Democratic politics should mobilize passions, not eliminate them for rational consensus

Evidence

An imponant difference with the model of ‘deliberative democracy’ is that for ‘agonistic pluralism’, the prime task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions from the sphere of the public, in order to render a rational consensus possible, but to mobilize those passions towards democratic designs. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 462

Categorization

• XREF: Directly opposes the deliberative-democracy model; connects to the reader’s agonistic-pluralism project against rational-consensus liberalism. — connects to: Reducing partisan animosity will not suppress policy activism if policy disagreement remains legitimate. — Rachel Hartman et al., Interventions to Reduce Partisan…, 18; Blocking democratic closure requires abandoning the ideal of stable consensus grounded in justice — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 357; Rawls and Habermas seek rational consensus to stabilize liberal democracy. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 429 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Emotionality aids rather than undermines democratic deliberation #corroborates (0.92)
• Passions and affects, not rationality, secure allegiance to democratic values #corroborates (0.90) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 433
• Emotionality aids rather than disrupts political reasoning and democratic life. #corroborates (0.90) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1660
• Deliberative democrats ground legitimacy in rational consensus produced by ideal discourse procedures #responds-to (0.85) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 219
• Believing power dissolves through rational debate endangers democratic institutions #expands (0.80) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 467
• Democratic elections legitimize only as outcomes of prior public deliberation, not preference aggregation #complicates (0.78) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 94
• Conflict legitimation, not consensus, is modern democracy’s condition of existence #corroborates (0.78) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 463
• Rejecting consensus as impossible protects democracy from closure #qualifies (0.75) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 146