possible to govern based solely on polling numbers. But a ban on mediation could also produce the nightmare of a public space with no limits, procedures or representation. All three factors protect democracy from its possible irrationality because limits also guarantee our rights, procedures challenge arbitrary responses and representation offsets populism. Of course, transparency and proximity are essential political values, but democratic discretion and democratic impartiality are just as necessary. This reveals a fact of which classic writers were already well aware: in politics, any value without a counterweight becomes a potential threat. In essence, the same logic and reasoning used in favour of representation also supports the regulation of the marketplace. So what if our great challenge was actually to construct mediations that, while less rigid, were still mediations? These new mediations, applied to the economy, politics or the culture, would make the greatest possible amount of freedom compatible with a structure that protects rights and eliminates undesirable side effects. In this respect, it is not very useful to envision a real-time politics that suppresses institutional mediation, rhetorical circumlocutions and the protocols of agreement. An ideology of immediacy proposes returning to the people the power that is unjustly retained by their representatives. It is presumed that democratic representation must be a falsification, or at least a deformation, of the pure will of the people, the fragmentation of their original unity into the atomism of various interests. Striving for a more truthful political system and more institutional specificity only leads to a strengthening of the illusion that we live in a world that is retransmitted live, entirely subservient to the present moment. The invocation of a politics that reproduces true social reality brings to bear all the functions of a mythical reality that can always be called upon to justify anything. The demand that people act in the immediacy of the moment ends up de-legitimizing as inauthentic the delicate artifices that societies devise in order to be able to live together. That is why the creation of the popular will sometimes fails. (We are currently seeing this in the stuttering evolution of the Arab revolts or in the Occupy movements of the Western world.) Creating the popular will is as decisive for democratization as indignation and protest are. Popular mobilization is needed to call attention to an intolerable state of affairs, but in order to delve more deeply into democracy, we need both representation and compromise in order to situate ourselves within a political framework.

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Direct democracy Representative democracy creates a complex relationship between those who govern and those who are governed which is marked by tension between two contrary realities: a logic of proximity that requires politicians to remain in contact with citizens and to listen to them and a logic of distance that invites them, on the contrary, to maintain their distance. This all leads to a contradictory tension regarding the political profession: one must foreground daily contact with voters and also assume the language of general interest. Politicians must cultivate both proximity and a prudent distance of security. Political geometry is not Euclidian: it presents height as the ideal but allows politicians to maintain contact with the greatest number of people; it combines the enactment of representatives’ greatness while celebrating proximity with all voters. For some years now, this tension seems to have been resolved in favour of a primacy of proximity. The calls for proximity have been multiplying: proximity justice, proximity police, proximity democracy. Political action has conspired against geographic, social and technocratic distancing (Le Bart and Lefebvre 2005). ‘Proximity’ is a recurring term, a magical word, which creates the obligation that leaders appear close, and it puts them under the pressure of ubiquity: politics has become the art of being present. Opinion polls mobilize the categories of proximity and distance to evaluate those who govern. For this reason, the intimidating monumentality that Bataille addressed is out of fashion (1974). Proximity and transparency are imperatives that shape political styles at every level, from forms of communication to the architectural styles of public buildings. This is the context in which we speak of ‘local democracy’ (Blodiaux 1999). That which is local, the place of proximity, is considered the scale where coherence and integration of the public action are established. What is local has been erected in the ideal space of citizen reconquest, the same space that was at other times considered the place of particularism and the roots of identity. Proximity appears as a reserve for unifying, pacifying, implicated solutions, as a shelter in a world that is considered lacking in references, impersonal, complex and anomic. Relationships of proximity correct the verticality of social relationships and impersonal social rules, which are seen as too general. Proximity seems to ‘localize’ immediacy, direct reciprocity and the social, which are at the core of groups and concrete situations. The concrete implication of individuals in a group is conceived as the paradigm of real, effective and direct socialization. This vision of the social grants a nearly exclusive role to spatial and physical proximity

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in the production of the social connection. Thus the reference to small, idealized and intimate communities is a bromide that frequently reappears in political discourses (Douglas 1987). The valorization of the local as a public space of co-presence (Thompson 1998, 177) is a continuation of Rousseau’s appreciation of Swiss assemblies or Tocqueville’s admiration for townships. The valuing of proximity also circulates in diverse parts of the social space: in the associative world that recognizes militancy around ‘close’ causes, in the world of labour unions that negotiate concrete solidarities or in the world of the media when they say they are providing us with life and immediacy. Proximity is also conceived as one of the ways to address the opprobrium facing politics. The ‘otherness’ of the representative is invoked by a token of proximity that appears as an antidote in the face of the empowerment of the political elite. It calls for a regeneration of representative democracy through social and political connections of proximity, by listening to citizens, being close to them, to their concerns and expectations, by renewing contact with them to overcome the abyss that separates representatives from the voters. The idea of proximity attempts to bring about a true change in the means of production of political legitimacy. A politics of proximity defends, against what is standardized, impersonal and abstract, a greater sensitivity before the plurality and complexity of what is real. In this sense, Jacques Chevallier defined the postmodern state as one that tends to open itself to admiting the constitutive diversity of the social at its core (2003, 171). Within it, the will of privileging a concrete, precise and nuanced approach to reality would be exercised, foregoing the all-embracing and dominant position that characterized the tasks of the traditional state. Public policies move from the realm of the norm, of objectivity, of universalism, of the prefiguration of the future to the realm of circumstance, subjectivity and relational immediacy. Reality is conceived through plurality, in other words, through the implacable diversity of situations that are confronted by political action. It is a conception that empties politics of the great nouns that fed its rhetoric. The discourse of proximity, on the other hand, eschews speaking in the name of single agencies, hypostasiated entities. The political discourse is impregnated with an ethos of modesty and the small scale. To understand the extent to which this focus is a novelty, one must keep in mind that until recently proximity provoked distrust in the realm of politics. Grandeur and distance seemed necessary to express the general interest. The distance between the state and civil society, between those who govern and those who are governed, made equality between citizens possible. The state viewed the

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social body from above and could not approach it under pains of succumbing to the particular, in the form of cronyism, localism or corporatism. Proximity has always evoked privileges and inequalities, arbitrariness and favouritism. The founding myths of modernization have functioned with a logic that is exactly the opposite of the one we observe today: modernity came from the centre; distance was synonymous with impartiality, effectiveness and legitimacy. In this context, it is representative of current transformations that certain public policies that were historically constituted against that which is ‘local’ (the police, justice or education) now place their emphasis on proximity. Distance was traditionally considered necessary for a serene exercise of power, in order to protect the decision-makers from pressures and arbitrariness. One of the problems presented by proximity is precisely de-politicization and cronyism. The framework of the public action of proximity points towards a transformation of the citizen into an individualized client. A durable and institutionalized relationship is replaced by a specific relationship without origin or continuity, and its capacity to generate social connection is weaker. In this way, a ‘consumerist’ relationship is strengthened through politics. If the society is not perceived as a whole, politics is mistaken for a provision of services towards a citizen-consumer who is increasingly demanding regarding his or her individual interests. There is a logic of de-politicization in a certain way of understanding proximity: contact democracy is increasingly expressed in the language of interpersonal relationships rather than in what are, strictly speaking, political categories. It also narrows the horizon in terms of friendship, fidelity and services rendered, something that Richard Sennett called the ‘tyranny of intimacy’, as opposed to the freedom of impersonal generality (1977). When the political discourse praises proximity and defines its action exclusively on that scale, it inscribes itself into a culture in which simple ideas, feelings and the image seem to be the only things that are intelligible. When space is fractionated in such a way that the multiplicity of facts cannot be inscribed in an account that assures its general meaning, the strength of conviction of data and evidence with a strong emotional charge is automatically reinforced. Thus arises a paradoxical darkness at the core of the promise of clarity and immediacy assured by proximity. In a world that is becoming more confusing and ungovernable, only the local seems to represent a scale where one can expect a reduction in uncertainties, but this reduction increases the degree of complexity of the whole. The result here is a particular difficulty in giving coherence to public action, inscribing it into broader frameworks or maintaining a reference to social totality. This means that those who govern become less

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characterized by the aspiration of carrying out an action planned for the long term in a sovereign manner, preferring instead the immediacy of the short term, which is the temporal version of proximity. This is where politics intersects with the typical proximity of the media and where what reigns is a short temporality of events, urgency and that which is imminent. But no one can fail to see that this focus on what is most immediate in both space and time leads to growing confusion about society as a whole. The issue of the policies of proximity presents us with a huge question in the end. Is it simply an opportunistic argument to guarantee that the way authority is exercised does not change and new paradigms are not revealed? It is, of course, worth analysing those phenomena as the result of an unsettling dissolution of the common interest that is favoured by a withdrawal of state action and by an increase in individualism, but it can also be understood as the access that local power and the civil society have to the common interest. In this last case, the fragmentation of politics would correspond to an increase in the spaces of deliberation; it would then reveal that society does not accept having a conception of an abstract and centralized common good imposed upon it. When the idea of politics as the will and capacity to govern seems to escape our horizons, the theme of proximity has the immediate value of beginning the work of modulating the community and nurturing the social connection with that which is local. Balancing proximity and distance, local and global, and immediacy and strategy is one of the great tasks that await politics – a task that cannot be carried about by privileging one of its terms.

In praise of political distance Few people dispute the advantages of exploring the territory of proximity; I would like us to do so while remaining aware of the possibility of overstating it. In this regard, digital communication has some illusory capabilities (Rheingold 1993). The applications that mimic a connection by sending a message to the president, who responds automatically and instantaneously and thanks you for your opinion, already exist and have worn out their virtuality of legitimacy. Any true communication between representatives and those represented takes another form, without excluding this type of procedure. Transparency is one thing, while exhibitionism is something else entirely. The impression of the mendacity of politicians does not stem from a lack of sincerity but from their

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continual staging, which the people perceive and which erodes their legitimacy more than any other distance. Proximity has a lot to do with artifice. We should remember that proximity is not simply something given but a social construction, and it is often reduced to an ‘impression of proximity’ produced by political actors who successfully carry out strategies of rapprochement. That is why it is not strange that there are experts and businesses specialized in producing it. The uses and rituals of proximity lead us to sometimes confuse proximity with notoriety and visibility, with the suggestion of proximity constructed by the media. There is an ‘effect’ of proximity that is pure staging, media construction and false proximity, especially from the moment in which it can be produced through the means of communication without an actual corporeal presence. On the other hand, in our globalized world with its growing mobility, proximity does not comprise a physical or objective scale; proximity must not be conceived under territorial determinism, especially in our virtual and media spaces. Many social struggles are carried out precisely around the definition and attempt for proximity. Proximity has become the central ideology through which multiple actors work on their own legitimacy. But what is, strictly speaking, the most proximate? How are closeness and distance defined? Those who work in favour of proximity should not forget that, in the new configuration of social spaces, proximity does not mean the suppression of distance, because there are close things that are far away and very distant proximities. The growing mobility that characterizes our societies, for example, makes proximity increasingly a question of time rather than space; time tends to replace space in the appreciation of distance. That may explain the decline in the neighbourhood as a socio-spatial form where relationships of proximity are developed. Those who live in cities are no longer primarily inhabitants of neighbourhoods; in the living space, in the age of mobility and elective relationships, the very notion of neighbourhood tends to disappear. Where the mobile city replaces the sedentary city, citizens, liberated by the mobility of communications, develop logistics of approximation by affinity largely because of spatial proximity. In this new context, proximity can no longer be thought of as only physical proximity. The pluralism of the spaces in which we really live invites us to talk more about proximities and diversify a horizon that tends to narrow in its physical dimension. There are very varied proximities, according to equally diverse criteria, arenas and references. But the most serious objection in the face of the apotheosis of proximity is directed against the absolutization of the register of immediacy, which leads to many of our problems. Some of our problems are not caused by the distance of the

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elites but, in a manner of speaking, by their excessive closeness. We suffer from a way of configuring our political agendas that lacks direction and coherence, not because it is sequestered by conspiratorial elites but, quite the opposite, because it does not manage to separate itself from day-to-day turmoil. We may be confusing the general will with the daily press of a type of ‘meteorological democracy’, in which opinion polls or published opinions are like weather maps that allow us to decide whether we should go out with a coat, umbrella or short sleeves today. In other words, they tell us whether to make a decree, release a particular message or disappear from the scene. Let us not forget that our lack of collective anticipation in the face of the economic crisis, for example, was not due to a ‘lack of proximity’ with society, but to that short-termism that established a fatal chain reaction (with varying degrees of responsibility, of course) between the governing class’s lack of vision, the financial institutions’ desire for benefits, the irresponsibility of the controlling bodies and consumer habits. In view of these collective disasters, it could well be said that our challenge consists of creating a representative construction of the popular will without simply blindly following that which is loudest and most immediate. If the distance of the elite is a serious political problem, opportunistic proximity is equally so. Let us consider the practice, which is so habitual and so corrosive, of flattering the worst instincts and intoxicating the public space, what English-language political scientists call ‘pandering’ and ‘priming’. When politicians want to be as close as possible to their voters, they lose interest in their independence and become mere executors to the political desires of citizens, which may be changing, chaotic and poorly defined (Ankersmit 1997, 355). In demagogic opportunism, there is no deliberative relationship between the speaker and his or her audience, no attempt at dialogue, at convincing or stimulating reflection. Political opportunists do not seek to convince as much as to adapt their declarations to the preferences of voters. One might object that there is nothing bad in that, and even that it is the most democratic path, but the problem is that if this opportunism satisfies what people want, it is incapable of leading the way towards the best political decisions and adopting them coherently. In principle, we want the elite to be sensitive to the true interests and concerns of the citizenry, but we would also like those interests and concerns to be well informed, thought out and considered (Chambers 2011, 34). We need, therefore, a political system whose agents truly listen to everyone: to the loudest voices and the lowest whispers, who pay attention to current emergencies but do not forget to anticipate the future, who balance the short and long terms properly. There are serious political problems that cannot

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be resolved in the tumult of immediate pressures. Let us think, for example, about decisions that affect intergenerational justice. These decisions can only be carried out when a degree of sovereignty is transferred to a less democratic level and are adopted by institutions that are less exposed to electoral pressures. Certain unpopular decisions to limit the emission of contaminants or to reform pensions can be better adopted on a European level – which is not required to be immediately accountable for what it is doing – rather than in the domestic realm. Bourg and Whiteside have pointed out some of these systemic short-circuits of democracy in an ecological context (Bourg and Whiteside 2010). European institutions were created in part to manage these kinds of externalities that cannot be handled by national democratic procedures. Some of the accusations of elitism or democratic deficits are related to this. It is not that they are failing to be sufficiently democratic but that there are decisions that can only be adopted at a level protected from voters, in a realm that is more ‘republic’ than ‘electoral democracy’. Therefore, what could previously have been proof is today an inconsistent cliché used to justify democratic self-government: the prejudice of thinking that the closest realm is necessarily the most appropriate, both in terms of legitimacy as well as effectiveness, to respond to the aspirations of self-determination. Many issues only find their appropriate level of democratic self-determination if we distance ourselves from the habitual decision-making level and include within the group of the ‘we’ who have to decide those people who are very distant in space or time. In this realm of interdependence, questions that have to do with transnational or intergenerational democracy find their own space of justification. ‘Proximity’, ‘subsidiarity’ and ‘participation’ are terms that continue to exercise democratic fascination, but they presuppose a world that is articulated vertically, which no longer describes our world. In any case, they should be used in a reflexive and critical fashion, not as unarguable proofs, if we want to meet the expectations of our democratic complexity.

Paradoxes of democratic self-determination Democracy is a political system that intensifies our expectations; it makes us believe in things that are as inalienable and impossible as a free society that governs itself or one in which those who govern and are governed are identical. This ideal of self-determination is part of democracy’s useful fictions, which does not mean that it is an ideal we should do without or that it reflects actual

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reality or that it is a literally demandable right. It is, like so many properties by which we define democracy, a goal, a critical or normative principle, in other words, like always, something more complex than its mere formulation might suggest. Many of the debates that have been raised by the Spanish Indignados movement have revealed the paradoxes of popular sovereignty. It is a tension that has plagued the theories of democracy from the very beginning. On the one hand are the ideals of a full democracy (often based on a model of direct democracy), the desire for participation, the insistence on the popular ratification of decisions and firmer mandates from voters, the demand that representatives reflect those who are represented as accurately as possible, a requirement that representatives fulfil their promises and so forth. Compared with all these goals, voting seems quite insignificant. These aspirations are not new, and there are, in contrast, more realistic positions, such as those put forth by Schumpeter (2003) or Dahl (1971). While the details of their positions differ, both maintain that the greatest democracy to which we can aspire is a competitive oligarchy. At the same time, it is not easy to see how it can be a democracy when the bodies that participate in political decisions were either not elected or elected in very indirect ways (like judges, independent authorities or certain international bodies). It would not be very realistic to demand that institutions and procedures of global governance uphold the same democratic standards that are required of nation states. On the other hand, experience teaches us that democracy is not always a product of democrats, but of Jacobins or rigid state machines; it is defended by states of emergency and sustained by a public that hates political parties, especially those parties that are not particularly unified, in other words, parties that allow criticism and freedom of expression. We owe the most famous formulation of democratic sovereignty, of its particular squaring of the circle, to Rousseau. This is how he synthesizes it in his Social Contract: ‘The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before’ (1964 [1762], 23). This objective is contradictory, incompatible with our political condition and particularly unattainable in complex societies. In that sense, it could recall Morgan’s observation (1988, 14) that government requires make-believe. (These fabrications support both the assumption that the king is divine and the idea that the people have one single voice and are represented by their representatives.)

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To understand the innocence of its first formulations, we must keep in mind that representative democracy arose at a time when the concurrence of society’s interests and values was imaginable. Modern democracy was first conceived prior to today’s political pluralism or the great social conflicts of the contemporary era. Its original simplicity is also combined with a certain anthropological naïveté. Schumpeter called attention to this fact when he observed that eighteenthcentury philosophers saw the common good as an obvious beacon light, so clear that anyone could recognize it. Failure to do so could only be explained by ignorance, stupidity or evil (2003, 250). That led to the anti-partyism of the founders of English and American democracy (Rosenblum 2008) that then progressed into the organic democracies of the twentieth century and into contemporary populisms (in a context in which there are, coincidentally, more and more parties that reject that designation). It was assumed that everyone would conveniently choose to live under the same laws, so the parties were understood as factions, artifices that broke with the natural unity of societies, spurious divisions or the direct result of the ambitions of politicians. Even the very idea of opposition made no sense. If the people’s self-government is literal, if those who govern are the same as those who are governed, there is no right to opposition. It took some time in the history of democracy to establish the idea that the people can oppose a government that had achieved a majority of the votes. Today, in more complex societies, we affirm that the general will can only be the result of compromise among diverse groups. That is why Kelsen could affirm that the concept of the general interest or organic solidarity that transcends the interests of group, class or nationality is, in the last analysis, an anti-political illusion (1988, 33). How do we define the ideal of self-determination in large, complex societies with heterogeneous preferences when it seems inevitable that at least some of the people at certain periods of time will be subject to laws they do not like? The solution to this dilemma has been the idea of representation, the institutional concentration of an experience that our rhetoric tends to conceal: the fact that democracy is a representative system means that the citizens do not govern; we are inevitably governed by others. Elections are not held every day; mandates are vague; some of the things for which we vote are less important to us than others; as voters, we give elected officials some room to manoeuver; the demand for unanimity (in which everyone’s desires would be realized) is impossible and is a block and so forth. One of the greatest challenges of political

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theory is determining what conditions and what democratic justifications allow this hetero-determination. In the first place, if the citizens do not govern in complex societies – they do not govern everything or continuously or every detail – it is because decisions are delegated: governments should be capable of governing. If governments only did that which elections expressly authorized them to do, there would be many limitations when the time to govern came. Some of the limitations would be positive (because there would be less arbitrariness and fewer broken promises) and some negative (because new situations arise, because majority governments would need to be configured or because it would require the creation of pacts). In any case, ‘mandates are not instructions’ (Przeworski, Manin and Stokes 1999, 12), but indications that should be concretized through compromises or guidelines for confronting the unpredictable future. Any leadership will have inevitable costs in terms of democratic authorization and the remoteness demanded by the adoption of decisions (especially the ones we often call ‘unpopular’). If the government does not maintain a certain distance from voters, they are sometimes unable to tell the truth. In addition, without distance, politics cannot separate itself from the current moment, which is one of the biggest burdens it suffers nowadays. We must either justify this ‘distance’ democratically, or we will be unable to muster the arguments to oppose the plebiscitary populism that enjoys strong defenders on both the right and the left. It is not a question of choosing between inefficiency and betrayal but a question of ensuring governments will not distance themselves too much from the mandates of the voters or let their rigidity make them inefficient. Citizens must tolerate a degree of permissiveness in government decisions because mandates in a democracy are not absolute imperatives. The inevitable need that political parties have for negotiation reduces the power of the voters. When the parties need to form coalition governments, when new and unexpected factors arise that demand unprecedented decisions, political parties and the government find themselves obligated to distance themselves from express mandates or to make modifications that were not expressly authorized. In these situations, would we prefer to condemn them to ineffectiveness or to demand express authorization (by referendum or a new election), even though that is not always possible or desirable? The notion of self-government is not incoherent or impractical unless it is formulated in a weak manner: a democracy is not a regime in which every action is what we all want. It is a regime in which individual decisions have some influence on the final collective decision. Democracy is the system that best

