Reclaiming Democracy

Judgment, Responsibility and the Right to Politics

Albena Azmanova, Mihaela Mihai

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138021990
• eBook ISBN: 9781317693277
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Democracy is in shambles economically and politically. The recent economic meltdown in Europe and the U.S. has substituted democratic deliberation with technocratic decisions. In Athens, Madrid, Lisbon, New York, Pittsburgh or Istanbul, protesters have denounced the incapacity and unwillingness of elected officials to heed to their voices.

While the diagnosis of our political-economic illness has been established, remedies are hard to come. What can we do to restore our broken democracy? Which modes of political participation are likely to have an impact? And what are the loci of political innovation in the wake of the crisis? It is with these questions that Reclaiming Democracy engages. We argue that the managerial approach to solving the crisis violates 'a right to politics', that is, a right that our collective life be guided by meaningful politics: by discussion of and decision among genuinely alternative principles and policies. The contributors to this volume are united in their commitment to explore how and where this right can be affirmed in a way that resuscitates democracy in the wake of the crisis. Mixing theoretical reflection and empirical analysis the book offers fresh insights into democracy's current conundrum and makes concrete proposals about how 'the right to politics' can be protected.

PART I

Loci of Democratic Politics

1

AGONISM AND THE CRISIS OF REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

Paulina Tambakaki

The topic of representative democracy has once again come to the forefront of political theorizing. Partly as a result of the euro-crisis, which saw elected governments being replaced by technocratic administrations in Italy and Greece; partly as a result of the explosion of the mantra ‘no alternative’ in view of neoliberal politics and a stagnant party system; and partly as a result of the Indignados and the Occupy movements that gave renewed visibility to institutional misworkings, the very frame of representative democracy has re-emerged as the subject of analysis and critique (Tormey 2012; Lorey 2011; Hardt and Negri 2012; Green 2010). Although much of this critique is already familiar in that it draws on the usual mistrust of representative institutions, there is something in contemporary accounts of representation that merits further reflection. This is the idea that institutional representation (democracy as we know it), far from showing signs of malaise (as the by-product of the 2008 economic crisis), is itself in holistic crisis, at an irreversible turning point, and this invites us not just to rethink but also, crucially, to re-create the space for politics, perhaps by moving away from institutional representation. Of course, times of crisis—that is, times of dislocation—highlight the moment of political action (Laclau 1996). However, what is ­interesting in the contemporary case against representation is that its crisis signals neither the arrival of a post-democracy of sorts¹ nor the return of something already constitutively problematic (after all, representative democracy has always been seen as impure by its critics).² Instead, references to (economico-political) crisis accentuate the cul-de-sac of the representative process—its irreversibility—and in so doing give strong impetus to visions of politics as post-representative rather than simply as nonrepresentative or direct. Indeed, one immediate effect of the interlacing between talk of crisis and representation is that it evades immediate rejections of representative democracy—for example, on Rousseauian grounds. Another, related, effect is that it contextualises and, inevitably, refashions those aspects of institutional representation that constitute as much as contribute to the current democratic problem.

Two such aspects stand out. The first concerns the way in which institutions of representation are imbricated in the workings of neoliberalism. Although institutions of representation have always been seen as elitist, detached (from the citizenry), and exclusive, they are now increasingly sketched as too complicit in the workings of neoliberalism (that benefits the few), too vested in a neoliberal rationale (that proletarianises), and too convenient a tool in the hands of power and vested interests (that seek to consolidate their hegemony). Therefore, if neoliberal hegemony (that is, the wider context which informs the workings of institutions of representation) is to be challenged, then the transformation (if not overturning) of those very institutions that nourish and buttress it appears a good starting point. Representative institutions thus transpire in this case not simply as obdurate to democratisation—because they are, for example, constitutively impure—but as one obvious barrier to democracy. This brings us to the second related problem with institutional representation as it has been refashioned by current accounts. While representative institutions promote and consolidate neoliberal policies that benefit the few at the expense of the many, egalitarianism, which defines democracy, evaporates—with the implication being, of course, that democracy also evaporates. Therefore, democracy, in this reading, surfaces not just as ‘distorted,’ exclusive, or ‘closed’ (as is the case with standard sceptical accounts of representation), but as endangered—because the rule of the many, its very basis, is endangered. It follows that to recover egalitarianism and to challenge neoliberalism, a move beyond institutional representation is both possible and desirable.

