Democratic politics should constitute democratic power, not eliminate it
Evidence
To assert the hegemonic nature of any kind of social order is to operate a displacement of the traditional relation between democracy and power. According to the deliberative approach, the more democratic a society is, the less power would be constitutive of social relations. But if we accept that relations of power are constitutive of the social, then the main question for democratic politics is not how to eliminate power but how to constitute forms of power more compatible with democratic values. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 451
Categorization
- QUESTION: Core to the reader’s test: does reformulating democracy as constituting power (not eliminating it) still require an excluded enemy to constitute the ‘we’? This is the crux of Mouffe’s pluralism.
- XREF: The ‘constitute rather than eliminate power’ move contrasts with the deliberative/consensus model of Habermas and connects to the adversarial frame the reader uses in their own work. — connects to: Democratic politics should mobilize passions, not eliminate them for rational consensus — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 462; Deliberative politics is constitutive of democracy, not a regulative ideal — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 54; Believing power dissolves through rational debate endangers democratic institutions — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 467 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Democracy is defined by legitimizing rather than suppressing political conflict
#corroborates(0.90) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 502 - Believing power dissolves through rational debate endangers democratic institutions
#corroborates(0.88) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 467 - Democratic politics should mobilize passions, not eliminate them for rational consensus
#expands(0.85) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 462 - Democracy minimally requires popular authorization of laws and shared power
#expands(0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 362 - Rejecting consensus as impossible protects democracy from closure
#corroborates(0.80) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 146 - Delegitimizing parties and knowledge institutions blocks democracy’s core functions
#corroborates(0.78) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 276 - Democracy requires social endosmosis, not just a form of government
#expands(0.78) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 904 - Undecidability, not consensus, is the condition of democratic freedom
#complicates(0.75) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 150 - Direct democracy can itself enable the tyranny of a majority
#complicates(0.75) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 77 - Constituting the people politically need not preclude pluralism within that association
#qualifies(0.74) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 242 - Deliberative politics is constitutive of democracy, not a regulative ideal
#qualifies(0.72) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 54