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reflects individual preferences, nothing more and nothing less. The democratic objective is to allow as much self-government as possible, while knowing that it is inevitable that some people will live under laws that they do not like and that have been determined by other people. What should be done to make their ‘submission’ legitimate and acceptable? The great invention of democracy is that governments are provisional; there is the possibility that the government will be replaced and other people will take over. So then, we consent to letting other people govern us because change is possible. This is what allows the realization of the ideal of self-government in complex societies. We are governed by other people, but we can be governed by different other people if that is what we want. ‘Democratic freedom consist[s] not in obeying only oneself but in obeying today someone in whose place one would be tomorrow’ (Manin 1997, 28). The solution of alternation, the precedent of which is Aristotle’s formulation of governments ruling in turn, is realized, in modern democracies, through free elections. Elections are the fundamental instrument of self-government. With them, we attempt to elect those who will govern through public mandate. Of all the instruments of political participation, elections are the most egalitarian (Przeworski 2010). Even though electoral participation is not perfect, elections are more politically important than any of the other participatory procedures, which often privilege the people who have the most resources to participate. By virtue of elections, the people who are in power confront the possibility of losing it through established procedures, which means that elected officials are forced to anticipate this very threat. The possibility of electing and substituting those who govern us offers credibility to the fiction that we govern ourselves. Elections are precisely the moment of greatest uncertainty, when possibility hovers over everyone like a promise or a threat. Elections are an interruption of inertia, an established break from continuity. It is a time when the fact that politics introduces us into a world in which one has to respond and account for one’s actions is made manifest. Power is not absolute because it must be defended, and the opportunities afforded by politics are only temporary. That is why no other moment concentrates as much fear and hope as elections because there is never as much at stake nor is reality so uncertain and so distinguishable from the merely possible. The democratic game, to which all participants implicitly submit, means that the person who won could have lost and may well lose in the future. Of course elections, while very important, should not be idealized as if democracy required nothing else. But the process of holding elections is the

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means by which the promise of democratic self-determination is maintained and reiterated. In the end, it turns out that something this commonplace and ordinary, something that strikes us as rather insipid and that barely interests half the population, is what best reflects the ideal of self-government and protects us from the appropriation of the ‘us’ by any triumphant majority. Our political condition allows human beings to do a great number of things that would be impossible if we lived like Gods or beasts, as Aristotle suggested, but it also poses a good number of limitations. That being said, knowing and recognizing our limits has some unexpected benefits, such as preparing us to challenge illegitimate restrictions. Being conscious of our limits is essential in order to push those limits as far as possible. In this way, we will not criticize democracy for failing to provide things we should not expect of it, and we will be protected from demagogic appeals that promise that which cannot be guaranteed. We will know what we have the right to expect and what is, conversely, futile. Some will feel that this analysis is not hopeful enough or that it throws cold water on our best expectations about the quality of democracy. But one need not be a disheartened cynic to remember that a lack of hope is not always bad; we should be pleased if those who project only false illusions are dissatisfied and reassured if true zealots are discouraged. In general, democratic maturity involves a certain degree of disappointment, especially the disappointment that arises from the unmasking of exaggerated hope. Political experience includes some demystification of democracy, which does not prevent us from appreciating it or defending it or abandoning the attempt to improve it. In fact, it is just the opposite: if we are blind to possible reforms, it is most likely as a result of disproportionate expectations. We must distinguish the dissatisfactions that correspond to shortcomings that should be corrected and those that result from the limitations of the human condition and our way of organizing ourselves. Knowing when, where and why there are no alternatives allows us to unmask the people who self-interestedly insist there are no alternatives when there can and should be.

The representability of society There are protests that question particular decisions and others that criticize representational partisanship, but contemporary protest movements such as the Indignados go one step further when they condemn the idea of representation in and of itself. Their underlying ideal is direct democracy without mediation.

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In some way, the fact that we live in ‘a post-representative democracy’ (Urbinati 2014, 172) is revealed in the mentality of many people and in certain political customs. ‘You don’t represent us’ was the slogan of the Indignados movement in 2011 which, in addition to understandable dissatisfaction, revealed a profoundly anti-political mindset because there can be no politics without representation. These protests include many factors, many of them very admirable, but they tend to lack a political criticism of politics. Politicians are poor at doing certain things that no one does better than they do. We can replace them, and perhaps we should, but we should not let ourselves be deceived by the smokescreen that those who replace them are not, in turn, politicians. What is at stake in this debate is whether a democratic society can avoid the limitations of representation and do without its benefits. Representation is a site of compromise and mediation where, for example, parity and territorial balance are assured; these factors are not self-regulated, but require explicit decisions. It is unrealistic to believe these complex balances can be left to the vagaries of spontaneity. The self-regulation of the marketplace that is supported by the right and the self-regulation of politics that is lauded by the left suggest very similar preconceptions that coincide in holding the artificial dimension of the public space in low regard. The will of the people is at least as fragile as the will of the individual; the whole process that leads to configuring the public space – balancing deliberation and decision, participation and delegation – is an arduous and complex process, threatened on the one hand by indecision and on the other by the thoughtlessness of its constituents. The problem of political representation is that it has to come up with a democratic synthesis from all interested parties. This synthesis must be singular, helpful in making decisions and respectful of the plural nature of societies. Deciding without deliberation would be illegitimate; deliberating without deciding would be unproductive. A democracy is not a regime for consultation, but a system that articulates diverse criteria such as the participation of citizens, the quality of deliberations, the transparency of decisions and the exercise of responsibilities. Politics always ends up having to confront the responsibility of creating democratic synthesis, which may be very provisional and amendable, but it is still a synthesis. Without it, we would not even perceive the differences we want to protect. If the public space is important in a democratic sense, it is not only because everyone has the right to assert their desires or convictions, but because they must lay them on the line at the heart of a debate in which integrative public policies are determined.

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Representation once found its enemies in pre-democratic, absolutist states, but it is now placed into question by a libertarianism that speaks in the name of social networks, civil society, the self-regulation of the markets or direct democracy. These are different labels that all coincide in their suspicion of mediation. From this perspective, rather than being a tool for configuring the public space, representation becomes the means of expressing desires, interests and identities. This leads to viewing the ‘proximity’ of representatives as an ideal. It is said that the more the representatives are like those represented, the better. But the current political crisis does not, as they tend to say, stem from the great distance that separates voters from elected officials, but from the complete opposite: crises arise when the two groups are forced to identify with each other. This creates a situation where ‘working on’ identities and demands is impossible because they are presented as non-negotiable. We must confront the difficulty of democratically legitimizing the distance between representatives and their constituents so that it will help make society more coherent and organized. Politics, conceived of in this way, is impossible, because politics means representation and synthesis. Individual private rights are foregrounded and understood as something entirely separate from the political arena, complete in their original form, free from any need for negotiation or compromise, radically depoliticized. Politics would then be an immediate transposition of whatever society happens to be, without being ‘worked on’, without the added value of cooperation, as if any intervention by other people were a betrayal of principles that are immediately obvious. Any political mediation would be synonymous with falsifying and concealment. The problem with all of this is that without representation, society would be shattered by a surfeit of demands that are incapable of internalizing their mutual compatibility. Representation is not a cacophonous transposition of social variability but a task of synthesizing, a process in which compromises are configured in such a way that societies can act like societies without abandoning their constituent plurality. The deliberative principle is opposed to this belief in a private, prepolitical and exogenous sphere, which ignores the extent to which preferences are a product of laws, preconceptions and power dynamics. The conception of a social order that succumbs to the immediacy of interest groups seems not to recognize the transformative power of politics, which does not merely manage what exists but frequently modifies the point of departure. Among other things, politics allows society to acquire a certain distance from itself, a thoughtfulness that allows it to critically examine its own practices (Sunstein 2004). In the public sphere befitting a republic, the emphasis is not on the people’s

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pre-established interests or irremediably incompatible visions of the world. Instead, communicative processes that contribute to forming and transforming the opinions, interests and identities of the citizens are foregrounded. The goal of these processes is not to satisfy individual interests or to assure the coexistence of different conceptions of the world, but to collectively elaborate common interpretations of coexistence (Habermas 1996). We still need to make a lot of improvements to representative democracy, but there is as yet no candidate to replace it. What I see at the heart of the enthusiasm for alternative forms of social action is an attempt to escape political logic, in other words, an attempt to escape plural action and compromise. This is the dream of a society in which the limitations of our political condition are permanently overcome. This dream of getting beyond politics is shared by many people whose company should strike us as suspect. Representation is an authorized relationship that sometimes disappoints and that, under certain conditions, can be revoked. But we can never dispense with representation without stripping the political community of coherence and the capacity for action. We can improve representation, and we can demand better reporting, greater control, new representatives, as much transparency as we need, but we should not look for solutions elsewhere or, especially, in a nonpolitical framework. That would mean giving ground to those who think that politics cannot work, who are unintentionally allied with those who do not want politics to work. In contemporary political culture, a certain commonplace has been established that understands the deepening of democracy as more direct participation and a questioning of representativeness. Deep down, there are those who view representation as a substitute for direct democracy (Mansbridge 2003). We will not escape the political crisis we are currently traversing with more citizen participation, but nor will we escape it with less. What we need instead is improvement of the interaction between the two levels of the democratic structure. There are many issues that must be resolved by the political system so that it can enjoy delegated citizen confidence. The functions that should be carried out by representatives cannot be subcontracted, not even to the people. Populist ‘outsourcing’ is an abdication of responsibility that tends to give disastrous results. That relationship should be exercised in terms of demands for responsibility, accountability and justification. We should make an effort to provide an effective ability to control without further weakening politics by questioning its representative nature. My advice would be to strive for as much delegation as is inevitable and as much control

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as is possible. Citizen control is not easy under the current complex conditions, but it must be expressly facilitated so that it does not become an empty principle. The more the political system is controlled by citizens (which in an advanced democracy is realized through parliamentary control, public opinion, supervisory or regulatory bodies and electoral sanction), the more capable it will be to stop that disaffection that, at current levels, impoverishes the quality of our democracy. This is something that is realized through elections, mandates, supervisions and sanctions, the most important of which, politically speaking, is the possibility of sending them packing and electing others. It is not a question of telling politicians at every moment what they need to do, as if they were simply the ventriloquist dummies of society, just as they do not have the right to prescribe to us the opinion that they deserve us.

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How Much Transparency Do Our Democracies Require and Tolerate?

In recent years, the concept of ‘transparency’ has had a meteoric rise in our democratic societies. The observation of authorities is presented as a great instrument of citizen control and democratic regeneration. However, as with all political principles, transparency must be promoted and balanced with other principles. It would be best if our enthusiasm for transparency did not conceal the difficulties of truly exercising it: its disadvantages and possible side effects, as well as the game of concealment it can promote. In addition to observing, citizens must have other abilities that are as essential for democracy. If we pay attention to all the variables that intervene in a democratic society, we can affirm that transparency is a value that should be promoted in its just measure, which is as necessary as it is limited, that a democracy requires transparency but does not tolerate it in excess, nor can transparency be declared democracy’s sole principle. Our ocular democracies are articulated around the observation of the struggle that its elites unleash, and within the observation of that spectacle, we find both the strength of its control and the limitations of transparency.

The observation society A ‘monitored democracy’ is that form of democracy in which citizens have multiple ways in which to observe and evaluate their governments. This possibility ranges from the traditional forms of parliamentary and judicial control to the growing role of regulatory agencies or social networks that ensure that everything that happens is an object of observation and public debate. The demand for transparency stems from the Enlightenment principle according to which the democratic life should be developed, in Rousseau’s expression, ‘under the public eye’ (1969, 970–71). Since then, societies have evolved significantly

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and even though the problems they confront and our systems of government have become more complex, the demands for publicity have not decreased, quite the contrary. The reason for this demand for transparency is found within the very evolution of society, by virtue of which the authorities are made more vulnerable and dependent (Rosanvallon 2008, 61). Communication and information technologies make possible a type of democratic surveillance that was unthinkable at times of asymmetric information. The old power mechanisms do not function in a society in which citizens live in the same informational environment as those who govern them (Giddens 2002). Every society that is democratized generates a corresponding public space; in other words, it is transformed into an environment where new rules of observation, surveillance, desire for transparency, debate and control are in force. We live in what I like to call an ‘observation society’ (Innerarity 2016), which consists of the unstoppable incursion of societies into the political scene. Political systems, from the domestic realm to the global space, are increasingly publically monitored. Let us think, for example, about what has taken place with international politics, how it has recently been transformed after benefitting for a long time from the privilege of ignorance. States could take the liberty of doing almost anything when what they were doing was barely known. The Soviet army met with less resistance when it attacked Budapest in 1956 that it did twelve years later in Prague; by then, European homes had televisions and the image of the deployed Warsaw Pact tanks helped forge the beginning of an international public opinion. Globalization is also a space of public attention that noticeably reduces distances between witnesses and actors, between those who are responsible and spectators, between oneself and everyone else. In this way, new transnational communities of protest and solidarity are formed. These new actors, to the extent that they monitor and denounce, increasingly destabilize the authorities’ ability to prevail in a coercive manner. An observing humanity participates and is acting directly in the debate that establishes world public spaces and acts in the name of universal legitimacy, in such a way that no state can ignore the gaze resting upon it. As in other spheres of life, in politics, the fact of knowing you are being controlled improves our behaviour or, at least, dissuades us from committing the errors that are born in secrecy and where there is no transparency. As Bentham stated, publicity guarantees integrity and loyalty to the general interest, at the same time as it constructs a ‘distrustful surveillance’ (1999) over those who

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govern. Our public spaces know many expressions of this tendency, which has come to be called ‘naming and shaming’: the dissuasive power of condemnation, public exposition, denunciations and shame, which is not an all-embracing power but it often disciplines behaviours.

The disadvantages of being observed I would like to point out the limits to transparency and one of its possible side effects. Now that I have emphasized the importance of being controlled, I would like to highlight the necessity of not being controlled, in other words, the impoverishment of political life when the principle of transparency is absolutized and we turn democracy into ‘politics broadcast live’, which is worn out with constant and immediate surveillance. One of the effects derived from the extreme surveillance of political actors is that it leads them to overprotect their actions and their words. One example of this is the fact that many politicians, knowing that their smallest acts and declarations are examined and shared, tend to restrict their communication. Democracy today is more impoverished by seemingly expressive speeches that actually say nothing than by the open concealment of information. Politicians should respond to the demand for truthfulness, of course, but also to the demand for intelligibility. A good deal of the people’s dissatisfaction with politics stems not from politicians being untruthful but from them being so predictable and not saying anything at all. The principle of transparency should not be absolutized because political life, even if to a small measure, requires spaces of discretion. Many other professions do as well of course, such as journalists, whose right to not reveal their sources is recognized, because otherwise they could not do their job effectively. They should not defend it as a privilege (generally absences, silences or news conferences without questions are unjustifiable) but as a space of reflexivity in order to better perform the job that citizens have the right to expect from their representatives. We should not let ourselves be seduced by the idea that we are facing a world of information that is available, transparent and without secrets. This is necessary because, in the first place, we know that certain successful negotiations from the past would not have been produced if they would have been retransmitted live. There is something we could call the diplomatic benefits of in-transparency. Of course the secrecy of many traditional procedures are destined to disappear and those who participate in diplomatic processes from this point forward must be conscious that almost everything will end up being known. But it is also true

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that the demand for total transparency could paralyse public action on more than a few occasions. There are compromises that cannot be reached in the light of day and with stenographers, because they tend to provoke actors to radicalize their positions and in no way make politics a place of sincerity. A recent example of this is the demand presented by Italy’s Five Star Movement in 2013 that its negotiations with the Partito Democratico to form a government be retransmitted by streaming. We all understood at that moment that such a demand meant that there would be no agreement. I do not believe it an exaggeration to formulate the principle that a retransmitted meeting is an un-deliberative meeting. Discrete commissions probably have much greater deliberative quality than the weekly rituals of plenary sessions to control the government. In spite of certain precipitous celebrations of an imminent world without duplicity or areas of shadow, the distinction between being on and off stage continues to be necessary for politics. Additionally, by pressuring for transparency and immediacy, the media provokes the behind-the-scenes politics that they then criticize. There will always be a second space in which the agreements that are impossible in a space continuously exposed to everyone’s scrutiny can be hatched. For that second level the principle of popular legitimacy is also valid, of course, but here the relationship between representatives and those represented will be more for delegation and accountability than for immediate exposure. We must convert the principle of transparency into a central demand for governmental action in a democratic society, without losing sight of the fact that, like any principle in politics, it should be balanced with other priorities. Furthermore, its possible negative effects must be taken into consideration. As our political systems fight against unjustified opacity, we have also noted that those same control mechanisms tend to transmit excessive distrust and a fundamentally negative vision of politics (Behn 2001). Some of the rules of transparency and accountability can damage rather than reinforce confidence, to the extent that – in contrast with its declared purpose – they feed a culture of suspicion that increases public distrust. At the same time, there are a series of strategies to produce in-transparency through transparency, which Luhmann explained with particular subtlety (1995). ‘Being under the popular eye can be an astute strategy on the part of the leader or the communication experts to decrease the people’s control of the leader’s power if some previsions that have nothing to do with his public appearance are not taken’ (Urbinati 2014, 213). Transparency is only a principle that improves our democratic life if it is not enshrined while ignoring the self-interest that can

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be made of it and its consequences throughout the democratic society, which is also made up of other values, some of which are not very compatible with absolutized transparency.

Transparency or publicity? Transparency is, without a doubt, one of the principal democratic values, allowing citizens to control the activity of their elected officials, verify respect for legal procedures, understand decision-making processes and trust political institutions. That is why it is not strange that it has exercised a power of fascination that sometimes makes it difficult to analyse its meaning, reflect on its content and its limits or undesired consequences. The principle of transparency has such an indisputable status that it can take the luxury of being indistinct and vague. We should not consider transparency as the only norm of our action on social reality, even admitting that it stems from a legitimate desire to democratize power. In addition to limits, transparency can have negative consequences. More than a few scholars have noted that the internet can become an instrument of opacity: the increase in the amount of data provided to citizens complicates their surveillance (Fung and Weil 2007). How can citizens successfully carry out this task of control over the authorities? For this reason, I prefer to talk about publicity and justification, which are more demanding principles than the principle of transparency. While transparency expects continuous visibility, publicity is by definition limited and delimited. Let us consider whether perhaps harassing some of our representatives at their homes or workplaces, which takes legitimate protest to private spaces, reveals the confusion that exists when it comes to distinguishing public and private; we have sown an idea of transparency that suggests a continuous visibility over people rather than a principle of publicity that is essentially limited to the acts that make political sense and in the spaces of public domain, thus allowing areas of intimacy and a private or even secret life. On the other hand, while transparency tends to settle for data being made available, publicity demands that this data be configured as information that is intelligible to citizens. Transparency does not presume real access to information. In contrast, publicity means that the information is truly disseminated, that it is taken into account and that it participates in the formation of points of view, because it is illusory to think that as long as the data is public truth will reign in politics, the authorities will open up and citizens will understand what is really

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going on. In addition to access to public data, there is the question of meaning. Placing large quantities of data and documents on the web is not enough to make public action more intelligible: it must be interpreted; the conditions under which it has been produced must be understood, without forgetting that this type of information generally does not account for more than a slice of reality. Transparency is a necessary condition of publicity, but it does not guarantee it. This is the reason that there can be potential availability of information but a lack of true publicity for many different reasons: because the work of the mediators (such as institutions, the means of communication, the labour unions and political parties) is not effective or because of limitations of a cognitive order (Naurin 2006, 91–2). It is a delusion to think that we can control the public space without institutions that mediate, channel and represent public opinion and the general interest. What is occurring nowadays is that the disrepute of some of these mediations has seduced us with the idea that democratization means dis-intermediating. Some people – with a logic similar to that used by the neoliberals to dismantle the public space in benefit of a transparent market – insist on criticizing our imperfect democracies based on the model of a direct democracy, articulated by spontaneous social movements, from the free play of the online community and beyond the limitations of representative democracy. The platitude that journalists, governments, parliaments and politicians are dispensable has been established, when what they truly are is improvable. I am convinced that we are mistaken with this approach, which does not mean that the mediation provided by those professionals is always satisfactory. In a contemporary democracy, we citizens would not be able to clarify what is taking place, much less challenge the degree to which it strikes us as deserving of reproach without the mediation, among others, of politicians and journalists, to whom we owe, in spite of their many errors, some of our best democratic conquests. Advanced societies rightly claim that there is greater and easier access to information. But an abundance of data does not guarantee democratic surveillance; that requires, additionally, mobilizing communities of interpreters capable of giving context, meaning and critical assessment. Separating the essential from the anecdotal, analysing and placing the data in appropriate perspective demands mediators who have the time and the cognitive ability. The political parties (another example of an institution that needs to be renovated) are an essential instrument for reducing that complexity. Journalists are also inevitable in the task of interpreting reality; their job is not going to be

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superfluous in the age of the internet: quite the contrary. Journalists are called upon to play an important role in this cognitive mediation to interest the people, animate public debate and decipher the complexity of the world (Rosanvallon 2008, 342). But I am defending the cognitive necessity of the political system and the means of communication, not their representatives who, like all of us, are also manifestly improvable.