The nature of this move differs within the relevant literature. At one end of the spectrum are those theorists who suggest that processes and institutions of representation, a locus of power, hierarchy, and domination, could be overcome and replaced by horizontal political relations—a network type of politics that involves (and revolves around) bonds of affinity and immediacy of action (Tormey 2012; Robinson and Tormey 2007; Hardt and Negri 2012; Lorey 2011; Day 2005). The politics of singularity, argue the Deleuze-influenced theorists,³ entwines action with difference, subjectivisation with commonality, and, in so doing, it escapes the trap of (the mediating process of) representation—which implies, in turn, that representative processes are neither constitutive nor necessary from this perspective, and can therefore be transgressed. In the middle of the spectrum, there are those theorists who explore the revival of communism (Dean 2012; Bosteels 2011). Tying communism with the idea of the sovereignty of the people—their ‘self-steering’—these theorists expose and critique the malfunctions of representative institutions (their complicity in the consolidation of neoliberal hegemony) but do not altogether dismiss the frame of institutional and, particularly, party representation—at least not immediately (Dean 2012, 117). Interested primarily in the revitalisation of left politics, such theorists flirt with the prospect of post-representation, with the idea of horizontal political organisation, yet they concede that horizontalism (and a network type of politics) coexists with and challenges institutional representation—notwithstanding, of course, its ever-growing potential to transgress it. Similarly sympathetic to horizontal political organisation, particularly in light of the discourses of the Indignados and the Occupy movements, the third group of theorists that occupies the other end of the spectrum outrightly rejects the prospect of post-representational politics (Prentoulis and Thomassen 2012; Decreus, Lievens, and Braeckman 2014; see also Thomassen 2007). Seeing processes of representation as constitutive of socio-political, and not just of state, relations, these theorists highlight the inescapability of representation (especially in horizontal politics) and, ultimately, its necessity for processes of collective subjectivisation. Importantly, the defence of representation that we encounter here does not deny that institutional representation is currently under strain. What it does is build a case for counter-hegemonic politics as one way of challenging the neoliberal hegemony that representative institutions buttress and perpetuate (not overcoming representation per se as the root cause of the democratic problem).

Therefore, at stake in this debate about representative democracy is, first, the function, and then, inevitably, the import of institutional representation to democracy. Although this is certainly an old objection within the relevant literature, the distinction between democracy and institutional representation gains new significance in light of the growing appeal of the politics of singularity on the one hand, supported by new social movements, and the neoliberalisation of all areas of socio-political life on the other hand, where institutional representation transpires as one among many terrains of neoliberal contamination. For these two reasons, it now appears increasingly credible to distinguish between democracy and institutions and to start exploring other (perhaps deeper and better) forms of democracy in networks and horizontal assemblages—whether these involve acts of representation or not. After all, the socio-political world seems today more complex and interconnected, and as a result, representative, institutional, and state politics no longer sufficiently engages (let alone channels the demands of) the surpluses which exceed its remit—whether these are global activists concerned about common problems, the excluded, marginalised, the different, the poor, or simply the many, the 99 percent. The second issue at stake in this debate about representative democracy concerns, interestingly, the meaning and purpose of radical politics, because it is no coincidence that all theorists currently questioning the workings (if not purchase) of representative democracy subscribe to the radical strand of democratic theory. At this level of analysis, the difference between the Deleuze-influenced theorists, open to the overturning of representative institutions, and the Laclau/Mouffe⁴-influenced theorists, suggesting the idea of counter-hegemonic projects, becomes clear. While the former envision radical democracy in terms of an imminent break from institutional and representative politics, the latter envision radical democracy within frames of representation, with radical demands infiltrating, transforming, and bettering (but never fleeing from) representative mechanisms (and institutions). By so doing—that is, by so entwining representation with radicalisation—this second group of theorists comes close to agonistic theory, whose particular insights into the role of contestation in representative democracy, although influential, have so far been missing from our discussion. Therefore, the question arises: Does agonistic theory, with its twin focus on representative and radical democracy, which is precisely what is at stake in current debates about the crisis of representative democracy, have something specific to contribute to these debates?

Seeking to address that question, this chapter suggests that agonistic theory provides a useful angle from which to enter current debates about representative democracy. Not only because we find in agonism a caution against the closures and normalisations which institutions of representation effect—and hence a powerful critique of institutional and, inevitably, representative democracy (that guards against conformism); but also because the agonistic emphasis on contestation shows one way of expanding on and, indeed, radicalising democratic politics. For these related reasons, the chapter argues that agonistic theory offers a fruitful, dynamic field of conceptual reflection that enables us to both identify and address the current limits of representative democracy—thereby siding with the idea of counter-hegemonic projects that the third group of theorists brings to discussions of representative democracy. However, this argument for agonism develops also a question against agonism, insofar as the differences between agonistic theorists become especially glaring (and arguably irreconcilable) once we narrow down the discussion to the topic of representative democracy (rather than pluralism, which they are renowned for) and start enquiring into the implications of their writings for the crisis of representation. This is because the growingly Deleuzian influence on William Connolly’s work, with his emphasis on abundance, becoming, and assemblages, is increasingly at odds with Chantal Mouffe’s outright defence of representative democracy (particularly in Agonistics) and James Tully’s focus on democratic games between governance and freedom (see Connolly 2002, 2005, 2011; Mouffe 2013; Tully 2008a, 2008b). Therefore, reproducing from within agonistic theory the divisions which already arise in debates over (post-)representation, the frame of representative democracy which this chapter employs, serves both to expose the limits of the agonistic position (its unity as a position) and highlight its specific contribution—which ultimately resides in the synergy it effects between necessary institutions and open-ended contests. Seeking to strengthen this synergy in the face of the crisis of representation, the chapter concludes by exploring the idea of claims-making as a necessary component of the contestatory politics that agonistic theorists defend. Claims-making, I argue, transfers attention from process to outcomes and from contestation to acts of construction, that is, to the second, inescapably representative dimension of contestatory politics. This second dimension, already clear in Mouffe’s version of agonistic theory, probes deeper reflection on the limits of democratic ­representation and invites a re-evaluation of the ‘remedies’ for its crisis. The next section starts by examining the agonistic approach to representative democracy.

