Liberal democracies are simultaneously mechanisms of domination and empowerment
Evidence
Following Fassin ( 2005 ), I will be arguing that liberal democracies are mechanisms of domination as well as empowerment. There is a foundational tension at the heart of liberal democracies: a tension between domination and empowerment, exclusion and sympathy, which regulates the perpetuation and expression of tolerance and intolerance, as two faces of the same coin. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 47
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The two-faces-of-the-same-coin claim — tolerance and intolerance as regulated by the same foundational tension — is paradigm-shifting in its scope.
- XREF: Connects to the moral panics literature and to how exclusion and sympathy coexist in statecraft — relevant to the sacrifice piece’s premise that societies stabilize through exclusion. — connects to: Liberal democracy’s neutral ideals mask racial and gendered domination — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 406; Polycentric governance structures enable citizens to resist domination through multiple remedies. — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 9; Pluralist democracy amplifies the already privileged — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1187