The private lives of politicians We are witness to the increasing presence of politicians’ private affairs in public opinion. This is due in part to the fact that public surveillance brings to light some aspects of the life of those who represent us that they would have preferred to keep secret. But this publicizing of that which is personal often stems from politicians themselves and their communications advisors, who offer up aspects of their personal life that they consider beneficial for their popularity and the electoral battle. The politics of transparency and the intentional exposure of one’s own personal life are modifying certain conventions regarding the separation between the public and the private, even in those countries that used to clearly distinguish the two spheres. In any case, this over-exposure of private life is bringing about a transformation in the logic of the game, which turns politicians into victims or beneficiaries depending on the particular situation. Among the causes of this transformation, we can note a growing competition among the means of communication: a degree of de-ideologization and the personalization of campaigns or the development of internet. These are factors that clearly contribute to our understanding of some mechanisms without which this change in the limit of our collective attention would not have been possible. But there are reasons of a more structural nature that suggest that we are living in a time of expansion and generalization of the private that weighs on the public space and de-naturalizes it. This tendency is going to persist and one of our principal challenges is determining how to confront it based, among other things, on new considerations about the relationship between the private and the public. It is not so much a question of protecting politicians’ right to a private life but preserving the integrity of the democratic process. One argument for limiting public use of politicians’ private lives would come from the protection of an individual right, that allows each of us, politicians

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included, to prevent having activities that they want to protect from general scrutiny revealed, observed or exposed without their consent. It is not a bad argument, since those who govern also have a right to privacy, but it is weak since it does not take into account that we are not speaking about just any citizen. Competing for a public office is a free choice for the candidate, who should be conscious of the burdens it entails. Those who struggle for power must know that they cannot claim the right to privacy to the same extent as ordinary citizens. Greater power entails greater responsibility and therefore less freedom in which to hide. Those who exercise political power would like to enjoy being invisible in order to do what they wish they could do without suffering a public reprimand or censure (Urbinati 2013, 169). But the argument that is focused on the protection of the private life of those who represent or govern us is insufficient, especially because it does not centre on the good that must be preserved. When it is a question of political representatives, it is the demands of democratic space that determines their rights and their particular obligations. Granting politicians an unlimited right to privacy would assure them excessive power of control over the public discourse, which would lower the quality of democratic debate. Politicians have a demand for responsibility that relativizes or diminishes their right to a private life. This demand would justify making public certain behaviours that are generally considered private (information about their physical or mental health if it could affect their abilities, their financial situation or even the economic situation of their family members that could create conflicts of interests or any circumstance that might condition their public behaviour). The principle of democratic responsibility authorizes a certain degree of publicity about the private life of politicians, to the extent that information is considered necessary to evaluate their past, present or future capacity to assume a public function. At the same time and for identical reasons (protecting the quality and responsibility of democratic life), there are good reasons to limit the publicizing of private life. When politicians’ private lives are made public, it has very negative effects on political life. When revelations on private life dominate any other type of information, the general quality of public debate declines. There are many examples of this. For example, the Clinton–Lewinsky relationship marginalized the media’s treatment of other questions like the new political proposals on social security, campaign finance, but especially the justification of the US position on Iraq and the preparation for military intervention.

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There is no doubt that certain sexual behaviours should be more publicized than they are. Sexual harassment is not a private matter. Behaviours that have a uniquely private character in principle, become a topic of legitimate investigation when they violate the law. However, with the exception of these concrete cases, excessive media coverage focused on politicians’ private activities distracts our practices of democratic deliberation. When more attention is focalized on the banal details of private life, we become less able to assess the nuances of public life. Politicians’ private lives act as a great distraction in profoundly depoliticized societies. For that reason, when a media outlet questions whether it should or should not reveal a private behaviour, the questions it should ask itself are as follows: What effects would this have on the quality of our democratic life? Is it knowledge that citizens should have in order to evaluate the actions of their representatives? If it must be done, does the degree of publicity match its relevance? When transparency is demanded, it is important not to forget that the powerful or the industries of transparency have ways in which to divulge information and images that produce the emotional reactions that are most favourable to them, in other words, provoking the in-transparency that suits them. Taking politicians to the public stage does not eo ipso limit and control their power. The case of Berlusconi has been very illustrative in this regard: highlighting a leader’s private life creates a spectacle that conceals the truly political considerations that should be in the public agenda. Berlusconi was permanently under the watchful eye of the media, but their intrusion on his life served, not to evaluate his political weaknesses, but to satisfy a certain hunger for scandals, which allowed us to overlook that which was truly important. As Michaël Foessel affirms, politicians entertain us with themselves so as not to have to talk about us (2008). Making the life of the politician visible may make political life invisible. Giving the people ocular power does not guarantee that we are going to look at that which is most important or what society needs to know. The ocular power of the people tends to focus more on the person of the leader than on his or her policies. The things that should be the object of public visibility are not as interesting for observers as other matters; we are more curious, for example, about how much a politician earns than about how much work is actually being done; there are personal behaviours that create more of a scandal than a scandalous decision would. This predominance of the personal is similar to our tendency to point a finger at a guilty party in order to visualize complex matters; ‘politicians’ also satisfy this reduction of complexity by suggesting things are

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merely personal, converting the structural into something that can be assumed by a person. Between our personalization of leadership and our recourse to scapegoats, we lose sight of those complex structures that should be the object of our democratic surveillance.

From the power of the word to the power of vision: Ocular democracy Democracy is the power of the citizens. The question is how we understand this power, how it is exercised, what modalities of empowerment are put into play. The current apotheosis of transparency implies understanding citizen power, fundamentally, as a power of vision. Every society establishes a regulation of the relationships of visibility. In traditional societies, one of the privileges of power is a privilege of active attention: seeing everyone without being able to be seen or without having to be seen. The emotion of many stories about emperors, popes or caliphs who disguised themselves in order to mix with the people and thus discover the state of public opinion is not due to the tensions of spy craft that they contain, but depends precisely on those fathers of the nation not being known. The great authorities of the past were recognized by their weapons, crowns, robes, insignia or musical fanfare, but barely by their faces. The king was never naked. For modern political careers, on the other hand, the key is in having a privilege of passive attention: being seen by everyone without being able to see or without having to see. A contemporary emir no longer needs to camouflage himself; he can visit his territories every afternoon in order to be recognized, without the inconvenience of immediate contact with the people. This is possible courtesy of the means of communication, whose political relevance consists fundamentally of their being the current distributors of the relations of visibility. Nowadays an anecdote of an authority figure camouflaged among the people would be impossible. Power resides in the face and that is why the paraphernalia that used to accompany authorities has fallen into disuse; the abandonment of these signals is due more to their uselessness than to the modesty of those who have chosen to do without them. Modern politics has turned previous privileges on their heads. The public that politicians address is anonymous, undefined. The people are now invisible and those who have authority have it because they have managed to acquire a position of visibility for the other; those who govern are not those who see but

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those who are seen. The ability to see and not be seen belongs now to those who are governed. The best formulation of this new ocular democracy in the age of spectacle can be found in Jeffrey Edward Green’s book The Eyes of the People, in which he states that ‘the gaze rather than the decision … [is] the critical ideal of popular power’ (Green 2010, 15). The people as spectator would have a power that the elite do not: the power of unveiling, a type of negative power that imposes an ocular responsibility on the representatives, the weight of being observed. The spectators are thus situated in a position of equals with those who are seen. The masses enjoy the omnipotent invisibility that guards used to have, and they exercise the pressure of constant vigilance over the representatives. In this way, the people are understood as an impersonal and completely disinterested unit that inspects the game of politics from the outside by virtue of the principle of publicity. Participation is minimal but the contemplation is extensive. The anonymous mass of those who see only observes because they essentially do not take part in the game except to elect those who truly compete. If in representative democracy the voice, discourse and ear were, respectively, the primary organ, function and sense, today the eye, the judging mirror and vision are central instead. In this way, the democracy of the internet has not broken, but continues the democracy of television; it is not the child of the discursive model of the agora but the videocratic model of the society of the visual means of information, which has replaced the voice with vision. Even though internet users interact and are not merely passive, their type of interaction is carried out in the assertive and apodictic style of images. Democratic dialogue has very little to do with the interchange of declarations on Twitter. All of this presupposes a decline in the politics of ideas and discursivity (Urbinati 2014, 85). Mediation and discourse have come to an end and are now secondary categories in the empire of vision. The demand for transparency is fundamental so people can be in a position to judge and control, but it can be limited to being a voyeuristic reward for a public that does nothing but watch. We are, as Bernard Manin defined it, in an ‘audience democracy’ (Manin 1997, 218) and politics has become something that the citizenry contemplates from the outside. Citizens have stopped being participants and have become passive spectators. The empire of the visual impoverishes the level of political discourse. The public feels visually drawn to themes or perspectives about the themes that strike them as the most attractive, which do not always coincide with the true political issues or the depths of the matter, which frequently remains beyond the

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spectacle. One thing may conceal the other. In this way, not even the function of democratic surveillance can be fully exercised, since the spectacularization of political life hinders the perception of everything that does not fit into the category of spectacularity, things that are not very attractive to the citizenspectator, anything that does not impress or is not personal, issues that do not stir rage or envy or indignation, everything that is normal, banal, structural or complex. Being ‘under the public eye’, as Rousseau demanded, can lead to a ‘politics of passivity’ (Urbinati 2014, 171), to a theatricalization in which there is more entertainment than control, more ‘politainment’ than political judgement. For opinions to be public, it does not suffice that they be publicly expressed; they must form a part of ‘public affairs’, the res publica, and the judgement of what belongs is something that citizens carry out freely when they participate in the formation of their will and judgement as citizens, not as simple observers (Sartori 1987, 87). In order to forge a political will, one must do more than look; one must also participate, speak and protest. In an ocular democracy, the people can feel less encouraged to participate or decide as a sovereign precisely because they are busy continuously supervising their representatives. The spectacle is enough for them, exercising the negative sovereignty that limits the power of their representatives. In this way, transparency will be revealed as a strategy of regeneration that does not rise to the level of what is promised and that is, at times, even a true democratic distraction.

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The Importance and the Limits of Moralizing Politics

When politics runs aground, whether because of the ineptitude of the representatives, the irresponsibility of those represented or the difficulty of the matters that need to be managed (we will not concern ourselves at this point with determining how much of the issue corresponds to each of these factors), the appeal to ethics is a recourse that is as comprehensible as it is insufficient (Longás and Peña 2014). Those who are disappointed by politics place all their hopes on ethics, from which they expect solutions for problems that can only be resolved politically. This way of seeing things corresponds with the fact that the word ‘politics’ has negative connotations nowadays; it suggests trickery, corruption, dogmatism and ineffectiveness. In common parlance, saying that an issue has been politicized means that its true nature has been distorted. At the same time, we can affirm that political theory today is filled with normative approaches and there are few analysts that examine the nature of the task, its conditions and its limits. It is very significant that one of the great treatises of contemporary political philosophy is Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971), which is a book about legitimacy, in other words, a fundamentally moral focus on politics, more normative than explanatory. How can we be surprised that citizens have such a bewildered relationship with politics if the philosophers who should make it comprehensible – and criticize it once it is understood – dedicate themselves almost exclusively to discussing its ethical limitations, just decisions or legal legitimacy, barely paying attention to what our political condition means, what it entails, who practices it and under what conditions and limits? It seems that political praxis is not important enough for the theorists who reduce it to a sum of morality and rights. The fact that people’s expectations of politics are both extremely elevated and reduced to the minimum is not at all surprising, especially since the politics that actually exists does leave a lot to be desired.

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I believe this is the context in which we should be thinking about the relationship between ethics and politics today. We are at a time when greater demands regarding the ethical limits of political action coincide with its increased weakness. Conceiving an ethos of politics does not mean confusing the moral vision of the world and the demands for political action. The question is how to formulate the ethical responsibilities of politics without falling into the trap of thinking that we have thus guaranteed sound policy. The defence of public ethics should be carried out with an awareness that it allows us to set limits that do not guarantee much of anything, without letting ourselves be distracted by those who make use of morality in an ideological fashion and especially, without thinking that we have, in this way, saved politics from its endemic weakness, which is what should concern us the most.

The time for public ethics The relationship between ethics and politics is now more than ever a lively theme of daily discussion. Various circumstances have coincided in time, the result of which is devastating for our habitual practices and will force us to significantly elevate the criteria for what we judge acceptable in politics from the ethical point of view. This situation could be summarized as the result of three crises: economic, political and ideological. In the first place, the economic crisis has accentuated our sensitivity to corruption. There are political behaviours that are inappropriate whether or not there is an economic crisis. The crisis has not turned good into bad; it has not invented corruption. What it has done is modify our perception of public matters, increasing the effect that anything negative has on us. Behaviours that went unnoticed or that were even tolerated in times of prosperity become unbearable in the midst of austerity and of the social consequences of the economic crisis. In addition, we are confronting a long-standing political crisis that impacts the judgement citizens make about what is going on in the public space. Political institutions are currently devalued because of the discrepancy between citizens’ growing demands and the still hierarchical style of politics. Citizens want and are capable of control or, when this is not possible because of the complexity of the topic, are not prepared to let it be delegated far away or without the corresponding accountability. Society has become horizontalized; we have greater skills, and this allows us to assess and judge when we would have previously had a more passive or resigned attitude about what was going on in the public space.

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This is all complicated by an ideological crisis which is appraised in various ways. There has been talk about the end of ideologies for some time now, and some of these interpretations are very self-interested. The result of this is that the ability political actors have to use ideologies for their own benefit has decreased; it is now harder for them to use ideology as an excuse that will justify any behaviour. Society has not done away with differences; there is still a leftand right-wing, as well as varied national identifications, but these ideological constructions are less effective at hiding other things. What are the effects of this triple crisis in politics? We could summarize them, in turn, into three consequences: politics has become personalized to the same extent it has been de-ideologized; procedures have become the central political question and large-scale political agreements are demanded with more intensity. The personalization of politics has a lot to do with the blurring of ideological profiles. The personal attributes of those involved in politics have been foregrounded. We pay less attention to what they say than to whether that discourse aligns with what they do and, especially, with what they are. Our political preferences are increasingly configured around personal attributes such as heroicness, honesty, competence or the confidence they inspire, while the political franchises have been profoundly discredited. Ideological references continue to be important, of course, but one’s service record to the nation or membership in the social democratic or conservative group does not guarantee anything, and the electorate is increasingly focused on the representative’s traits rather than the principles he or she represents. One of the inevitable consequences of this is that we value procedures more than results. Recent public debate has focused on questions about the way political decisions are made and their democratic qualities: the essence of political life is now transparency, information, participation, accountability, citizen control and the independence of regulators. It is curious that political actors in a de-ideologized world find it very difficult to come to an agreement even when they create very similar policies. In the midst of a serious crisis, this inability is not understood by citizens, who demand large-scale agreements. Political life is ruled by short-termism and tactical ploys that soak up public attention and end up exasperating citizens. The principal problem with this way of going about things is that it prevents us from addressing certain issues that require either a long-term perspective or broader agreements than those merely necessary to achieve a sufficient minority. People are beginning to realize that this is not good, particularly in a situation of profound crisis that requires changes of a certain magnitude. In this context,

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voters may punish excessive opposition more than weakness. Agreements are desired and valued. Or, at least, voters do not understand disagreements that do not have a good reason for existing, beyond winning some electoral battle. This triple crisis, with its triple consequences, also has a triple solution scenario: private consciences, the judicialization of politics and public ethics. Let us presume that those who dedicate themselves to politics have a moral conscience and that we respect their judgement, but we are also conscious of their limits when it comes to judging public behaviours. Saying that those who are self-interested never suffer a guilty conscience is not an irrefutable fact that halts any subsequent discussion. We live in a society where there is greater tolerance towards reasons stemming from personal conscience, a variety of lifestyles and individual preferences, but that does not mean that acting on our conscience exonerates us from the obligation of justifying certain personal behaviours that affect decisions that have public meaning. One might have a very clear conscience and be untrustworthy or, at the very least, someone who should not represent us. The second consequence is the judicialization of politics, which appears as a lifesaver for politicians’ failures, whether in relation to the fines that are proposed or as a challenge to immoral procedures (Rosanvallon 2006). Politics frequently plays out in the courts. Resorting to the courts is a right and, at times, a requirement, but it has its limitations. Its abuse is, from the start, a symptom that is worth analysing. It reveals the limited ability of politics when it comes to articulating certain demands and the lack of purely political channels to express the demands of responsibility. It also reveals a lack of competence of the political actors who try to win in the legal terrain what they have not been capable of obtaining in the political arena. Limits on the judicialization of politics depend on the courts sanctioning what is legally reprehensible, but the courts are not meant to judge political competence. In a context of public decisions that affect other people and can and should be judged by those people, in the same way that a clean conscience does not guarantee that one has behaved correctly, the fact that a court overturns an accusation does not mean that it confirms the political correctness of the decision. Public ethics are presented, finally, as a space that should be configured between rights and personal morality. Our legitimate democratic demands extend beyond the individual conscience and are bigger than the margins of the legally irreproachable. We use the term ‘public ethics’ for the combination of criteria, practices and institutions that regulate the space demarcated by the individual conscience and criminal law. There cannot, so to speak, be a chasm

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between the personal conscience and the courts, a blind spot in the political system, a black box or a no-man’s land between what is criminally punishable and the private realm of the conscience. There are things that are not illegal but are not good, that are not politically acceptable. We can demand more of public representatives than of other people, in the same way that decision-making processes in the public sector have different requirements from those of the private sector. This idea should be complemented with one logical reservation: ethics are not a political solution either; they are related to political limits but do not replace politics. Ethics by themselves do not guarantee sound policy; what is ethically correct is not the same as that which is politically proper, although the latter requires the former. It would seem unnecessary to remind ourselves of this, but it is not excessive to do so when moral solutions for political problems abound and when there are those who dedicate themselves to destroying everything with moral principles. An ethically irreproachable government is not necessarily a good government, although there cannot be a good government if some minimal ethics are not respected. Directives and ethical codes try to guarantee these minimums, nothing less, but nothing more.

Paying attention to values It was once said that when an Oxford don refers to the decadence of the West, he is really thinking about the poor quality of domestic service. The moral complaint points towards a general loss of values, consumerism, disorientation, a lack of solidarity, hedonism, disloyalty, traditions that are abandoned and so forth. Structures, consensuses and authorities seem to be breaking everywhere. Social classes are blurred and society loses cohesion, businesses vanish in virtual spaces, the power of the state is weakened, voters are not to be trusted and so forth. However, the public that listens with pleasure to diagnostics about the crisis of values tends to be affecting a lack of historical consciousness. It is a widely held assumption that we live at a time of questioning and crisis. Our present would be something like a critical moment, between the not anymore and the not yet. We no longer believe the large representations of the past, but we have not yet managed to replace them with anything else. The present would be a type of no-man’s land between the reassuring security of the past and a security we can only dream of for the future. I believe this analysis is completely illusory; it

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responds to a dream that is, of course, not of our invention, but probably more or less common in all types of present. What is certain is that for some time now our democratic societies’ principal political parties, be they conservative or progressive, seem tempted to give a central place to the defence of ‘moral values’ once again. This appeal played a determining role in Bush’s re-election in November 2004, but it is not peculiar to the United States since moral values have also occupied a central place in European electoral campaigns for some time now. This phenomenon of the ‘moralization’ of public life can be observed in very different manifestations. Bishops’ pastoral letters unleash a crusade against supposed moral relativism and offer orientations whose literalness reflects nothing but commonplaces and function in context as indicators of exclusion. On the other hand, the growing judicialization of politics does not begin with the guarantee of rights and freedoms but with the protection of certain values that are understood in such a way that those rights and freedoms are placed in jeopardy. In addition, the unsuccessful Constitutional Treaty of the European Union called upon common values, which rallied both supporters and detractors. In this way, it gave Europe the appearance of having a type of sentimental identity beyond its economic interests and legislative-political abstractions. It must have seemed more moving than the cold language of rights and principles, easier to understand and capable of generating support. But this emphasis on ideals and values rather than rules and rights is still significant. In the first place, ‘moral values’ in these debates tend to mean the values that conservatives traditionally conceive in the way that they conceive them (family, fatherland, life, security, achievement, order, authority). They generally do not include the values that are more present in the opposite camp, which seem no less important, like public service, universality, informed consent, responsibility or solidarity. The fact that the public agenda of the debate about values is centred more on the first list than on the second seems to be an intellectual concession that progressives made to conservatives; while it is one of the most blatant concessions, it is not the first or only one. As long as this and other concessions are not examined, the space of political discussion will continue to be sown with these advantages and inequalities in standing that make it extremely difficult to have a balanced confrontation: because, to reformulate a phrase that now seems clichéd, some people try to achieve through ethics what the citizens have not granted them through politics. There are those who will only see an exercise in opportunism in this generalized appeal and, if this interpretation were correct, we would not have too

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many motives for concern. But we need to ask whether it is revealing something more ideological and unsettling for democracies. The discourse of values may call into question the priority given to the idea of rights, consent, guarantees and individual freedoms in a democratic society. When there is a weak political culture, calling upon values in general, even if it is apparently destined to establish rights and freedoms, paradoxically ends up with the opposite result: responding to rights and making individual freedoms more fragile. Just as we see with the phenomenon of judicialization, the language of values is used to reduce the political space, not to establish rights but to call them into question, as is the case, for example, with the appeal to family, work or security. Both the debate on the ‘value of the values’ and even the expressly ideological use of moral language instead of a logic of rights and responsibilities are disregarded. We need to be careful with values, not because they do not exist, but because there are too many of them; in other words, they are in competition and need to be concretized and balanced. In the mischievous anecdote that I told at the beginning, the Oxford professor was thinking about something else when he talked about the crisis of values; those who currently speechify about moral issues are thinking about how to eliminate some right or about how to introduce a particular and arguable point of view as if it were a self-evident truth.