Agonism and Representative Democracy

Seeking to identify the ways in which agonistic theorists approach representative democracy (and institutions of representation in particular) is, in the first instance, a straightforward task. Theorists who subscribe to agonism, such as William Connolly, Bonnie Honig, Chantal Mouffe, and James Tully, to name a few, immediately agree that (state and representative) institutions, although key to the workings of democratic regimes, neither exemplify nor exhaust democratic life (Honig 1993; Connolly 1991, 1995; Mouffe 1993; Tully 1995). This is, first, because democratic life, through the agonistic lens, always exceeds institutional and procedural blueprints and cannot be confined to particular sites or reduced to the particular forms and identities that institutional politics sets. As Honig puts it, ‘the always imperfect closure of political space tends to engender remainders … [that may] destabilise the very closures that deny their existence’ (1993, 15). Remainders, therefore, or simply put, ever-present differences, which do not conform to dominant standards or are excluded from particular configurations, exceeding and escaping these, always (return to) contest and disrupt institutional closures. This reveals that democratic politics not only has the potential to normalise, close off, and exclude differences that do not conform to the rules it frames (particularly in its institutional form), but also, crucially for us here, has the potential to disrupt and unsettle institutions, if and when differences are expressed in the political arena.

This last point brings us to the second, related, reason why representative institutions do not exhaust democratic life according to agonistic theorists. Given that frontiers between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ relations of identity/difference, constitute a necessary component of pluralistic democracy, democracy for agonistic theorists rests on openness and thrives on strife. Conceived as an agon, a political activity and attitude of contestation, strife exposes hegemonies through the agonistic lens, bolsters pluralism (by ensuring that democratic imaginaries remain open to different interpretations), and stirs democratic renewal. Neither dispensable nor a problem to be solved, therefore, strife means politics in the agonistic vocabulary, and points to the idea that a vibrant democracy might not call for simply an institutional haven, but also the cultivation of such ethos of contestation. Thus, what we notice here is that the case for contestatory politics, which agonistic theorists put forward, does not simply proceed from the onto-political assumption that institutional mechanisms fail to capture (and, inevitably, represent) the whole of democratic life, because differences (excesses or remainders) always escape and challenge their workings, but also from the assumption that the challenge these differences pose to institutions equally constitutes democracy. Indeed, the very emphasis which agonistic theorists put on the democratic nature of the agon both displaces institutions and representative processes (such as voting) from the centre of democratic theorizing and questions institutional workings—or, to be more precise, it alerts us to their (mis)workings.

James Tully’s work (1995, 2008a) gives us a clear idea of what these institutional (mis)workings are, which agonism wards off: first, norm framing, that is, the settling of norms, which disqualify and exclude the multiplicity of voices and activities constitutive of the human condition; second, ‘inherited languages of description and reflection’ that restrict our ability to understand, affirm, and redescribe that which escapes the vocabulary we are accustomed to (for example, the language of modern citizenship that often prevents us from grasping the ‘democratic’ aspect of new practices of freedom); and, third, the dispersion of practices of governance and freedom (as a result of globalisation) along with the ways this dispersion challenges modern representative politics. These dangers, which Tully explores throughout his work, are interrelated in that his analysis of their implications for political thinking revolves around one particular aspect that they all share in common, namely, the idea of a ‘limit.’ A limit, explains Tully, means:

… either the characteristic forms of thought and action which are taken for granted and not questioned or contested by participants in a practice of subjectivity, thereby functioning as the implicit background or horizon of their questions and contests, or it can mean that a form of subjectivity (its form of reason, norms of conduct and so forth) is explicitly claimed to be a limit that cannot be otherwise because it is universal, necessary or obligatory (the standard form of legitimation since the Enlightenment).

(2008a, 75)

Read, therefore, against the background of this (Foucauldian) idea of a ‘limit,’ it appears that what specifically concerns Tully and other agonistic theorists when it comes to institutions is the way in which they settle and limit norms of thinking and acting, thus constraining us to think and act otherwise. From this reading, then, it immediately follows that a democracy reduced to institutions could be, and ofte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Loci of Democratic Politics
• PART II Modes of Democratic Politics
• PART III Democratic Critique
• List of Contributors
• Index