The weakness of politics One of the issues with the dismantling of public services, neoliberal deregulation or corruption scandals is that they make us forget the true problem of politics, the most common one, which is not easily explained by the inappropriate conduct of the few, but has a structural nature instead: its weakness, the public impotence when it comes to organizing our societies in a balanced and just fashion. Unveiling the guilty is necessary, but it often makes diagnostics difficult, because we tend to think the problem has been resolved by the police and judges. If there is anything of which we can be certain, it is that a policy in which there was no corruption would not necessarily be good policy. If we look at things more carefully, we will observe an even more serious problem: the erosion of democratic countries’ ability to construct legitimate and effective public power. We have the rather extreme cases of ‘failed states’, such as the states that have been ‘captured’ by drug cartels and terrorism, of apparently strong states like Russia, whose sovereignty is subjected to economic blackmail, or of the difficulty of the countries in which the events that have come to be

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called ‘the Arab Spring’ took place when it came to transforming the democratic mobilization into an institutional structure. But the situation is no less dramatic in countries with a long democratic tradition; when states attempt to control the markets, there are numerous difficulties that place their authority in jeopardy: fiscal evasion, the suffocating weight of debt, the delegitimizing effects of public austerity, the difficulty with re-launching economic activity through public intervention, the state’s loss of expert knowledge and authority, the problems of governability, an inability to regulate, an administration that is disillusioned and lacking vision, a welfare state that is on the defensive or in full withdrawal, public services degraded to management criteria and so forth. All these constrictions are nothing but manifestations of the states’ difficulties when it comes to formulating, representing and constructing general interest. This weakness of politics is explained by a series of causes that could be grouped into three factors. In the first place, the public authorities have lost their traditional reference to a determined territoriality and this space now escapes them, towards the inside and towards the outside, due to the dynamics of globalization and internal fragmentations. In the second place, the state has lost its capacity for synthesis in the face of a political life that tends to be radicalized. We can see eloquent examples of this in Italy’s problems of governability and Obama’s difficulties when it comes to overcoming polarization. Finally, the legitimacy of the state is placed into question when the specificity of public action is measured with the criteria of the effectiveness of private actors; not even the university seems immune at this point. So the state has stopped being a point of connection between a territory, a community, legitimacy and an administration. I regret that my response to the question caused by a problem that is difficult to solve – the struggle against political corruption – is another problem that is nearly impossible to resolve, but in the end, this is what should truly concern us the most: the weakness of politics. We need to reflect seriously on the ability politics has to produce social innovations. More concerning than corruption is the fact that politics has seen how its space of configuration narrows notably if we measure it against the expectations that democratic societies deposited in it. This weakness is more striking when it is contrasted with the dynamism of other social systems, like the economy or the culture, whose regulation corresponds precisely to the political system. In our societies, accelerated innovation in the areas of finance, technology, science and culture coexist with slow and marginalized politics. Concern about this regression should lead to renewed reflection about what we

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can and should reasonably expect from politics nowadays. For some time now, social innovations have not come from political institutions but are developed in other social arenas. Politics no longer conceives but, at best, corrects, from a chronic inability to understand social changes and anticipate future scenarios. For that reason, cleaning up corruption or preaching honesty are insufficient. What politics has going against it is not (only) immorality but bad politics. But there are still those who think that political ethics is limited to keeping politicians from doing anything illegal. What we call corruption is nothing but a type of crime committed by a public persona; not committing them does not guarantee that we will measure up as a true political culture. Politicians’ current loss of credibility is less connected to the corruption that threatens the rules of private morality than to the obsolescence of political uses in some scenarios that are determined by new historical tasks. The problem is not a lack of virtues, but lack of knowledge, poor initiative and imagination, indecision and routine, the lack of consciousness of new responsibilities that social and political changes carry with them. The morality that must govern the public sphere cannot be deduced from private experiences that are acquired in what we could call a morality of closeness, in contexts of immediacy, short-termism and the comprehensiveness of the consequences of action. The criteria to measure the responsibility of the art of the possible have changed substantially in recent decades. Not only has there been an increase in the moral demands for the configuration of social life – in line with new sensibilities towards the extension of human rights or respect for minorities; there are also increased expectations towards political action when it comes to the consequences of decisions adopted. With the increase in the horizon of responsibilities in relation to what is objectively possible in a society, what can be achieved or lost through indifference or a lack of attention, politics has gained a specific new moral dimension. In modern societies, the political system can only be controlled by political criteria. In any case, external moral control is circumstantial. This does not mean making room for indifference, but for play, and the rules of the game are never a joke, as any good player knows. Clearly this leads to an image of society that is more complex than simplifying moralism would like. It is the political system itself – and something similar occurs with other systems – that regulates the extent to which and the form in which morality is relevant. This is more demanding than extrinsic, one-time, corrective, punitive control, which would place anything that is not prohibited into the category of the morally irrelevant. The fact that the political system is not governed from the outside means that

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its vitality increases to the same extent that the complexity of its own moral significance grows. It is understandable that the tendency to moralize bursts forth in cases of corruption because it creates the sensation that everything else is equally valid, because it simplifies things pleasantly and gives us the opportunity to find ourselves on the side of good. As noted by Luhmann (2008, 270), this simplicity was only possible under the conditions of the holy watching of neighbours, within the cultures of neighbourhoods and towns. Responsibilities have grown as the world has expanded, but the individual has also been able to breathe easier when it becomes clear that, currently, no one who organizes in favour of morality can attempt to represent society. Proposals for regenerating democratic life do not need legislative initiatives or administrative reforms as much as a long-term strategic vision. This is not the time for electoral promises but for great designs that are the result of broad social debate. If political reflection was ever especially necessary, that time has come, in the midst of the current confusion, if we still seek to overcome the dictatorship of the moment and prevent politics from sliding towards a reparation (in the best case scenario) of the immediate.

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We have spent the last century announcing the death of almost everything: the intellectual funeral parlour saw a diverse parade of realities ranging from ideologies, God, the subject, nations, progress, history itself and so forth. These realities included the political left and right. Many of the things that were given up for dead were simply awaiting an opportunity to reappear; we could describe them in the words of the telegram that George Bernard Shaw sent to the newspaper that had announced his passing: ‘reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’. What remains today of the left and the right? There is probably no longer such a stark contrast between the state and the market, but there are other more subtle distinctions. There are still different political cultures and a certain style in their respective dispositions towards reality that appear as consolidated attitudes. It is the persistence of these differences that allows us to maintain the terminology of ‘left’ and ‘right’. This is useful as long as we employ appropriate precautions, particularly the awareness that we are dealing with a distinction that will have to coexist with other axes of identification (such as nationality or the distinction between the elites and the common folks) and with fronts that are less well-defined and surrounded by increasingly hybrid realities. If this hypothesis is confirmed, then it would be worthwhile to come to a conclusion about the way people should organize their antagonism and about the ways the tasks of the government and the opposition are understood.

Is reality right-wing? Unless one is a complete fanatic, it will not be difficult to recognize that political ideologies are not complete; there are relevant issues and values to which they pay less attention than to other matters that they consider more important.

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The way the left and right articulate the various values that politics put into play is different, but they do not monopolize them, nor is there a value that is completely absent from either of them; they are defined by their priorities and their emphases, not because they completely ignore those values that are not central to their own tradition. Many years of democratic confrontation – in other words, of antagonisms and agreements – have gone about configuring an ideological space that is much more hybrid and mixed than the guardians of political essences might desire. A good example of this is the compromises that allowed the settlement of the welfare state after the war or the attempts to find more cross-cutting combinations, such as liberal socialism or social conservatism, for example, or the thousands of manifestations of the political centre. In addition, the more extreme versions of the left or right represent options in which a value, such as equality or freedom, is claimed as a whole; we can find admirable goals there as well but must note that any political position is irremediably incomplete. Political ideologies, no matter how closely we hold them, always involve a break. Only fanatics have no feelings of envy towards their adversaries, in their own field or in another, because our opponents will better represent certain values that we are forced to pay less attention to but that still cannot, for that reason, be considered irrelevant. All of this reveals that political divisions are inevitable but they create incomplete positions. That is why we talk among ourselves, not only to negotiate but to heal our own wounds and enrich an ideological position, which owes its ability to guide and mobilize on a certain selectivity. What is it that the left and right discount, which makes them necessary and incomplete? We often say it is equality for the left and liberty for the right, but I believe that it is instead a different way of relating to reality and the possible. I am presenting it here in order to suggest a different focus later on. The left is sometimes reproached for having renounced utopia and given in to realism too quickly, but I believe that its problems stem from a previous factor that has serious consequences for politics in general. The left’s lack of vigour stems from accepting a territorial division, which grants the administration of reality and efficiency to the right, while the left enjoys a monopoly on unreality, where it can roam unchallenged around its values, utopias and dreams. This comfortable delineation of territory is at the root of a widespread political crisis: having accepted the division between the pleasure principle and the principle of reality, between objectivity and possibilities, the right can dedicate itself to unreflecting modernization, unburdened by the fear that the left could cause it any problems through its generic and disconcerting utopianism. The right can

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afford the luxury of struggling with values while the left still has problems with power. Meanwhile, this division is of little appeal to voters, who would in all likelihood prefer a different type of choice. Thus understood, political realism today means a realization of powerlessness in shaping the social space. However, what if, in the end, politics were nothing but a discussion about what we understand as ‘reality’? Perhaps the underlying political question is not so much about ideals and imaginaries, but about our perception of what is real. However, if that is indeed the case, the best that can be done in the face of a conservative conception of politics is to fight it in the realm of reality, to debate its conception of reality. This would be the only way for the left not to repeat their old mistake of playing by rules under which the right inevitably does better. The right cannot be opposed by dreams but by an alternative and superior description of reality. Reality is not simply about facts; it is also a set of possibilities for action that are informed by the point of view one adopts. The battle will not be won by generic appeals to another world but through a struggle to describe reality in another way. The left is unconvincing when it positions itself as if it were at odds with reality itself, but it can win us over if it makes us believe that the right’s description of reality is false. It would be disastrous to give up on the definition of the playing field, accepting either of the two possibilities that are on offer: taking up the challenge of better administering that reality (accepting the neoliberal logic as inevitable and simply moderating it) or fighting the right from a position of inoffensive moralism (in accordance with a version of socialism that is only capable of renewal by parasitically feeding on alternative social movements). That is why the left in the twenty-first century should be careful to distinguish itself from alter-globalization – which does not mean there are no serious problems in search of solutions beyond the currently available inventory – without giving in to the litany of deploring its loss of influence on the general course of the world. Instead of proclaiming that ‘another world is possible’, it would be better to imagine other ways of conceiving and acting upon this world. The idea that nothing can be done to combat globalization is an excuse born out of political laziness. What we cannot do is act like we used to. Social democracy will not free itself from the clutches of pessimism until it makes an effort to exploit the possibilities generated by globalization and to focus social change in a more just and egalitarian manner. What is currently at stake is not only democratic turn-taking or alternation but our very conception of politics. In their profound study on the history of

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the French Socialist Party, Alain Bergounioux and Gérard Grunberg (2005) summarized this aporia in terms of the twofold problem facing the French socialists: the rejection of ideological revision and their poor relationship with power. This is the fundamental issue: knowing whether the left is capable of understanding politics as an intelligent activity, renewing their concepts and practices of power. We also and especially need to know if it is capable of competing with the right in the realm of ‘realism’ by showing not so much that it has the best values but that it has a better explanation of reality. The other reason the left currently seems pessimistic is its purely negative conception of globalization, which prevents it from understanding its positive aspects when it comes to the redistribution of wealth, the emergence of new players and a change in the rules of the game when it comes to power relationships. By focusing only on the deregulations linked to globalization, the left runs the risk of appearing as a force that protects those who are privileged while rejecting the development of others. The fact is that the general dynamic of the world has never been so powerful, but also so promising for many people. And these opportunities also form part of a reality that has not yet been well described.

The market: An invention of the left If reality – its description and management – is not unquestionably a patrimony of the right, the left should not yield the idea of the market to the right so docilely, as if it were not aware of its own tradition. What if liberalism is, as some scholars have recently reminded us (Giavazzi and Alesina 2006), an ideology of the left? My proposal is to consider that the confrontation between left and right does not now bring those in favour of the state against those in favour of the market but those who would be more damaged by the failure of the market against those who can survive better when markets do not assure equality (either because they have more resources or because they are beneficiaries of a political structure of privileges). The market is, no matter how you look at it, an invention of the left. The greatest liberals – the Levellers (Liburne, Overton and Walwyn) in the English Revolution, revolutionaries like Paine and Findley at the origins of the United States, the Cercle Social in the French Revolution, Thelwall and the London Corresponding Society in England during that same time period – carried out a complete vindication of human rights, in other words, they rose up

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against any type of dominance, ancient or new, whether against the arbitrariness of the state or against economic dominance. The different traditions that shaped early liberalism – from Locke and Hume to Voltaire and Kant – defended the free market and unrestricted global trade and believed in the civilizing capacity of an individual desire for gain. It was the apologists for the restoration who reclaimed strict state control over economic life. The first radical criticism of capitalism came from the authoritarian right. In the nineteenth century, this correlation was turned on its head. The left became collectivist and, through the repression of the libertarian trends of the workers movement carried out by Lassalle and Marx, it became the defender of state planning. The right, on the other hand, while initially anti-liberal, gradually became the advocate of free enterprise. The first difficulty facing the left when it comes to shaping itself as a renovated alternative stems from an attitude that can be called ‘heroism against the market’ (Grunberg and Laïdi 2008). This prevents it from understanding the true nature of the market, which it sees as nothing but a promoter of inequality and antisocial realities. For much of the left, economic reasoning is a social conspiracy; they believe that social life can only be preserved through conflict with economic realities. The ritual denunciation of neoliberalism and of the mercantilization of the world stems from an intellectual tradition that contrasts the social and the economic and tends to privilege determinism and constriction over the opportunities afforded by social change. This starting point makes it difficult to understand competition as one of the true values of the left against the logic of public or private monopoly, especially when public monopolies have stopped guaranteeing the provision of public goods in economically effective and socially advantageous conditions. It is the case that some public monopolies falsify the rules of the game. We know by now that there are inequalities brought about by the market, but also by the state, which some people react to in an extraordinarily indulgent manner. The left should think about whether the ends that identify it could not be better achieved by modifying the means to which they often turn: it is a question of placing the market in the service of the public good and the fight against inequality. Nostalgia breeds paralysis and does not help us understand the new terms that are being applied to an old struggle. It is not that a time of solidarity has given way to an explosion of individualism, but that solidarity needs to be structured on a more contractual basis, replacing the mechanical response to social problems involving an intensification of state interventions with more flexible formula for collaboration between the state and the market,

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strengthening transnational institutions, with forms of indirect government or the promotion of a culture for evaluating public policies. My proposal to elaborate a new social democratic agenda begins with revising the relationship that social democracy has had with the liberal left (Innerarity 2010). I believe the market is an achievement of the left and that competition is an authentic value of the left, as opposed to a logic of monopoly and privileges. It is frequently held that economic dominance is due to excessive market freedom, when the opposite is actually true: economic dominance is caused by the lack of economic freedom. The republican idea of ‘freedom as non-domination’ (Pettit 1997) is what now sustains economic reforms: the possibility of making progress with equality not through state redistribution (which tends to generate privileges and is unsustainable at times of crisis) but through the creation of greater equality of opportunities in the marketplace. One of the most urgent tasks for liberal social democracy would be to fight for the disappearance of economic dominance. Constitutional and democratic order is viable only if we recognize and actively fight concentrations of power that are incompatible with freedom. This would, then, extend (not restrict) the constitutional principle of the minimization of power into the world of the economy as well, which is currently so distorted by new oligopolies with the complicity of weak states. We must aspire not only to a state with no more than the indispensable power but also to a market economy free of dominance. At the same time, we must remember that the laissez-faire label was raised against large concentrations of capital; it was not a justification for the inactivity of the state, as neoliberalism claims. The state must actively ensure that all citizens can trade freely in the market. Reforms that favour the market do not mean more efficiency and less social justice: quite the opposite – they can be considered left-wing, to the extent that they reduce privileges and favour the marketplace, the true marketplace, which is sufficiently regulated so that it is a space of nondomination. Current criticism of the global economic system rails against mercantilization as if the market were responsible for world poverty. But the problem resides in the fact that there is no authentic market economy. In our economic systems, no big business would have grown to its current size without state protection. These great consortia are the least interested in the existence of a truly free market. To a certain extent, we are witnessing a kind of feudalization of capitalism – a ‘legal economy of pillage’ (Oswalt 1999). The smokescreen of the general interests of society can often disguise the interests of particular groups, unfair competition and the concentration of power by financial and opinion groups.

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It is the citizens who are being fleeced by this enormous amount of capital. Liberal social democracy should be aiming to promote true equality of opportunities in the economic sphere. Globalization can be used to strip the existing economic concentrations of their power and effectively open world markets. Reforms to promote the market (so it will work better, with more ability to create jobs, providing opportunities for more people, improving access to the job market etc.) do not necessarily mean more efficiency and less social justice: just the opposite – they can be considered left-wing to the extent that they reduce privileges. Only a social democracy which has the courage to increase opportunities for everyone and contribute to a system based on a true meritocracy can truthfully say that it is fighting for the most underprivileged members of our societies. The objectives that have characterized the European left – such as the protection of the weakest or the struggle against inequalities and privileges – are what should encourage it to adopt measures in favour of the market. Regulating markets is not a strategy to destroy them but to make them real and effective, in other words, to place them at the service of the public good and the fight against inequality. Nowadays fair governance of the markets has very little to do with the classic socialist commitment that demanded strong state intervention. It is not a question of strengthening the state but of strengthening politics so that it is capable of establishing a regulation of potential risks connected to markets that are institutions with structural weaknesses that neoliberalism has not been capable of recognizing and with social potentialities that socialism resists integrating into its own tradition. The socialism that insists on redistribution through the state frequently tends to forget that excessive regulation, the protection of certain privileges, a public sector that does not benefit the poorest members of society but those who are best situated, all of that is not only ineffective but socially unjust. Because it is not true that any increase in social obligations helps eliminate inequalities; all too frequently, the benevolent state has produced new injustices, to the extent that it has favoured those who do not need it and has systematically excluded others. Political mechanisms vary from one country to another, but the background of the story is always the same: insiders block reforms. Many times, guaranteeing employment at any cost is a value that must be weighed against the cost such protections entail for those who are thus denied entry into the job market, thus creating a new inequality. Concealed behind the defence of social conquests, social criticism may be conservative and anti-egalitarian, which explains why the left is currently so closely identified with conserving the status quo.

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How does all of this apply to the current economic crisis? The principal failure of politics until now has been not fulfilling its responsibility regarding systemic risks. The political system, consumed by the most immediate social risks, has forgotten its responsibilities regarding the supervision and prevention of systemic risks. We are probably leaving the era of the welfare state understood as a state whose only source of legitimacy was redistribution and we are entering into a new state in which the prevention of systemic risks is at least as important. The crisis is making us discover that the protection against systemic risks is as decisive as the fight against social inequalities and that is only possible if those responsibilities are fulfilled. For this new task, both the program of neoliberal dissolution of the states as well as classic social democratic interventionism serve no purpose; it is a question of saving one of the most important instances of the configuration of political will but in a global context that demands other strategies. This would be the first challenge of the new social democratic agenda: the social contracts we have to renovate do not only connect us to ourselves (to those of us who are here, from our generation, the civil servants, wage earners in general) but to others who are partially absent (to those who are from another country, the immigrants, young people who still have not been able to get a job, our children, future generations). The problem is how to think about redistribution when, to say it graphically, there is a collision between the rights of those who are inside with the rights of those who are outside. And socialism, which is what best administers the first issue, is not currently associated with good management of the second. There are those who continue thinking that sustainability is a question about the climate or animals and forget that what we should be most concerned about is not living at the cost of future pensioners and future workers, in other words, that our agreements for redistribution not be carried out against the interests of those who are absent. The primary social consequence of the economic crisis, the collective demand that is presented to us in the most insistent fashion, points in the direction of a profound revision of our model of economic growth, whose fixation on the immediacy of the short term has been revealed as the cause of its unsustainability. In this sense, it is very logical that the end of the crisis is connected with ecological imperatives, with the need to think about progress and growth, in other words, the economy as a whole, in another way. The confluence between economy and ecology is not coincidental; it indicates to us that we would have to tackle the economy with a series of criteria that we have learned in the management of ecological crises. If we have managed to think systemically when it comes to

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questions that have to do with the environment, this is the training that societies should carry out when it comes to controlling economic matters. In some ways, what has happened is that the financial crisis has been instructive in the general ecological crisis. The tyranny of the short term has made us lose track of responsibilities connected to the long term, both in the environmental and in the financial realm. On the one hand, the excessive consumption of natural resources by current generations constitutes an insult to future generations. In a parallel fashion, the excessive benefits that financial products were generating in recent years have reduced the extended time frame that should be the horizon of finances to almost zero. That is why restoring the balance between short and long terms is the key for resolving both the financial crisis and our ecological problems. In this way, ecology provides a model of systemic thought and action that should serve as criteria for fine-tuning our idea of growth, including economic growth. The crisis forces us to reinvent progress, to change our priorities, once we experience the imbalance between consumption in our societies and the emerging world. It is not so much that we must reduce consumption as needing to organize it differently, integrating the ecological imperative with the goal of growth. The recomposition that the crisis will force us to undertake includes a global renewal of the states’ role in order to regain the room for manoeuvring that they have been losing. It is not a question of having more or less state or a need for the reform of the state, but of redefining its missions within a global knowledge society, in other words, in a world in which sovereignty is frequently linked to powerlessness and where the public authorities have no more knowledge than the actors they should be regulating. If this context does not lead us to reflect anew on the objectives of politics – for which the state is no more than a means to an end – we will continue to prevent the state from fulfilling its own missions. The creation of greater equality of opportunities in the free market instead of centralized redistribution would then be the objective of a historic combination of liberal and social ideas. What I propose is that the renovation of the social democratic agenda arises from this combination between liberalism (the elimination of rules in the marketplace), socialism (concern for equality) and environmentalism (a perspective on the system and sustainability). This would be the task of a social democracy that is not resigned to having conservatives monopolize one dimension of liberty and manage it without appreciating equality, with the superiority that the failure of state redistribution strategies affords them.

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Political cultures of the right and left The contrast between right and left must be considered today in accord with more subtle differences than those proclaimed, less for the banners they carry and more for the different political cultures in which they are cultivated. To fully understand their transformations, I believe it is more useful to analyse their psychology and cognitive mechanisms than what they say about themselves. When the ideological baggage of the antagonism between state and market is increasingly less successful as an explanation of different ideological positioning, we must turn to contrasts of style and attitude. In this sense perhaps one of the most interesting questions consists of knowing why the economic crisis or cases of corruption, as well as general political disillusionment, affect the left and right very differently from an electoral perspective (this has nothing to do with whether there is more corruption in one or the other, a question that a simple statistic resolves and that, in the most elemental and self-interested political confrontation, has a predetermined answer depending on who is asking it). I believe that the roots of this curious and asymmetrical disappointment are found in the differing political cultures of the left and right. In general, the left expects much more from politics than the right, and at times too much. It demands from politics not only equality in starting conditions but also equality in results, in other words, not only liberty but also equality. The right is satisfied with politics limiting itself to maintaining the rules of the game and conceives of the common good as a mere aggregation of individual interests. It is more procedural and is satisfied if politics can guarantee frameworks and possibilities, while the specific result (in terms of inequality, for example) is irrelevant. At most, it will accept the corrections of ‘compassionate capitalism’ to alleviate certain intolerable situations. Of course, both sides aspire to defend both equality and liberty and no one can claim a monopoly on either of those values, but the emphasis the left places on equality and the right’s preference for liberty tips the balance in a direction that explains why their respective voters behave differently. The distinction lies, in my opinion, in that the left, to the extent that it places great expectations on politics, also has a greater potential for disappointment. For that reason, the weakness of the left is melancholy, while for the right, it is cynicism. If this is true, we would also have an explanation for why their ways of learning are so different, which probably responds to two different psychological

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approaches to manage disappointment. The left learns over long periods of time; when it flounders because of disappointment, its recuperation depends on some doctrinal revision. The right is more flexible and less doctrinaire, more eclectic, incorporating elements from other political traditions with greater agility. That is why the left can only win if there is a climate in which ideas play an important role and when there are many demands placed on politics. When these factors subside, when there are no ideas in general and when the citizens have no large goals for politics, voters prefer the right. The left should politicize, in the best sense of the term, against a right that is not very interested in the ‘political’ treatment of issues. The right which is currently successful in Europe is a right that, indirectly or openly, promotes de-politicization and works better with other values (efficiency, order, flexibility, recourse to technical know-how etc.). What the left should do is fight, at all levels (European and global, against the imperialism of the financial system, against experts who limit the range of what is democratically decidable, or against the frivolity of the media etc.) in order to restore the importance of politics. It is not that there is one politics for the left and another for the right nowadays; the real struggle is currently being fought on a playing field that is divided between those who want the world to have a political shape and those who would not care if politics were insignificant, an anachronism we could well do without. That is why the defence of politics has turned into the fundamental task of the left; the right is comfortably settled into a politics reduced to its minimum expression, whose spaces have been enormously reduced by the power of the experts, market constraints or media sensationalism. For the left, it is crucial that the public space be democratic; its very survival depends on this issue. The idea that the left is generally less mobilized has become a truism that sometimes reveals a mechanical and paternalistic (if not military) conception of politics. Some people understand mobilization as a type of hooliganization, as if citizens were a mob of fans that, when the time comes, should be supplied with an appropriate level of fear or excitement in order to elicit an appropriate response. This automatism is not the solution but a symptom of the true problem faced by a left that is accustomed to slogging through a low-cost civism. What people need is not mechanical impulses but ideas that help them understand the world in which they live and projects to which it is worth making a commitment. In addition, European social democracies today have no ideas or projects (or they have them at a clearly inadequate level).

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I do not want to fall into cheap Platonism and exaggerate the role of ideas in politics, but if the left does not renew itself in this field, it will continue to suffer the greatest weakness that can beset those who want to shape the world: not knowing what it is about, not understanding reality and either flaunting contempt for their enemies or their clear conscience about the superiority of their own values. At heart, the left is melancholic and restorative. It views the modern world as a machine that must be checked, not as a source of opportunities and instruments that could be put to the service of its own values of justice and equality. The purpose of social democracy today is to try to resolve the inequalities of a liberal society. It aims to preserve that which is threatened with destruction, but it does not suggest any alternative structure. This restorative mindset is configured at the expense of innovative, forward-looking thought. Because of this, citizens are not offered a coherent interpretation of the world that lies ahead, which is, instead, simply viewed as a threat. At a basic level, this distrustful attitude about the future stems from perceiving the market and globalization as principal agents of economic disorder and social inequalities, without noting the possibilities they embody that could be exploited. The mobilizing of fine sentiments and constant appeals to ethics are not enough; we must understand social change and know how the values with which one identifies can be realized in new circumstances.

Governmental credibility All political parties that want to govern, in other words, those that are not satisfied with simply being a place to safeguard their ideals, confront a similar dilemma. This basic dilemma imposes on all of them the need to choose between governing or dramatizing their own principles, between being credible so that voters entrust the people’s government to them or maintaining an identity that they can dedicate to opposition, between risking a search for new members or assuring the unity of their habitual supporters. I would like to exemplify this dilemma in the case of the European socialists. Following recent electoral failures, the argument began to circulate that the crisis of social democracy was due to adopting the ideological framework of the right. At the same time, in both France and Germany, polls show that the majority of socialist voters would welcome an alliance with the parties to their left. Many

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of these parties’ traditional voters have ultimately chosen options ‘to the left of the left’. In addition, the current economic crisis has unleashed a wave of social criticism, and it does not seem like the time for nuances. History teaches us that when things are not going well we tend to agree with the people who express the sharpest criticism (even if it is not clear what exactly is being criticized or the proposed alternatives). In light of this situation, it was very logical that there was increased pressure on the socialist parties to do something that could be called turning to the left. However, as is typical with all political decisions, things are more complicated than they seem. Surveys in Germany, for example, indicate that many voters have fled in the opposite direction, that the sum total of voters on the left has decreased and that some of the parties on the extreme left reject any institutional collaboration; nor should we assume that everyone who votes for the environmentalists are really to the left of the socialists. Ultimately, the real decision that the European left is confronting is the following: they can act as the tribune of the masses or they could make returning to power and governing their goal. In the first case, these parties can radicalize their anti-capitalistic discourse and draw closer to the parties on their left; in the second case, it would be a question of conserving or recovering true governmental credibility, including the economic credibility that is absolutely necessary to reach power. It is worth noting that the question of the candidates’ economic know-how has been the crucial issue in recent electoral campaigns. In addition, the deadliest threat for those who govern on the left has not been and will not be a supposed ‘turn to the right’, but the suspicion that they are not the most competent to run the economy. Socialists are obliged to articulate the imperatives of social justice and economic credibility if they want to remain in or regain power. Of course, this articulation is particularly difficult, especially in times of crisis and deficits, and it may be poorly understood by the voters on the left. But if the socialist parties prefer to assume the role of protectors of principles and lose the economic credibility that is decisive for the majority of voters, they risk losing power or staying in the opposition for a long time. We should not forget that there is a curious lack of symmetry in the division of the ideological field: lacking governmental credibility is more serious for the left than for the right because – probably because of prejudices that are difficult to justify – the left is assumed to have good intentions and the right competence for governing. The worst thing for the socialists is if they lose governmental credibility while the right gains

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social credibility; for the right, the greatest misfortune is if the left seems more competent. In all cases, there is a curious paradox: while those who are most intransigent are politically inoffensive, moderate adversaries end up being the most fearful adversaries.

The challenge of being in the opposition It is surprisingly challenging for current democracies to configure alternatives, in other words, to make real choices possible. It is not that there is no alternation or political changes in government; what is curious is that many of these turnovers are produced with a certain irregularity, around exceptional events or after the destabilizing force of a catastrophe. There must be some explanation around the fact that it is almost never the opposition that wins the elections, but the government that loses, and additionally, they do so in a disastrous fashion. It gives the impression that normal politics, with its prosaic themes, is not enough to reveal the differences between political options or the antagonism that would be necessary to modify social preferences. The normal activities of opposition and criticism, which are so ritual and so staged, barely provide a conduit that can lead to a change of those in power. There may be a more profound crisis here than it seems, which is not only affecting the government and the opposition or one specific country, but politics in general. It has to do with the lack of innovation in politics and its inability to shape and transform. For some time now, true social changes have been taking place outside of the spaces designed for that purpose, pushed by exterior and to a certain extent extraordinary events. The opposition, any opposition, knows this and makes an effort to provoke these turbulences since they are the only thing that can lead to the opportunity and the mobilizing impulse that are not found in the realm of the specifically political. Let us recall some cases where a catastrophe has managed to bring down a government. In thinking about the effects caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, someone pointed out that the 1927 floods were a decisive factor in Huey Long’s successful bid for governor of Louisiana in 1928 and Herbert Hoover becoming president of the United States a year later. A correct reaction in the face of the floods gave Schröder victory in the German election of 2002 against Stoiber, the favourite, who continued his hunting expedition. These are only a few of the many examples that are worth mentioning of the astonishing

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power that meteorology exercises on governments when it devastates entire territories, freezes our highways or extends drought beyond what is bearable. But it is not simply a question of nature usurping the place that belongs to politics, because the decisive factor continues to be the way candidates react to catastrophe. Terrorist attacks are another type of catastrophe that test all political actors alike, but we must not succumb to determinism in this case either since an attack can strengthen or destroy a government, depending on how it is handled. Everyone can remember cases where the reaction was intelligent and others where it was clumsy; in every case, what is decisive has always been the way people acted in the face of the crisis. Carl Schmitt said that a sovereign is the person who can decide on a state of exception (2004, 19), in the sense of wielding the ultimate authority to suspend constitutional normality. Nowadays, this idea could be reformulated in the following way: the sovereign is a person who takes advantage of the state of exception, this time in the sense of reacting effectively to exceptional circumstances. Those who exercise the disagreeable function of being in the opposition know that they wield no power more effective than a poorly managed catastrophe around which they can reveal an alternative response which highlights their differences. The catastrophic exception is the place where the greatest opportunities for opposition are contained. Governments also seem to have understood things this way; they have elaborated very demanding protocols for these eventualities and are increasingly more attentive in order not to give an opportunity to the opposition. We have turned politics into the management of exceptionality; that which is the norm is shunted off to bureaucrats because nothing politically worthwhile ever comes from these issues. If that is true, what can be done when there are no catastrophes, when that mobilizing extra-political force, sinister but decisive, does not appear? Well, very easy: you invent it, because even a suspicion of catastrophe is effective at altering the playing field (Beck 1993, 7). There is a whole series of procedures to anticipate a catastrophe’s effects on the political space. Much of the opposition’s work consists of changing the regular order of things by the simple procedure of insisting that someone is changing the regular order of things. We could label this procedure ‘catastrophizing’ or ‘exceptionalizing’. The opposition has reasons that the government does not and cannot understand. Few arguments are more pathetic than criticizing the opposition by solemnly affirming they only want to undermine the government, as if the opposition could want anything else. That is not the problem, obviously, and

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the opposition remains immune to this type of argument, although it could be reproached for the fact that, by undermining the government, they are also incidentally undermining other more valuable things that affect the democratic system or a political culture. In and of itself, the fact that they might undermine the government is not a convincing critique and it also joins the same alarmist logic when it dramatizes the negative consequences of such a confrontation. In contrast to what is generally said, the system resists bad opposition quite well; it withstands it better than its voters, than those it represents or whose interests it defends. A bad opposition hurts itself before hurting the system. The system has more patience than opposition voters. That is why I do not believe that this argument will make the zealous opponent desist. The only thing that is really dissuasive is that the opposition could undermine itself, they may realize that this behaviour places them at risk, or more specifically, it jeopardizes a value that should not be squandered: their credibility. Opposition strategy requires that they maintain the level of dramatic tension and sustain the framework of authenticity within which their predictions are credible. The opposition must achieve an especially difficult equilibrium: make public opinion perceive the government as unusual, while not letting them think that it would be unusual for the opposition to fix the supposed disaster. Because if we are to believe the opposition when it warns about irreparable dangers, we may find it unbelievable that there are viable solutions, including the solution proposed by the opposition. As Luhmann noted (1997, 856), every opposition confronts the risk of confusing the opposition with protest, of opposing with methodology and making protest the agenda. It is something that has condemned the left and right for a long time to a comfortable position regarding their principles and an inoffensive position when it comes to their ability for social transformation. Those who want to achieve power cannot allow themselves the luxury of forgetting that the opposition is a part of the political system and for that reason – not because of desire – they must be prepared to collaborate with the government occasionally and to take responsibility for it at any time. This has a disciplinary effect on our thinking about democratic confrontation. The opposition can and should criticize the government, of course, but they should not forget that there may be times when their own points of view will need to be defended from within the government. When the opposition exaggerates catastrophes, they run the risk of believing the rhetoric and forgetting the perspective of governability, which is why this tactic is often so short-sighted.

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It would be worth ending these reflections on opposition with the following conclusion: governing is something that is within anyone’s grasp, what is difficult is being in the opposition. That is where one becomes plausible as a leader. Deep down, voters think that those who have done the most can do the least, in other words, we award the government to those who have carried out the task of opposition well.

A small theory of political ties In our political liturgy, the electoral afternoon is the moment of the results, when there is a clarification that puts an end to the assumptions of the polls. A few numbers dissipate the fog formed by hypotheses. Scrutiny places some people among the winners and others among the losers, thus ending a more or less extended period of uncertainties, hopes and fears. Elections serve, among other things, to resolve assumptions about what people really think and want. With the recounting of the votes, the spectacle of possibilities is concluded and the time of decisions that have to be made based on final results begins. Once the message is received, politicians tend to tout the conventional line that they will begin working the following morning. The delay of this clarification has always been associated with democratic immaturity, which in principle only happens in countries with organizational deficiencies or lack of a political culture. These kinds of things do not belong to what we call ‘developed countries’. An advanced democracy should have a procedure to verify the preferences of citizens in a clear and rapid fashion. Democratic systems are planned in such a way that anyone can win, what is unacceptable is to have no one win or to have excessively prolonged uncertainty about the electoral results. For some time now, this symbolic moment of the popular decision has been characterized by growing perplexity. It is becoming increasingly common to hear the voice of the sovereign and not understand it. Following an intense electoral campaign, we do not have calm and a new political positioning, but the threat of an infinite prolongation of the campaign. The result of many elections is that tense polarization does not lead to a clear result; it is not clearly resolved in favour of one of the competitors, giving way to a political tie that we do not know how to handle. The decision of the citizens is difficult to interpret (or the result is not accepted when it is very close to a tie) and the electorate remains divided at nearly 50 per cent.

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There are famous political ties in recent history, like the ‘ballottage’ between de Gaulle and Mitterrand in 1965. But there are even closer ones and their frequency seems to establish a tendency that should make us reflect: the United States in 2004, Germany in 2005, Italy and Mexico in 2006. With diverse variations, we find ourselves facing similar difficulties in resolving political battles, finalizing them and accepting the electoral results. Of course, political systems have procedures to resolve ties and neutralize their paralysing force, such as assigning seats proportionally, which favours the winner (even when it is a narrow margin of victory) or two-round voting. But in many cases, an atmosphere of contentiousness remains in the air without fully dissipating, which leads to difficulties in governing, a feeling of provisionality, resistance to change or, in the most extreme cases, a permanent suspicion of a lack of legitimacy. What political interpretation should be made out of a tie when it seems like voters wanted precisely not to resolve it? Perhaps that is the time to apply Wittgenstein’s principle which states that a lack of decision is a way of deciding. What is decided with something that seems more like a non-decision? Here we have no choice but to recur to a fictitious summation – the popular will, what people want – forming a single fictitious group out of what is in principle nothing more than a large number of individual, autonomous and disperse elections. With ties, voters express themselves in favour of reversibility, of not giving anyone absolute or definitive power. Society says that it only wants to resolve the alternative provisionally. It would be a mistake to deduce political indifference from these situations, although that would make sense if the tie was produced with low electoral participation. That was not the case in any of the four previously mentioned examples. The inevitable fiction that we call popular sovereignty or general will makes a very clear statement for those who want to understand it, whether or not we like it. It can be dissected in various ways: people are interested in politics nowadays but they do not want politics to be an authority from which transcendental decisions or large transformations of society are realized. There may even be another interpretation: a tie signifies that dominant dichotomies do not in fact represent any force of meaningful change, since they do not differ too much from their rivals who they try to beat by resembling them. The hypostasis of a tied decision reveals the inability of politics to generate social change in the way we have envisioned it until now, an invitation to conceive of it and provoke it in another way. But it is also worth interpreting as society’s desire that if we want meaningful changes to the conditions of our coexistence, that initiative should

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not be carried out by one half of society against the other half, but through integrating procedures and broader agreements. I have held the most plausible interpretation until the end. Perhaps a tie is an expression that our principal problems cannot be resolved through a change of those in office and the people continue to await another form of government.

Part Five

The Future of Politics

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17

What Is This Thing Called Governance?

All the reflections that are at the heart of this change of perspective on politics that is contained in the word ‘governance’ start with this observation: we have a problem with politics, a problem that will not be resolved simply by improving the instruments we currently have, but by changing the terms of the problem; it is not that we have clarified the problem and the only thing that has failed us is the instrument with which we want to solve it. Our mistake is more radical: the purpose of politics has changed, and we continue thinking that the only thing that needs to change are the solutions, making the same politics more effective or modifying the format. The greatest conceptual daring that we have been able to muster is applying what was valid in the realm of the state to new global realities or moderating the traditional exercise of power so that it is acceptable in societies with a more active citizenry.

What crisis? The change that has come about in the contemporary world is very profound and affects politics in a radical fashion. We could affirm without exaggeration that we are facing a process of social transformation that challenges politics the same way as social changes led to the invention of the modern nation states 400 years ago. These are the processes that are currently producing unusual transformations in institutional structures, instruments and the coordinating mechanisms that allow contemporary societies to try to resolve their collective problems and provide public goods. These changes are irreversible, not a passing fad; they are structural, like the globalization of the economy, the configuration of knowledge societies, the individualization of life styles, knowledge societies or the Europeanization of our societies. In the midst of this turbulence, the question is not how to make traditional politics more effective or even make it

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adapt to new realities but how to understand the function that we have the right to expect from politics in a different world. The crisis in politics is due to at least three sets of problems that we must consider separately. 1. The first meaning of this crisis stems from the fact that politics does not do a good job at what it is meant to do. The most basic level of dissatisfaction with politics is a failure that is detectable, can be corrected and does not place our essential viewpoints into question. This is where we find reforms that improve existing politics, making it more effective. 2. More complex are the problems that ensue from a lack of adaptation to new formats, unprecedented problems and common goods that are not managed by an appropriate or legitimate level of institutional decision-making. This would include the commotion produced in old politics by the process of globalization. In this case, the solution points towards finding a functional equivalent that can carry out tasks analogous to those of the state at a global level. Since we cannot call this state or global government, we agree to label it ‘global governance’. 3. But there is a more troubling level, in which reforms or changes in format end up being insufficient, because we are not facing the need to find new solutions to known problems but to identify new problems. In this case, normal solutions are inadequate as are the problems we were accustomed to managing. What is needed in this situation is an exercise in political innovation that demands another completely different way of thinking and acting. These are the types of paradigm shifts that are being produced, for example, with the emergence of new information and communication technologies, which are not a mere expansion of the available technological instrumentation but substantially affect the form that our public space takes. The case of the configuration of the current knowledge society is also worth mentioning; its radical nature would not be understood by those who conceive of it as a mere quantitative increase in existing knowledge institutions. Equally mistaken would be those who tackle current transformations in politics as if they were problems of administrative reform. We could include in this brief overview of examples of political innovation the concept of global governance that represents more of a rupture than a continuity with respect to old ‘international relations’.

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Politics as a field of innovation When we talk about innovation, we are accustomed to thinking about experimental sciences, economics and technologies, but not about human sciences, about societies and, much less, about their governments. One could complain about this restriction of the concept of innovation, but the truth is that there is some reason that explains the fact that almost no one associates politics with any novelty. It is noteworthy that innovation in the financial, technological, scientific and cultural realms coexists in the same world with inert and marginalized politics. The withdrawal of politics in contrast with the vitality of the economy or the pluralism of the cultural realm is a fact that deserves to be taken as a starting point in any reflection about the function of politics at the current time. There is nearly universal concern about politics’ inability to shape society, which contrasts with its aspirations and with the public role it is given. This is not a problem with people or individual incompetence but a systemic shortcoming of politics, with little collective intelligence in comparison with the vitality of other social arenas. Politics’ reduced ability to innovate has a lot to do with the fact that it has ignored ‘the confrontation with the transformations that have progressively hollowed out its categories and its concepts from the inside’ (Agamben 2001, 9). We truly live in an unbalanced society: between techno-scientific euphoria and the illiteracy of civic values, between technological innovation and social redundancy, between a critical culture in the realm of science or economics and a political and social space that is barely modernized. For some time now, innovations have not come from political authorities, but from the inventiveness that is sharpened in other areas of society. Society is not conceived, but repaired, from a chronic inability to understand social change, anticipate future scenarios and formulate a project to achieve an intelligent and intelligible social order. It is true that circumstances have been complicated because almost everything in the society that is to be governed has multiplied: the levels of government, the subjects who intervene in social processes, social scenarios, contradictory demands (economic, political, cultural, security, environmental etc.), the materials that are subject to decision, interdependencies, the impacts of every intervention and so forth. Politics is not administration, but configuration, designing conditions of human action, an opening of possibilities. It has a lot to do with the unprecedented and the unusual; it is not an action that strictly conforms to its prior experience. Politics is an action whose consequences are

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greater than its foresight. This contrast, which is true for almost all human actions, is particularly pointed for actions such as politics that are carried out in the midst of extreme uncertainty. New situations remind politics that it must question whether it is facing problems that can simply be resolved or whether it is confronting a historic transformation that demands a new way of thinking. But the political system does not seem too concerned about its potential role after current transformations. It appears to lack the pressure that the course of events exercises on things such as economic institutions and that mobilizes resources for survival. Politics and its institutions seem unconcerned with embracing negative predictions about their future as if they enjoyed theoretical and practical immunity. But its expulsion from that paradise is imminent. The expectation that has been valid until now that systems and programs can operate without alternatives collapses at a time when the people to whom the message is addressed discover that they can in fact choose the system of government they want: they can avoid politics, ignore its decisions, act as if it did not exist, assign it a secondary role and so forth. It could be that politics would continue working and taking care of itself without anyone being concerned about it because what it has to offer would be irrelevant for other systems. We might question whether politics fulfils any social function that could not be carried out even more professionally by other systems. That is why the key question that politics is currently confronting has to do with the form it must adopt to remain socially relevant. It is in this context that the concept of governance emerges, as a strategy to recuperate the shaping and transformative force that politics seems to be in the process of losing.

From government to governance: A concept for the renovation of politics This new concept of governance is used to refer to new realities that were not well explained by other traditional terms. It also contains an expectation that politics will be renovated, after decades in which the discourse has swung between technocratic planning and the despondency of ungovernability. In the political realm, it refers to the new forms of governing within or beyond the nation state; in the economic realm, this concept is used to refer to the regulation of markets or the internal organization of companies; jurists make use of it to analyse questions ranging from administrative reform to the function of law in a globalized world.

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The concept of governance, understood in the broad sense, alludes to a profound change in social action and the forms of government in contemporary societies, which needs to be redefined within an environment that is not free of tension, consisting of the state, the market and society, and in a context marked by globalization, Europeanization and interdependence. In political theory, governance expresses a transformation of democratic political power, which is forced to move from sovereign, hierarchical forms towards more cooperative modalities. The idea of governance attempts to confront the reality that in many political situations the borders of the state have been dissolved, encroached both by society and the international context. In economic terms, governance refers to the fact that the functioning of markets can only be properly understood if it is analysed from a systemic point of view, in other words, taking into account the forms of non-mercantile coordination that shape those markets. The task presented by research into governance is enormous. We must rethink the triangle formed by the state, the market and society in all its complexity or, if desired, the connections formed by hierarchy, the market and the networks, which can no longer be considered separately. The porousness between state and society or between states and international space has given way to such dense interdependence that it cannot be understood and managed by instruments elaborated in a world that was more differentiated and less interconnected. The challenge consists of understanding and governing processes of communication and cooperation in the space between actors with interdependent actions. How should we integrate different actors and to what extent? How do we articulate different social spheres (the economy, culture, politics, the means of communication) and the different institutional levels? The spectacular journey that the concept of governance has realized in recent years is due to a reaction to the profound changes that have come about in our societies. We have gradually come to believe that the regulation of collective problems and the provision of public goods require new forms of leadership and coordination that are different from traditional planning, but they should not be abandoned to the spontaneity of the social or economic processes. Renouncing the project of the political configuration of society – that has had its ideological expression in the neoliberal assumption of the spontaneous self-regulation of the markets – would suppose a relinquishing of responsibility and does not correspond in any way to the values of a well-ordered society. This paradigm shift arises from a reflection about the structural modifications of contemporary society that reveal that hierarchical forms of decision have lost both effectiveness and acceptance or legitimacy.

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At times, the term ‘governance’ has been associated with this process of de-politicization that has in recent decades been understood as deregulation, liberalization, privatization or a business style of management. But in reality, it is just the opposite. The concept of governance has been elaborated based on a need that was felt to propose an alternative to the liberal–conservative idea of a minimal state, as a reaction against managerialized administrative politics. Current concepts of governance, the incentive state, civil society and social capital are introduced as an answer to neoliberal denationalization. It is one thing that the state has run into difficulties that do not allow it to continue acting as it once did, and something else entirely to renounce the idea that politics is an activity designed to configure public space. The paradigm shift from government to governance represents an opportunity for political action and for the expression of social energies, in a panorama where agreement is more appropriate than control and horizontal relationships are more effective than vertical ones. Properly understood, governance does not justify the de-politicization of complex societies, but just the opposite: it can be a very useful tool to reconquer those spaces that had been abandoned by politics for political configuration. This abandonment may have been caused by the difficulty of the issues or even by an ideological prejudice that placed its faith in the self-regulation of societies (just as neoliberalism trusted the market). Democratic governance thus appears today as a way to save political power from its ineffectiveness and insignificance, of normalizing politics and, at the same time, transforming it profoundly. Thus, it is not a question of dismantling the state in the neoliberal sense, but a question of searching for functional equivalents for the institutions of the nation state that are compatible with new scenarios of interdependence and multipolarity. The goal is not to renounce the concept of government and conceive of politics as something completely irrational in which all interventions fail or necessarily lead to undesired results. It is not politics that is coming to an end, but a particular type of politics, specifically, the type of politics that corresponds to societies that are territorially demarcated and politically integrated. All of this has also meant a modification of statehood, as can be seen with concepts such as the ‘guaranteeing state’ (Schuppert 2010), ‘enabling state’ (Gilbert and Gilbert 1989), ‘cooperative state’ (Giddens 1984) and ‘government of context’ (Willke 1992). These and others formulas express a shift from control to regulation, from order to capacitation, from benevolence to an instigating state (Kooiman 1993). Politics must shift from hierarchy to heterarchy, from direct authority to communicative connection, from heteronomy to autonomy, from unilateral

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control to multi-contextual involvement. It must be in a position to generate the necessary knowledge – of ideas, instruments or procedures – to moderate a knowledge society that operates in a network and transnationally.

A new political culture to govern the global knowledge society In this new context, how should we think about and put into practice intelligent governance for an intelligent society? What political culture does the smart governance of a knowledge society require? The idea of democratic governance arises precisely as a response to the realization of the failure of hierarchy as the organizing principle of societies. Complex systems cannot be governed from a hierarchical apex, which would mean a simplification that does not match the richness, initiative and expertise of its elements. Handling great complexity presents numerous problems that subvert any strategy that depends on hierarchy: those who are in a position to decide do not recognize the temporal dynamic of complex systems because they generally do not have all the information, they do not include temporal development in their calculations, and when they do, they tend to favour linear extrapolations; they ignore side effects and exponential growth; they think in terms of causal chains instead of networks and circularities; they are most concerned about details, that which is immediate, underestimating connections and that which is panoramic; they often adopt solutions according to an-everything-or-nothing radicalism that makes problems worse. An intervention that focuses on the smallest details would necessarily lose sight of the bigger picture, which is so necessary for governmental tasks. All democratic governance displays a reflexive interest in avoiding the excessive burden that would come from not sharing leadership. When it comes to initiative, innovation or commitment, a centralized authority cannot in principle motivate any behaviour from its citizens. Their increased desire for self-government leads to resistance. In a knowledge society, there is less willingness to accept decisions adopted in a hierarchical or opaque fashion. New forms of participation and communication are demanded. The laws and regulations established through hierarchical forms of decision are only one of the possible forms of political regulation. Other structures in which the state does not adopt a monopoly of regulation but acts like just one actor among many or through participatory or federal procedures can produce better political results both from the point of view of effectiveness as well as the

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legitimacy of collective decisions. This is valid both in the realm of cities as well as within states and at the European or global level. A networked world demands relational governance. Networks require more complex instruments such as trust, reputation and reciprocity. These new arrangements demand institutional innovation in the processes of governance and the overcoming of classical administrative routines. New governance points towards a type of coordination between political and social agents characterized by regulation, cooperation and horizontality. In complex societies, the models and procedures of government cannot attempt to achieve a type of unity that destroys diversity; governing means managing heterogeneity. But all of this demands another way of understanding power and moving towards a way of doing politics that is based on relationship and cooperation rather than models of hierarchy and control. Even though it is omnipresent, power as an imposition is an atavist, suboptimal way of regulating conflicts. Politics’ traditional focus on raw power remains trapped in heroic self-regard. The possibilities of political configuration are currently understood in another way: influence, diplomacy, understanding, deliberation and procedure. If the concept of government centres on the state as the subject that governs, governance expands the perspective to social and political reality. Governance begins with the principle that the solution to social problems is not the purview of a supreme authority acting alone, but comes from the direct action of various actors and organizations. The concept of governance can go beyond the idea of a strict separation between the governing subject and the governed object. Power never floats in a vacuum without forces capable of acting upon it, contradicting or modifying it. When the system that must control is also, and at the same time, the system that is controlled, the idea of unilateral control seems obsolete, as we can see with the metaphor of the thermostat that Bateson used to demonstrate that it is never fully clear who is controlling whom (1979, 116). The form of power that best reduces complexity consists of not needing to impose, configuring forms of mutual conditioning that renounce unilaterality and threats. What if, in the end, the concept of ‘governance’ did nothing but allude to the unsolvable paradox that we do not end up knowing in a democratic society whether it is the government that governs over those who are governed or just the opposite?

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There seems to be a history of animosity between being in charge and learning, an incompatibility that Karl Deutsch summarized precisely when he affirmed that power has the privilege of ‘the ability to afford not to learn’ (Deutsch 1963). Those who are in charge can teach and give orders, but they do not learn, which is something that they do not need and of which they also may not be capable. That is why power is so close to authoritarianism and blindness. By its own nature, power tends to replace knowledge with orders. ‘Are you in charge or do you learn?’ could be the new version of the classic ‘Do you work or study?’ If this contrast were true, then it would make sense to define power as ‘a safe place for not knowing’ (Basseches 1999). ‘I do not know, therefore I am in charge’ could be the watchword of the stupid sovereign. This unchangeable characteristic of power would give way to a tragic division of territory: politics would be condemned to an inability to learn, while the spaces of social learning would be politically irrelevant. But this is no longer the case. Politics was cast out of that paradise some time ago, and it is forced to struggle, like any mortal, to escape perplexity, in other words, to learn. In a society that is intelligent, complex and plural, everyone, and politics as well, must make a choice between ignorant authority or intelligent deliberation. Much of the dissatisfaction generated by politics is due precisely to the impression it gives of being unintelligent, short-sighted, purely opportunistic, repetitive to the point of tiresomeness, rigid and conventional. It also does not seem to change course except when it calculates that a new tack would be advantageous. A knowledge society requires adaptation across the board, and this seems to have taken place in almost every realm: businesses need to come up with ingenious new ideas to respond to market demands, art has to seek new forms of expression, technology presents new challenges and so forth. The vigorousness of the economic, cultural, scientific and technological realms coexists with the inertia of the political system. This does not stem

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from a shortcoming in the people who dedicate themselves to politics or from individual incompetence, but from a systemic weakness in politics, from a lack of collective intelligence, in contrast to the vitality of other social realms. One of the most disappointing characteristics of our political practice is its nearly ritual stagnation, the fear of acting outside of the convectional formulas that have worked until now. The lack of vigour in politics when compared to the markets and the lack of interest that politics arouses in most citizens is probably due to its inability to develop behaviours that are at least as intelligent as those that take place in other realms of social life. It seems to me that this is the biggest challenge for politics in today’s world if it does not want to end up being socially irrelevant or constantly stretched to the breaking point between global spaces and the pressure of the private and local. We must find more intelligent ways of configuring the common spaces of politics. This renovation is of vital importance especially if we remain conscious of the problem that defines a knowledge society. The nation state was created as a response to the problem of controlling power and providing security in the face of fear and the threat of war. The welfare state attempted to assure the redistribution of wealth and to fight poverty. Knowledge societies are confronting the problem of how to manage knowledge, move through uncertain situations and confront ignorance. Powerlessness, poverty and ignorance have been the three great challenges that have characterized the nation state, the welfare state and knowledge societies respectively. In the latter, information and knowledge are the primary focal points of power. If control of the means of production was the key to the conflicts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the governing of ‘signs’ has now become our most important challenge. The organizing of the world is being restructured around the management of knowledge. In a knowledge society, the only systems that survive are those that are available and capable of learning (Wiesenthal 1994). This is a demand from which politics is not exempt either. In fact, this question has been gaining traction in the heart of political theory since the 1990s when the ‘ideational turn’ (Blyth 1997) was first addressed. The reappearance of concepts such as ‘knowledge’, ‘ideas’, ‘argumentation’ or ‘knowledge’, which are being associated with the most important questions of politics again, seems to indicate that something is changing in the way we conceive of politics. In subsequent decades, the question of whether ideas matter has raised relevant research questions about the role that knowledge and ideas play in political processes. The concept of ‘social learning’ (Hall 1993; Majone 1996) points precisely in that direction, revealing the growing influence of

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ideas rather than interests. Politics would not be understood only as a conflict of interests but also as something driven by processes meant to devise social experiences in order to develop something like collective learning. Because of this, the discourse of the end of ideologies would be the triumph of interests, the only political protagonist, perhaps it is precisely the opposite: without closed ideologies, the space for ideas, in other words, for politics as an intelligent activity, is opened. Turning politics today into an intelligent activity implies confronting diverse structural problems that make that transformation difficult. There are many questions that could be addressed, but I will focus on issues that encapsulate the lack of strategy found in politics, which makes learning difficult, and the excessive personalization of politics, which makes collective learning challenging.

The strategic deficit of politics Much of the current volatility of governments, their exhaustion and their difficulties when it comes to addressing complex processes (which we have called the ‘crisis of governability’) or, to think about it in a more banal fashion, the difficulties of being re-elected, stem from an easily demonstrable fact: there are many more instructional books about how to gain power than about what to do once you have it, which corresponds to the fact that there are more communications, marketing and development consultants for electoral campaigns than for government itself. Furthermore, since those in power tend to be obsessed about re-election and there are constant elections, much of their activity is more electoral strategy than actual governing. It is as if we facilitate access to power to people who have not thought very much about what to do with it. The question to which I referred earlier could be formulated like this: do you sell or learn? If the political system has enormous difficulties when it comes to learning, it is because it is run by people whose greatest interest is selling or convincing. If the protagonists of the political world are people who have shown more ability to gain access to power than to govern effectively, the logical consequence is that there are more promises than successes, which necessarily produces an increase in disappointment. It is not surprising, therefore, that political dissatisfaction is increasing at the same rate as political seduction techniques improve. Perhaps this circumstance explains the fact that the public space is filled with more emotional agitation and vague promises than debates about concrete proposals for governing.

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The only way to balance this situation is to once again centre our reflections on the idea of government and what it means in the twenty-first century, what we can reasonably expect from governments in complex societies, what level of political expectations produce the greatest mobilization with the least cost of disappointment. Most particularly, we need to think more about what governments can do and less about what they can promise. This implies that we should relate to the future in another more strategic and less opportunistic fashion, that we turn politics into a collective reflection about the future and its democratic configuration. The current difficulties with addressing institutional reforms are, of course, due to the calculated shortsightedness of the principal agents, but also to a tactical inability to anticipate the future. Delayed reforms, difficulties when it comes to agreeing on a shared strategy for escaping the crisis or the fact that educational reforms seem unachievable outside of the electoral cycles and party interests are all the result of the tyranny of the short term in which our political systems are submerged. Politics today suffers from a great weakness of strategic abilities; its principal actors are diligent administrators who work on a very short temporal horizon and frequently give in to the temptation to postpone addressing difficulties until the future to the detriment of the next generations. We must look beyond the small details and a focus on things that are urgent so we can overcome our short-sightedness, the corresponding opportunism and our limited capacity for learning. Politics will only move beyond the world of troubleshooting and on to the world of determining society’s structure if it recovers its strategic abilities. In the past 200 years, democracy has demonstrated a great ability for adaptation and gradual change, but it is not particularly wellsuited to reflexive or second-order learning or to achieving strategic abilities, especially in environments that are undergoing major changes. We must reflect on the types of problems that cannot be resolved with available resources and need another type of response, because these are the sorts of problems that paralyse our political systems.

The excessive personalization of politics The other source of inattentiveness towards the collective processes of learning is the excessive personalization of politics. The relationship between processes and people, between institutions and individuals, has taken many turns in

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the history of our democracies. We have wavered between Marx’s thesis that it is the masses who make history and the opposite opinion, which holds that our primary political transformations come from great leaders. The twentieth century has been the age of the pathologies of political charisma (Monod 2012). A rather banal emphasis on personality traits seems to have taken hold which replaces a strong ideological profile with a personal touch, emphasizing the leader’s personal attributes as a motive for political seduction. In an electoral democracy, political power is articulated in people who embody or symbolize rival projects. That explains the importance, which is probably excessive, that we place on the election of leaders or their resignation, relegating everything else to second place. We spend so much time complaining that politicians do not step down when they should that, when they do, we harbour exaggerated expectations for a greatly-improved future, as if a change of personnel could produce magical effects on the organization and on politics in general. Institutions are accustomed to handling diverse strategies in such a way that they can make changes so that nothing changes. One of the most frequently used strategies is to replace people, as if problems were always caused by personal incompetence and their solution depended on changing who is in charge of them. Even though turnovers in personnel are often essential, not all political problems are caused by people remaining in their positions nor should all solutions wait until they have left. Changes in personnel may be merely a tactic or a cosmetic change; they may even lead to something worse, since any change runs the risk of greater problems. Generational turnovers in personnel do not signify a change of ideas or styles either; at times, the successor ends up being a greener version of the same old thing, with less experience and, therefore, a greater propensity for arrogance. With political issues, a focus on replacing one group of people with another tends to camouflage the depths of the problem. In-depth changes can only be achieved effectively by making a lengthy detour into changing the organization. Political changes of any importance are always institutional changes, changes in style, of the rules of the game. What politics is currently demanding is not a replacement of personnel as much as a change of mentality that will translate into institutional procedures that are more in line with the new reality of our societies. Replacing people does not ensure newness when background attitudes remain the same; new people end up being prey to the same routines because habits tend to be more powerful than good intentions.

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One example of a simulated revolution is the generalized access of women to positions of political responsibility. This achievement was an attempt to correct an unjustifiable exclusion, but we also expected something more: for political life to include people who look at things differently. Why have things changed much less than desired? In the first place, because women have frequently been given ‘feminine’ responsibilities that have in fact excluded them from the larger political questions. A nearly unperceived machismo prefers to see women in decorative positions, as assistants or focusing on resolving the failures of the system. This means that women are much less likely to be working with the primary instruments of social construction. When there is no plan, assessment of the problem or new ideas, people tend to occupy the foreground, affirming their own profile above the party line, which can be fuzzy or non-existent. When there is no specific project to work on, one’s own career takes priority. Celebrity becomes the fundamental imperative. The art of being noticed becomes more important than cautious political coherence. Symbolic politics ends up serving as a replacement for political action. However, when there are many people on a team who are trying to get noticed, with signals that may sometimes be contradictory, then the political parties cannot give direction, which it what we should be able to expect of them. The parties are needed because voters can only come to a decision when organized groups configure political alternatives to choose between. This does not mean that politicians and the parties have to make vehement pronouncements about great principles. Politics always consists of small steps. What is decisive is not the size of the steps but that the direction is recognizable. The gravity of politics is not the solemnity of the changes that are planned but the authenticity with which ideas and projects are renewed. We find ourselves at a time when politics faces generalized doubt. We are not very sure how democratic authority is constructed in an age of networks and within societies that may be more horizontal, but still in need of references. While previous procedures of legitimizing democratic authority have been largely discredited, we still have not finished transforming them or replacing them with others. I am not referring to people as much as to systems, frameworks and decision-making procedures. It is not so much a question that they should make space for others who have been involved for a long time, but something more radical. We do not need resignations and renovations of personnel but political innovations, something that has more to do with the configuration of an intelligent political system than a supposed government of the best.

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Intelligence of people or of systems? Whatever the name that is used to characterize our contemporary societies – post-industrial, information or knowledge society – all of these concepts point towards a profound change that has been realized in advanced countries in recent decades. They are referring to the situation in which information and knowledge resources have grown powerfully in relationship to material and energy resources. The production and transfer of knowledge now have great meaning and play an essential role in social, economic and territorial development. One could summarize the character of the age in which we are living by saying that humanity’s great challenge is no longer to control nature but to make information and organization move forward together. The great enemy we must fight is not so much misery or fear as ignorance. Our main challenges have to do with knowledge in the broad sense and the most decisive strategies point towards politics of knowledge, science, technology, innovation, research and education. The true richness of nations resides in their knowledge. What does this mean for politics? What challenges for government does it present? The future of democracy depends on its ability to be up to the challenges that a knowledge society presents. Knowledge societies demand that the political system elevate the level of its knowledge and decisions for governance to be a knowledge-based task as well. This implies a radical change in our routines since the dominant decision-making mode continues to be normative and should be complemented with a cognitive style. Social organization should place increasing emphasis on instruments and abilities of knowledge, such as analytic reasoning, critical thought, imagination, the consideration of diversity as a resource, the independence of criteria, collective deliberation or the ability to cope with uncertainty and complexity. Charles Lindblom spoke about ‘the intelligence of democracy’ (1965) in reference to a century-long conquest that has been condensed into structures, procedures and rules. Democracy has been creating a system of representation, decision-making procedures and the provision of public goods. The intelligence of democracy has replaced hierarchy and authoritarianism with an inclusive structure to decide collective matters. It has replaced procedures of divine or hereditary authority with the representative vote and periodic cycles of government. It has transformed eternal rules into systems of rules that are open to revision.

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If we need a special cognitive effort in a knowledge society, it is because there is an element of ungovernability in a society that is active and of distributed intelligence, since professionals and specialists operate according to their own criteria and with professional ethics that cannot be imposed or controlled from the outside. Nevertheless, it continues to be a space for politics: the control of negative externalities, the demand for responsibility, the ability to anticipate before the need to change is desperately obvious, the provision for contextual conditions for the development of each one of the autonomous systems that are present in a society and so forth. In any case, politics must abandon its normative obsession to ‘tell the people what they should do’, but it cannot escape the responsibility of creating the possibilities that an emerging knowledge society requires. A complex knowledge society needs to be capable of articulating a series of places for collective intelligence that are spread out and decentralized; the political task consists of coordinating and moderating the interaction between those autonomous units. Collective intelligence is the only thing that can counter the dangers inherent to complex systems, such as financial risks. Individual people and actors seem unable to perceive the properties of an interdependent and linked system. In modern societies, actors and social systems should be capable of functioning as complex totalities that interact, not as a mere aggregation of individual elements. Generating collective intelligence implies a society configuring knowledge about itself, something that cannot be produced by any individual and which no one person possesses exclusively. However, it is important to understanding what we mean when we talk about something like a collective intelligence (Salomon 2003; Sunstein 2006; Tapscott and Williams 2006; Willke 2007; Rheingold 2012). We must first make a distinction between individual and collective knowledge because one of the details that is true about organizations or societies is that they generate specific knowledge in addition to the knowledge of their members. Collective knowledge is even greater than the sum of knowledge held by individual members. People within societies learn, but the societies themselves learn as well; there is cooperation between actors and also institutional learning. While individual expert knowledge is a private affair, the framework to achieve collective intelligence is a genuinely public task. It is frequently thought that knowledge within organizations is simply the result of adding up the knowledge of the members. Of course the competency of organizations depends upon the knowledge of its members. But in the same way that a disorganized accumulation of geniuses and Nobel prize winners does

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not constitute an intelligent organization, an increase in the number of people with higher education does not produce an intelligent society automatically. It does not make sense to pay too much attention to individual properties, to have excessive faith in people’s virtues or to try to indignantly console oneself in the face of individual authors’ or institutions’ evil ways when we should be fundamentally focused on interconnection. A traditional perspective will tend to make its assessment based on individual actions and a chain of causality with elements that are perfectly identifiable and attributable. But there is complex causality when the majority of events have so many causal factors that exclusively individual responsibility is the exception rather than the rule. This complexity can serve to excuse a lack of attention towards the global result of actions, but also to refine the identification of responsibilities and the running of complex systems. This situation, far from being an excuse for irresponsibility may even expand our reflection and care towards consequences that are far from the individual sphere of action, in the realm of greater uncertainty in which non-linear causalities are developed. When we are dealing with matters that have to do with collective dynamics, there is always the question of whether the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, whether there is something above and beyond the individual – the system, the organized totality, an emerging phenomenon – which ‘cannot be reduced to the intentions of individual participants’ (Heintz 2004, 3). We talk about emergence precisely when there are general properties that cannot be reduced to the characteristics of their parts. A knowledge society is not a society which has more experts but one in which the systems themselves are expert. It is not enough for individuals to learn and innovate; it does not do much good when citizens acquire new skills while the rules, routines and procedures, in other words, organizational and public intelligence prevent those skills from being utilized. Changes can only be realized when structures, processes and collective rules are also modified. A society’s knowledge is more than the mere accumulation of existing knowledge, in the same way that an intelligent organization is intelligent because of the synergy that is produced in its systems of rules, institutions and procedures, and not by simply adding up personal intelligences. The generation of knowledge is a consequence of communicative acts; in other words, it is a relational good. The fact that politics is a system of learning does not mean that politicians are or must be very intelligent. As is the case with organizations, it is a question of a kind of collective intelligence: the knowledge of the group is not reduced to the knowledge of its members, although group knowledge is unthinkable without

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member knowledge. There may have been wise politicians from whom the system was unable to benefit in terms of collective learning. The process is only able to learn if the inferences that individuals make based on their experiences are incorporated into the organization’s memory and procedures (Levy 1994). Organizational knowledge is not what is in members’ minds but in the systems of rules, organizational culture, procedures, routines and processes, bargaining norms, decision-making and conflict resolution. Collective intelligence is an emerging property of social systems that is not based on simply adding up individual properties but on the intelligence of the system itself. This is the sense in which we speak of ‘governmental learning’ or ‘the intelligence of democracy’ (Lindblom 1965). The question is knowing whether our political systems incorporate learning mechanisms or whether their configuration renders them incapable of it. Unlike other systems of government that rest on the (supposed) extraordinary abilities of certain individuals (theocracies, monarchies, aristocracies, dictatorships etc.), democracy is especially vulnerable to the weaknesses of human nature because it is supported by the properties of ordinary people. If the best candidates end up governing, that is either a coincidence or it is due to the intelligence of an institutional system, rather than a correct choice of personnel. A good deal of the disappointment that is expressed about the functioning of democracy is simply due to the fact that we have not found a procedure to ensure that democratic power is exercised by the most qualified, without realizing that we should talk about the intelligence of democracy rather than the intelligence of its occasional leaders. Of course the functions of government cannot be correctly exercised without minimal qualifications that do not necessarily have anything to do with university or technical degrees. But this is not the decisive question. Although we can understand the desire to be governed by the best candidates, this same formulation is still questionable. Saying that representatives should be cognitively and morally superior to the median means, paradoxically, that they can only represent if they are not representative (Preuss 2003, 260). Is there not still in this prejudice a vestige of the belief that human beings can only be governed by something that is above them, by either gods or supermen? Why does it surprise and scandalize us so much when we discover that those who govern us have weaknesses and make mistakes? Are our political systems not full of regulations to correct those mistakes so they do not cause much harm, such as constitutional guarantees, divisions of power, instruments of responsibility and assessment? Is it not more productive to improve these properties of our

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political systems rather than attempting to find people to lead those systems intelligently? Talking about the running of intelligent systems, Robert Geyer and Samir Rihani proposed a very interesting mental experiment (2010, 188). They encouraged us to think about what would happen if the governors of the Bank of England were replaced by a room full of monkeys. If one had to respond quickly, they might say that the British economy would collapse. However, if we look at things from the perspective of collective intelligence, the answer would be very different: the monkey government would reveal the extent to which we are governed more by systems than by people, with balances, counterweights and automatic corrections, which means the monkeys would not do as much harm as we might suppose. This allows us to conclude that, in a knowledge society, an institution or a political system, we could do without intelligent people, but not without intelligent systems.

The sovereign that learns The sociologist Niklas Luhmann said something that should be considered the fundamental objective that human beings and organizations should pursue in the new knowledge society – a demand that is also directed at the political system: ‘to learn or not to learn, that is the question’ (Luhmann 1975, 55). Claude Lefort presented it with the dramatism of a decisive quandary, asking which was worse for democracy, having leaders who are ambitious and stubborn about defending their particular interests or leaders who act as idiots (Lefort 1992, 178). Learning has become the new imperative in knowledge societies. One could summarize the character of the age we are living in by saying that the greatest challenge for humanity is no longer controlling nature but finding a way to move information and organization together simultaneously. Stated paradoxically, in knowledge societies, we know a little, not a lot (in comparison to what we need to know). Knowledge has become a rare and unpredictable value. The value of knowledge increases with the widening of the areas of uncertainty that characterize a complex society. In the midst of this complexity, politics has a special obligation to learn, because in politics, power itself – without knowledge, without persuasion, without the participation of others – is not well-suited to government. For this reason, hierarchy has been exhausted as the principle organizer of societies. That is also why it is not surprising that politics enjoys so little appreciation, especially

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when it is carried out with those styles of government that are characterized by the firm resolution to not learn anything from let-downs. This is probably the best definition that can be given of authoritarian politics and of all bad politics in general: it is incapable of learning. How does or could the political system learn? How do we make it so that power is not impossible to correct? The first thing that ‘the sovereign who learns’ (Frankenberg 2003, 119) must do is recognize that it is an activity that must deal with more uncertainty than other human activities. Part of the nature of politics is that there is more extreme unpredictability than found in other issues or professions. Political intelligence means acquiring some general basic skills, the ability to learn and innovate that allows for the appropriate management of uncertainty. In this realm, all political agents – the political parties, labour unions, social movements, institutions, governments – suffer from shortsightedness. Democratic societies’ ability to learn is assured through institutions that produce not only knowledge and norms but also the ability to handle uncertainties. Institutions such as schools, science, the university, parliament or the means of communication are not places to transmit indisputable knowledge, orders or values, but places where we develop our ability to cope when we are in an environment that is characterized by a plurality of knowledge and values. In a democratic society, collective decisions must be made in the midst of changing and uneven conditions, in situations characterized by unstable knowledge, political competition, a pluralism of values and conflicting interests. At the same time, democracy implies the ability to put into motion processes with unpredictable results. That is why it is so important to ensure the institutionalization of collective processes of learning. Politics needs to learn because it operates in an environment characterized by dynamism and instability, but especially by the close relationship that politics enjoys with the future. Politics is the attempt to civilize the future, to prevent it from being closed off or colonized by a determining past, by the loss of opportunities or by mere administrative inertia. ‘Politics has the function of coordinating the learning process of the whole society’ (Deutsch and Markovits 1980, 38). That is why one of the greatest current challenges consists of introducing procedures for reflection into a political life that tends to be dominated by the immediate: by the tyranny of the present, administrative inertia or lack of attention towards the collective. Decision-making is habitually organized as if governments had the best knowledge of the situation. But in fact, knowledge is spread throughout society,

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and governments have no choice but to take advantage of the access to this widespread knowledge at a time at which, furthermore, the collective production of knowledge has increased exponentially with new technologies. Learning has a normative and critical meaning that differentiates old sovereigns from new democratic sovereigns. The obligation to learn destroys the idea of a sovereign who knows everything or who has privileged access to knowledge. A sovereign is one who knows that he or she does not know everything and is, for that reason, prepared to learn. At the same time, it is clear that collective rationality cannot be constructed by simply adding up individual usefulness: the market cannot function without an institutional framework that includes other logics, and good societal organization demands ways to articulate interests politically. The question of how to configure intelligent democracies, network intelligence or ‘smart governance’ is crucial; some people have considered the idea of a ‘wiki-government’ (Noveck 2009). In any case, we must redesign the institutions of government in the age of networks. Effective governance in the twenty-first century requires organized collaboration. It is a question of transforming hierarchies into ecosystems of collaborative knowledge and thus radically changing the culture of government from centralized expert knowledge to one that is designed in such a way that revisability occupies a central place (Goodin 1996, 40). Political learning requires processes of reflection in which the consequences of introduced changes and possible unwanted effects are observed and a shared evaluation of public policies is developed. The intense debate that has taken place in recent years around the possibilities of deliberatively transforming democracy is inscribed in this context. Societies learn through processes of collective intelligence. Among ‘epistemic communities’ (Haas), what stands out are those procedures for political deliberation where perplexity is combated collectively and civic judgement is formed. If this common effort makes sense, it is because the ignorance that politics must confront is enormous. Intelligence is something that is only exercised in common. A mature society practices procedures, areas and institutions to experiment regarding itself, to provide itself with spaces of reflection and deliberation. This is something that can only be done communicatively because – let us not forget – communicating is what is done when one does not know and one wants to overcome that lack of knowledge. Everything else is simply a ritual of notification. The idea of a deliberative democracy underscores how central processes and institutions are to forming a joint determination in the face of a model of

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democracy understood as a mere negotiation of previously established opinions and preferences. The public sphere is a space where we can convince and be convinced or mature new opinions together. Debates are useful precisely in order to generate additional information that can confirm but also modify our starting points. In the republican model of the public sphere, the foreground is not occupied by the unchangeable interests of subjects or irremediably incompatible visions of the world, but communicative processes that help form and transform the opinions, interests and identities of citizens. The goal of these processes is not to satisfy particular interests or guarantee the coexistence of different conceptions of the world, but to collectively elaborate common interpretations of coexistence. The processes are decisive, since the interests and preferences of the citizens are not predetermined nor do they generally constitute a coherent whole. Actors often do not know exactly what they want or what their most authentic interest may be. In other words, the democratic process is what allows participants to better understand themselves and form an opinion about what is in play. The political force of deliberation is achieved precisely in its ability to institutionalize the collective discovery of interests. I began by saying that the principal social and political perspective that we have currently, our principal challenge, is, in my opinion, to develop a political system that is intelligent and reflexive, allowing politics to meet the demands that a knowledge society presents. However, I wonder, in conclusion, whether one can think in the middle of politics. In the first place, this does not seem to be a behaviour expressed by most political actors, who are dominated by superficial agitation and are especially subject to the dictatorship of the immediate. But deep down, we all know that perplexity is not fought with activism, it only disguises it. We never move as quickly as when we do not know where we are going. That is why one of the tasks of all political criticism is to remove the mask from that false mobility, from those forms of pseudo-activity where acceleration and strength are due to the fact that we do not have any idea of what is going on. Thinking may have been a waste of time in the past. But in this day and age – when we cannot depend on the stability of frameworks and concepts or comfortably trust best practices – thinking is a time-saving device, a radical way of acting upon reality.

Bibliography Introduction Arendt, Hannah (1993), Was ist Politik? Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, Munich: Piper. Crick, Bernard (1962), In Defence of Politics, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Innerarity, Daniel (2010), The Transformation of Politics: Governing in the Age of Complex Societies, Brussels: Peter Lang.

Chapter 1 Bullitt, Stimson (1977), To Be a Politician, New Haven: Yale University Press. Everson, Michelle (2000), ‘Beyond the Bundesverfassungsgericht: On the Necessary Cunning of Constitutional Reasoning,’ in Zenon Bankowski and Andrew Scott (eds), The European Union, Oxford: Blackwell, 91–112. Innerarity, Daniel (2013), The Democracy of Knowledge, New York: Bloomsbury. Mair, Peter (1995), ‘Political Parties, Political Legitimacy and Public Privilege’, West European Politics 18 (3), 40–57. Majone, Giandomenico (1996), Temporal Consistency and Policy Credibility: Why Democracies Need Non-majoritarian Institutions, Robert Schuman Centre Working Paper 96/57, Florence: European University Institute. Palonen, Kari (2012), Rhetorik des Unbeliebten. Lobreden auf Politiker im Zeitalter der Demokratie, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Rosanvallon, Piérre (2006), La contre-démocratie. La politique à l'age de la défiance, Paris: Seuil. Scheer, Hermann (2003), Die Politiker, München: Kunstmann. Shils, Edward (1956), The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of American Security Policies, Glencoe: Free Press. Weber, Max (1919) [1992], ‘Politik als Beruf ’, in Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, Band 1/17, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Chapter 2 Aron, Raimond (1948), Introduction à la philosophie de l´histoire. Essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique, Paris: Gallimard. Beck, Ulrich (1997), Was ist Globalisierung? Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

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Chapter 3 Fraser, Nancy (1995), ‘From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a “Post-Socialist” Age’, New Left Review 212, 68–93. Fraser, Nancy (2002), Toleration as Recognition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fraser, Nancy and Honneth, Axel (2003), Umverteilung oder Anerkenung? Eine politischphilosophische Kontroverse, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Gitlin, Todd (1995), The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars, New York: Metropolitan Books. Hekman, Susan J. (2004), Private Selves, Public Identities: Reconsidering Identity Politics, State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Honneth, Axel (1992), Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moraliscjen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Jordan, June (1994), Technical Difficulties, Boston: Beacon Press. Kukathas, Chandran (1998), ‘Liberalism and Multiculturalism’, Political Theory 26 (5), 686–99. Kymlicka, Hill (1995), Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Phillips, Anne (1997), ‘From Inequality to Difference: A Severe Case of Displacement?’ New Left Review 224, 142–53.

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Chapter 4 Dahl, Robert (1983), ‘Federalism and the Democratic Process’, in James Roland Pennock and James W. Chapman (eds), Nomos XXV: Liberal Democracy, New York: New York University Press, 95–108. Jennings, Ivor (1956), The Approach to Self-Government, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lindahl, Hans (2007), ‘Towards an Ontology of Collective Selfhood’, in M. Loughlin and N. Walker (eds), The Paradox of Constitutionalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 9–24. Luhmann, Niklas (1997), Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Röttgers, Kurt (1983), Texte und Menschen, Würzburg: Königshauser und Neumann. Walker, Neil (2011), ‘The EU’s Resilient Sovereignty Question’, in Jürgen Neyer and Antjie Wiener (eds), Political Theory of the European Union, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 91–109. Weiler, Joseph (2001), ‘Federalism without Constitutionalism: Europe’s “Sonderweg”’, in Kalypso Nicolaïdis and Robert Howse (eds), The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and

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Chapter 5 Benjamín, Walter (1974), Gesammelte Schriften II, 3, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Berlin, Isaiah (1998), Wirklichkeitsinn: Ideengeschichtliche Untersuchungen, Berlin: Berlin Verlag. Dubiel, Helmut (1994), Ungewissheit und Politik, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Hirschman, Albert (1995), A Propensity to Self-Subversión, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ignatieff, Michael (2013), Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Innerarity, Daniel (2012), The Future and Its Enemies, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kroeger, Arthur (1990), In Praise of Politicians: Notes for a Speech to the Empire Club, Toronto, 8 February 1990. http://speeches.empireclub.org/60281/data. Lauer, Robert (1981), Temporal Man: The Meaning and Uses of Social Time, New York: Praeger. Lindblom, Charles (1965), The Intelligence of Democracy. Decision Making through Mutual Adjustment, New York: Free Press. Luhmann, Niklas (1992), Beobachtungen der Moderne, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Powell, J. Enoch (1977), Joseph Chamberlain, London: Thames & Hudson.

Chapter 6 Austin, John L. (1962), How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bohman, James (1996), Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Garsten, Bryan (2006), Saving Persuasion, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Habermas, Jürgen (1981), Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns 1, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Latour, Bruno (2012), Enquête sur les modes d'existence. Une anthropologie des modernes, Paris: La Decouverte. Lübbe, Hermann (1975), ‘Der Streit um Worte. Sprache und Politik’, in Kaltenbrunner, Gerd-Klaus (ed.), Sprache und Herschaft – Die umpunktionierten Wörter, Basel: Herder, 87–99. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1999), ‘Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne’, in Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (eds), Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 1/2, München: Walter de Gruyter.

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Chapter 7 Beck, Ulrich (1986), Risikogesellschaft – Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Béjar, Helena (2001), El mal samaritano. El altruismo en tiempos de escepticismo, Barcelona: Anagrama. Camps, Victoria (2011), El gobierno de las emociones, Barcelona: Herder. Chatterjee, Deen K., ed. (2004), The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elias, Norbert (1978) Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Frankenberg, Günter (2003), ‘Der lernende Souverain’, in Günter Frankenberg, Autoritaät und Integration. Zur Grammatik von Recht und Verfassung, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 46–72. Lipovetsky, Gilles (1992), Le crépuscule du devoir, Paris: Gallimard. Luhmann, Niklas (1984), Soziale Systeme, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Madison, James (1995), The Federalist Papers, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Nussbaum, Martha (2013), Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Pringle, Rosemary (1988), Secretaries Talk: Sexuality, Power and Work, London: Verso. Ritter, Henning (2004), Nahes und fernes Unglück. Versuch über das Mitleid, München: Beck. Schulze, Gerhard (1992), Erlebnisgesellschaft. Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart, Frankfurt: Campus. Weber, Max (1919) [1992], Politik als Beruf, en Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, Band 1/17, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Young, Iris Marion (2000), Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 8 Ankersmit, Frank (1997), Aesthetic Politics, Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Bishop, Bill (2008), The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Brownstein, Ronald (2008), The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America, New York: Penguin Press. Burke, Edmund (1987) [1774], ‘Speech to the Electors in Bristol’, 3 November 1774, in Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner (eds), The Founder’s Constitution, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Gutmann, Amy and Thompson, Dennis (1996), Democracy and Disagreement, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gutmann, Amy and Thompson, Dennis (2012), The Spirit of Compromise, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Habermas, Jürgen (1968), Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. King, Anthony (1997), Why America’s Politicians Campaign Too Much and Govern Too Little, New York: Routledge. Margalit, Avishai (2010), On Compromise and Rotten Compromises, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Urbinati, Nadia (2014), Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wolff, Robert Paul (1965), ‘Beyond Tolerance’, in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore and Herbert Marcuse (eds), A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Boston: Beacon Press, 3–52.

Chapter 9 Crick, Bernard (1962), In Defence of Politics, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Crouch, Colin (2004), Post-Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press. Derrida, Jacques (1991), L’autre Cap, Paris: Minuit. Hood, Chistopher (2010), The Blame Game: Spin, Bureaucracy and Self-Preservation in Government, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Innerarity, Daniel (2002), La transformación de la política, Barcelona: Península. Innerarity, Daniel (2009), El futuro y sus enemigos. Una defensa de la esperanza política, Barcelona: Paidós. Jacobs, Lawrence and Shapiro, Robert (2000), Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lefort, Claude (1986), Essais sûr le politique, Paris: Seuil. Mori, Luca (2014), Phantom democracy. Assenza e trasformazioni di una forma di governo nel mondo contemporaneo, Centro Einaudi, Laboratorio di Politica Comparata e Filosofia Pubblica, Working Paper 6. Oppenheimer, Danny and Edwards, Mike (2012), Democracy Despite Itself: Why a System that Shouldn’t Work at All Works So Well, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Revault d’Allones Myriam (2010), Pourquoi nous n'aimons pas la démocratie?, Paris: Seuil.

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Chapter 10 Aghion, Philippe and Roulet, Alexandra (2011), Repenser l'État. Pour une socialdémocratie de l'innovation, Paris: Seuil. Brownlee, W. Elliot, ed. (1996), Funding the Modern American State, 1941–1995: The Rise and Fall of the Era of Easy Finance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collingridge, David (1980), The Social Control of Technology, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Guattari, Félix (1974), ‘Psychanalyse et transversalité. Essais d'un analyse institutionelle, Paris: La Découverte. Habermas, Jürgen (1985), Die neue Unübersichtlichkeit, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Innerarity, Daniel (2012), The Future and Its Enemies, Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Innerarity, Daniel (2013), The Democracy of Knowledge. New York: Continuum. Innerarity, Daniel (2016), Governance in the New Global Disorder. Politics for a PostSovereign Society, New York: Colombia University Press. Mayntz, Renate (1990), ‘Politische Steuerbarkeit und Reformblockaden: Überlegungen am Beispiel des Gesundheitswessens’, Staatswissenschaft und Staatspraxis 3, 283–307. Pierson, Paul, ed. (2001), The New Politics of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schäfer, Armin and Streeck, Wolfgang (2013), Politics in the Age of Austerity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Slaughter, Anne-Marie (2004), A New World Order, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stoker, Gerry (1998), ‘Governance as Theory: Five Propositions’, International Social Science Journal 50, 17–28. Strange, Susan (1988), The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Willke, Helmut (1997), Supervision des Staates, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Willke, Helmut(2002), Dystopia. Studien zur Krisis des Wissens moderner Gesellschaft, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Chapter 11 Bardhan, Pranab (1999), ‘Democracy and Development: A Complex Relationship’. In Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordón (eds), Democracy’s Value, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 95–6.

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Chapter 12 Budge, Ian (1996), The New Challenge of Direct Democracy, Cambridge: Blackwell. Caplan, Bryan (2008), The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Crenson, Matthew and Ginsberg, Benjamin (2002), Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined its Citizens and Privatized its Public, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Crouch, Colin (2004), Post-democracy, Cambridge: Polity. Dahlgreen, Peter (2013), The Political Web: Media, Participation and Alternative Democracy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dalton, Russell (2004), Democratic Challenges – Democratic Choices: The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Estlund, David (2009), Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Habermas, Jürgen (2012), Zur Verfassung Europas. Ein Essay, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Habermas, Jürgen (2013), Im Sog der Technokratie, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Hibbing, John and Theiss-Morse, Elizabeth (2002), Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Belief about How Government Should Work, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Innerarity, Daniel (2012), The Future and Its Enemies, Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Koppell, Jonathan (2003), The Politics of Quasi-Government: Hybrid Organizations and the Dynamics of Bureaucratic Control, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Chapter 13 Ankersmit, Frank (1997), Aesthetic Politics, Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Bataille, Georges (1974), “Architecture”, in Oeuvres complêtes I, Paris: Gallimard, 1922–40. Blodiaux, Loïc, ed. (1999), La démocratie locale. Représentation, participation et espace public, Paris: PUF. Bourg, Dominique and Whiteside, Kerry (2010), Vers une démocratie écologique. Le citoyen, le savant et le politique, Paris: Seuil. Chambers, Simone (2011), ‘Rhétorique et espace publique: la démocratie délibérative a-telle abandonné la démocratie de masse à son sort?’, Raisons Politiques 42, 15–46.

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Index abstract equality  36 accelerative decelerations  60 active citizenship  138 activism  85, 143–6 consumer world  144 digital space  144 digital space/Internet  143–4 transformation of  143 administrations  58 advanced societies  41, 183 Aeschylus  68 Afro-American community, civil rights of  37 Agamben, Giorgio  130 age of austerity  118 age of negative democracy  139 agonistic vision of politics  147 agreement  83–91 campaigns on governments  89–90 consensus  88 education  91 inability to come to  85 integrative  87 principles and compromises  86–9 renunciation  87 Algeria  69 Allen, Woody  70 alternative left  147 alter-politics  138 antagonism  84–6 affectations and standardization  85 social space  86 anthropology. See political anthropology anti-globalization movement  130 Arab Spring  197 Arendt, Hannah  4 aristocratic elitism  4 Aristotle  67–8, 172, 173 Aron, Raimond  19 Athens  1 audience democracy  188 austerity  118–25

Austin, John  68 authority, limitations of  114–17 automatism  210 Bataille, Georges  162 Bauman, Zygmunt  22 Beck, Ulrich  20, 114 Bentham, Jeremy  179–80 Bergounioux, Alain  203 Berlusconi, S.  2, 186 bewilderment of Leviathan  94–6 bilateralism  41 Bismarck, Otto von  57 blameworld  100 Budapest  179 bureaucracy  58 bureaucratic-rationalist model  77 Burke, Edmund  87 cabinet reshuffling  56 Cameron, David  159 campaigning and governing  90–1 Caplan, Bryan  154 catastrophes  79–80 Chamberlain, Joseph  61 Chevallier, Jacques  163 citizen  14 Guizot’s idea of  14 new image  160 passive  150 political desires  167 civilization  78 civil society  138, 143 neoliberals’ demands for  132 classic liberalism  34 clicktivism  144. See also activism Clinton-Lewinsky relationship  185 Club of Rome report  110 co-decision  41 coexistence  41 cognitive limits of government  112–14 collective decisions  240

Index collective identity  30, 44 collective intelligence  236–9, 241 collective learning  238 communication  84 discourse  64–74 means of  79, 80–1, 101, 166, 184, 187 compassion  81. See also emotions compound societies  40–1 compromises  83 principles and  86–9 willingness to  93 Conde, Mario  15 conditions  9 conflicts, transformation of  123–4 constituent power  147 constituted and  42–5 constitutional pluralism  41 contact democracy  164 container, age of  20–5 contingency  51, 52–6 cognitive  54–5 existential  56 facets  54 practical  55–6 controversies  84 cooperative state  226 corruption  3, 51, 92, 94, 102–3, 191, 196, 197–8, 199 counter-democracy  138, 143 Crick, Bernard  103–4 crisis economic (see financial crisis) politics  221–2 criticism of politics/politicians  10–13 cronyism  164 culture jamming  130 Dahl, Robert  169 d’Allones, Myriam Revault  96 debates  242 Debord, Guy  130 debureaucratization  58 decentralization  58 deception  136–8 decision-making  240–1 de Gaulle, Charles  2, 69, 217 Deleuze, Gilles  130 deliberation  57–8 deliberative democracy  241–2 demagogic opportunism  167

257

demagogues, fear of  64 democracy. See also knowledge society; politics; specific democracy deception  136–8 deliberative  241–2 demystification  173 disappointment  92–105 expectations  103–5 future of  235 intelligence of  235, 238 Lefort defining  98 as open space  141 plebiscites  150–1 role of experts in  16–18 as system for coexisting  83 tension  131–3 totality  44 without politics  141–56 democratic distance  159–77. See also proximity democratic immaturity  216 democratic surveillance  179 democratic systems  216 democratization of politics  15 democratization of skills  160 demystification democracy  173 politics  137 de-politicization division of labour  148 functional  155–6 governance  226 involuntary  149–51 proximity  164 détournement  130 Deutsch, Karl  229 developed countries  216 digital communication  165 digital mobilization  144 di Pietro, Antonio  15 diplomacy  32 direct democracy  162–5 being attractive for passive citizen  150 plebiscitary decision-making  150 representativeness  150 disadvantages of being observed  180–2 disaffection towards politics  127 disagreement  83. See also agreement as automatic reaction  84 institutionalized  92

258 redistributive  123 unproductive things  86 disappointment  92–105 bewilderment of Leviathan  94–6 democracy  96–9 incompetence  93 negativity  99–103 sources  92–3 discourse  64–74 ideologies  66–7 rhetoric  64–6 words  67–71 disintermediation  160–1 dissent  84 distance. See also proximity democratic  159–77 emotional  80–1 distrust  159 distrustful surveillance  179–80 division of labour  148 Draghi, Mario  69 dreams  133–6 economic crisis. See financial crisis economic policy  124–5 economic resources, limitations of  117–25 education  91 educational institutions  91 effective governance  241 elections  172–3, 216 Elias, Norbert  78 emotional deregulation  79, 80 emotional distance  80–1 emotional globalization  79 emotional outbursts of society  79 emotional-populist disorder  78–82 emotional spaces  79, 81 emotions  75–82 catastrophes  79–80 civic responsibility  76 collective  80 compassion  81 as elements of de-politicization  76 in public space  77–8 enabling state  226 Enlightenment  75 epistemic communities  241 equity/equality  35–8 Eshkol, Levi  83

Index Esperanto  33 ethics  191–4 The Eumenides (Aeschylus)  68 euro crisis  119–20 European Central Bank (ECB)  120 European Union  57, 155 Everson, Michelle  16 exactitude  18, 65–6, 67, 113 expert commissions  58–9 experts  14 in democracy  16–18 The Eyes of the People (Green)  188 fear  79. See also emotions of demagogues  64 feelings  76–8. See also emotions as politically dysfunctional  77 rationality and  78 15-M movement, Spain  144 financial crisis  2, 110–11, 115–16, 117 impact  118 management  118 financial markets  110, 117 emergence of  118 Five Star Movement of Italy  181 flexibility  86 Foessel, Michaël  186 Foucault, M.  85 Founding Fathers of the American Republic  75 Fraser, Nancy  30, 32 French Revolution  15 French Socialist Party  203 Freud, S.  122 Geertz, Clifford  20 Germany  17, 119, 211–12, 217 Social Democratic Party  114 Geyer, Robert  239 Giddens, Anthony  30 globalization emotional  79 left and  202, 203 as space of public attention  179 governance  221–8 concept  224–5 crisis  221–2 de-politicization  226 imperative styles  116–17

Index innovation  223–4 knowledge society  227–8 political theory  225 renovation  224–7 governing  100 campaigning and  90–1 government cognitive limits  112–14 money, limits of  117–25 paradigm shift to governance (see governance) power, limitation of  114–17 governmental credibility  211–13 Great Britain  120 Greece  1 Green, Jeffrey Edward  188 Grillo, Beppe  15 group identity  32 group knowledge  237–8 Grunberg, Gérard  203 guaranteeing state  226 Guattari, Félix  122, 130 Guizot, François  14 Habermas, Jürgen  65, 84 hard power  117 heroism against the market  204 Hessel, Stéphane  138 Hirschman, Albert  52 history  153 Hitler, A.  63 Homo democraticus  98 Honneth, Axel  30 hooliganization  210 Hoover, Herbert  213 How to Do Things with Words (Austin)  68 Hurricane Katrina  213 identity politics  31–2 ideological integration  67 ideologies  19, 66–7, 201 concept of  66 concepts provided by  67 Kantian fashion  67 primary function  67 idiots  1–2 Ignatieff, Michael  56 “I Have a Dream” (speech by King)  69 immediacy  161

259

impolitic democracy  141 incentive state  226 In Defence of Politics (Crick)  103–4 Indignados  88, 127, 128, 133, 169, 173–4 indignation  3–5, 127–40 being not enough  138–40 deception  136–8 democratic tension  131–3 dreams  133–6 revolution  128–31 indirect democracy  153–6 individual rights  37 informational environment  179 information and communication technologies  160 innovation  46, 76 politics  213, 223–4 social  197–8 institutions  240 non-majoritarian  16 intelligent activity, politics as  229–42 learning  239–42 people/systems  235–9 personalization  232–4 strategic deficit  231–2 interdependence  120 interdependencies  40 intermittent citizenry  142–6 international terrorism  31 Internet  150 democracy of  188 mobilization on  143–4 involuntary de-politicization  149–51 Iraq  185 Italy  15, 217 Five Star Movement  181 governability  197 journalists  180, 183–4 judicialization of politics  193 Kelsen, Hans  170 King, Martin Luther  69 Klein, Naomi  130 knowledge collaborative  241 collective  236, 241 expert  241 group  237–8 individual  236

260

Index

limits/limitations of  112–14 organizational  238 production and transfer  235 knowledge society  229, 235, 239. See also democracy cognitive abilities  160 complex  236 demand  235 governance  227–8 learning  239 ungovernability  236 Kymlicka, Hill  33 language of politics  66. See also discourse Lassalle, Ferdinand  204 Latour, Bruno  73 leadership, personalization of  122–3 learning  239–42 Lefort, Claude  98, 239 left and right  200–18 cultures  209–11 governmental credibility  211–13 market  203–8 opposition  213–16 political ties  216–18 reality  200–3 Leviathan, bewilderment of  94–6 liberalism  203 liberal socialism  201 lies, in extra-political sense  71–4 limits/limitations  109–26 of growth  110 of knowledge  112–14 of money/economic resources  117–25 of power/authority  114–17 Lindblom, Charles  235 liquid panorama  22 Living in the End of Times (Zizek)  130 local democracy  162–3 Long, Huey  213 Luhmann, Niklas  44, 80, 181, 199, 215, 239 Macmillan, Harold  62 Madison, James  75 Mair, Peter  10 Manin, Bernard  22, 27, 188 Marcuse, Herbert  78 Margalit, Avishai  87

market  203–8 Marx, Karl  204 material rights  37 means of communication  79, 80–1, 101, 166, 184, 187 media  91 feeding disillusion and mistrust  100–1 idea of omnipotence  110 political content  91 power and  101 mediation, elimination of  160–1 meteorological democracy  167 Mexico  217 Mill, John Stuart  65 minimal state  226 Mitterrand, François  217 mobilization consumer world  144 on Internet  143–4 modernization founding myths of  164 modern societies  44 modesty  61 money, limitations of. See economic resources, limitations of monitored democracy  178 Mora, José Andrés Torres  2 moral conscience  193 morality of closeness  198 moralizing politics  190–9 moral values  195 Morgan, Edmund S.  169 movements  134–5 multilateralism  41 naming and shaming  180 nationalists  42 negative publicity  85 negative sovereign  141–2 distrust  143 ideology  146–8 negativity  99–103 neighbourhood  166 neoliberal denationalization  226 neoliberalism  146, 148, 204, 205, 206 network intelligence  241 Nietzsche, Friedrich  62, 71 NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard)  145 non-majoritarian institutions  16

Index non-politics  138 normal citizen  33–4 Obama, Barack  15, 197 objectivist prejudice  151 observation society  178–80 Occupy Wall Street  144 ocular democracy  187–9 online campaigns  144 online forums  150 open space, democracy as  141 opinion polls  160–1 meteorological democracy  167 opposition  213–16 bad  215 catastrophe and  213–14 undermining government  214–15 organizational knowledge  238 otherness of representative  163 outsider, in political system  15 Paine, Thomas  65 pandering  167 parliamentary democracy  57 participation in politics  13–16 passive citizen  150 performative language  70 Pericles  1 peripheral nationalism  42 Perot, Ross  14 personal conscience  193 personalization of leadership  122–3 of politics  232–4 Pettit, Philip  154 Plato  64, 84 plebiscites  150–1 pluralism  34–5, 149–50 constitutional  41 sub-state societies  41 Podemos (We Can) movement in Spain  152 polarization  91 polemical totality  44 political anthropology  92 political apathy  137–8 political class  10–13 political competition  99, 100 political geometry  162 political ideologies. See ideologies

261

political judgements  63 political parties  19–28 political profiles  18 political ties  216–18 politicians criticism  10–13 pre-democratic  15 private lives  184–7 skill at resolving  85 talent of representing political reality  85 politics as agathon eris  68 agonistic vision of  147 aversion towards  127 conservative conception of  202 crisis  221–2 democracy without  141–56 democratization of  15 demystification  137 dreams  133–6 excessive personalization of  232–4 judicialization  193 negative impression  92 professionalization of  18 renovation  224–7 strategic deficit of  231–2 success and failure in  60–3 taxonomy of idiocy  1–2 uncertainty of  52–6 weakness  196–9 politics of passivity  189 popular elitism  4 popular mobilization  161 popular will  161 populisms  12 being credible  78 contemporary forms of  75 post-heroic society  138 postmodern state  163 post-socialist conflicts  30 pouvoir constituant  147 power  187–9 authoritarianism and blindness  229 being vulnerable to criticism  102 compromises  83 diffusion of  116 hard  117 limits/limitations of  114–17 nature  229

262 priming  167 private lives of politicians  184–7 professionalization of politics  18 proximity  159–77 artifice  166 de-politicization  164 discourse  163 growing mobility  166 local democracy  162–3 logic  162 opportunistic  167 otherness of representative  163 politics  163 public action  164 as social construction  166 psychocultural dramas  31 ‘the public’  131–2 public ethics  191–4 publicity vs. transparency  182–4 public policies  163 public space/sphere  27, 242 feelings shaping  77–8 republican model  242 published opinions  167

Index

quasi-governments  155 questionability  44

pluralism  149–50 as site of compromise and mediation  174 as substitute for direct democracy  176 representative democracy. See democracy reshuffling of cabinet  56 rhetoric  64–6 distrusting  65 rehabilitation  66 suspicion  65 rift  151–3 right and left. See left and right right to decide  39–47 right to free expression  37 right to privacy  185 right to self-determination  43 right to vote  37 Rihani, Samir  239 risk society  81 Rorty, Richard  70 Rosanvallon, Pierre  138, 139, 141, 143 Rousseau, Jean Jacques  80, 163, 169, 178, 189 Ruiz-Mateos, José María  15 Russia  196

radical democracy  147–8 radicalism  86 rationalists and sentimentalists  76–8 rationality collective  241 feelings and  78 populism and  152 Weberian idea of  77 Rawls, John  72, 190 real-time politics  161 recognition  29–38 equity/equality  35–8 redistribution  30–2 ‘who’ matters  32–5 redistribution  30–2 reform  129 renovation of politics  224–7 representation  173–7 as authorized relationship  176 crisis of  149 enemies  175

scandals  101 scepticism  103 Scharping, Rudolf  114 Schmitt, Carl  147, 214 Schröder, Gerhard  213 Schumpeter, Joseph A.  169, 170 self-determination  45–7 elections  172–3 paradoxes  168–73 self-government  35, 37, 40–1, 45 complex societies  172 democratic  46, 47, 59, 168, 171–2 elections  172 notion of  171–2 self-regulation  59 Sennett, Richard  164 sentimentalists, rationalists and  76–8 sexual harassment  186 Shaw, George Bernard  200 single issue movements  135 skills, democratization of  160

Index

263

smart governance  241 Smith, Adam  81, 116 social capital  226 social conservatism  201 social contract  83 social demands  145–6 social democracy  202 social-democratic consensus  29 Social Democratic Party  114 social learning  230–1 social movements  138 social networks  135, 159, 160 social organization  235 social protest  148 social spaces  78–9 societal drift  59 society. See also knowledge society democratically mature  133–4 democratic self-determination  58 emotional outbursts  79 observation  178–80 post-heroic  138 representability of  173–7 solidarity  79–80 sovereign  214, 241 learning  239–42 ocular democracy  189 sovereignty concept of  41 diverse institutions  41 Spain  42–3 15-M movement  144 Podemos (We Can) movement  152 speeches  69, 84 statehood  226 state of austerity  118 Stoiber, Edmund  213 Strange, Susan  110–11 subjects  9–10 suboptimal decisions  93 sub-state societies  41 symbolic politics  242 systemic ignorance  112

technology  160 tension, democracy  131–3 territorial conflicts  30 terrorist attacks  214 themes  9 A Theory of Justice (Rawls)  190 Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith)  81 ties. See political ties time  51–63 centrality  57 deliberation  57–8 intuition about  57 management  56, 57 Tocqueville, Alexis de  163 Tocqueville syndrome  10 Togo, German colony of  39 Touraine, Alain  37 tragedy of contemporary politics  151–2 transformation of conflicts  123–4 transparency  151, 178–89 concept  151 demand/desire  179, 181 disadvantages of being observed  180–2 observation society  178–80 power  187–9 principle  180, 181–2 private lives of politicians  184–7 publicity vs.  182–4 Transparency International  117 Tresckow, Henning von  63 truth  65 in extra-political sense  71–4 Twitter  188

taxonomy of idiocy  1–2 Taylor, Charles  30, 36 Tea Party movement  130, 134–5 technocratization of politics  148 technocrats  28, 104, 148, 149, 150–1, 152

Walzer, Michael  34 Warsaw Pact  179 weakness of politics  196–9 Weber, Max  75, 96 Weizsäcker, Richard von  17

uncertainty of politics  52–6 unhappy consciousness  31–2 United States  134, 185, 195, 213, 217 universalism  34 values  194–6 Varoufakis, Yanis  45

264 Why We Don’t Love Democracy (d’Allones)  96 wiki-communism  146 wiki-government  241 Wittgenstein, Ludwig  66, 217 words  67–71. See also discourse actions vs.  69 appropriate, struggle for  70

Index Aristotle on  67–8 choice of  70 doing things with  69–70 speeches and  69 world governance  39 Zakaria, Fareed  154 Zizek, Slavoj  130

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266

267

268

269

270