Chantal Mouffe's Agonistic Democracy

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CHANTAL MOUFFES AGONISTICDEMOCRACY

George Crowder

School of Political and International Studies

Flinders University

Refereed paper presented to the

Australasian Political Studies Association conference

University of Newcastle

25-27 September 2006


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CHANTAL MOUFFES AGONISTIC DEMOCRACY

Chantal Mouffe has proposed an agonistic model of democracy in opposition to the

dominant aggregative model and the leading deliberative alternative. Agonistic

democracy emphasises the inevitability of conflict in political life, and the impossibility ofidentifying final, rational and neutral decision procedures, because of the ubiquity of power

and the plurality of values. On the other hand, Mouffe distinguishes agonism from mere

antagonism, or destructive conflict. In this paper I analyse Mouffes case, and argue that it

is deeply flawed in particular by its Foucauldian reduction of values to power, and by its

irrationalist account of choice under value pluralism. I go on to present a more nuanced view

of value pluralism, and to show that this implies a case for liberalism and deliberation rather

than agonism.

The political thought of Chantal Mouffe is an interesting attempt to preserve

something of the old program of the radical left and to adapt this to contemporaryconditions. In the influentialHegemony and Socialist Strategy (2001, first published

1985), Mouffe and her co-author Ernesto Laclau present themselves as inaugurating a

new generation of left-wing political theory in succession to the faltering voice of

socialism. The Marxist or socialist outlook is by no means to be wholly abandoned:

the abolition of capitalism and emancipation of the working class remain valid and

important ideals. But these goals should now be seen as only part of a broader left-

wing vision that must embrace the new social movements, whose various perspectives

cannot be reduced to that of traditional Marxism. The task of the left must now be to

empower this polyphony of voices, each of which constitutes its own irreducible

discursive identity (2001: 191). The label used by Laclau and Mouffe to summarise

this enterprise is radical democracy.

Mouffe has gone on to develop her version of this project under the heading of

agonistic democracy. Her broad theme is that the dominant liberal approach to

democracy which includes recent theories of deliberative democracy is too

rationalistic, seeking an impossible consensus based on rational argument. In this and

related respects, liberalism denies or evades the true nature of the political, which is

characterised by an ineradicable tendency among groups of human beings to mutual

antagonism. Agonistic democracy faces up to this reality, but also channels it in

non-destructive ways. Democracy on this view consists of a vigorous but mutually

tolerant contest among groups of people united by passionately shared identifications.

These groups seek to achieve for their view of things a dominant or hegemonic

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status. To support this position, Mouffe draws on an eclectic mix of materials:

Marxist anti-capitalism, liberal respect for individual rights, Antonio Gramscis idea

of hegemony, Michel Foucaults genealogical understanding of ethical norms in

terms of power, Carl Schmitts notions of the political and decisionism, and Max

Webers value pluralism.

I am especially interested in the last item on this list. Much of the contemporary

political-theory literature on pluralism, at least in English, is based on either John

Rawlss idea of the fact of reasonable pluralism or Isaiah Berlins concept of value

pluralism.1 Consequently, much of this literature has a broadly liberal orientation

although the liberal reading of Berlins pluralism, for example, has been prominently

challenged by writers such as John Gray and John Kekes.2 Mouffe, by contrast, starts

with the pluralism of Weber, and argues from this to a position that is, at least in

intention, both substantially anti-liberal and different from the pragmatic

contextualism of Gray and the conservatism of Kekes.

In this paper I examine Mouffes theory of agonistic democracy, especially its

foundations (if that word is permissible) in value pluralism. I argue that the picture

she presents is deeply flawed. First, Mouffes agonism is not as radical as it

purports to be indeed it is really just orthodox interest-group politics in post-

structuralist clothing. Second, the theory is deeply incoherent when it comes to

justification, since its humanist and relativist components continually undermine one

another. Third, it depends on grossly misleading accounts of the liberal and

deliberative views it takes issue with. Fourth, it rests ultimately on a superficial

notion of value pluralism as implying an irrationalist decisionism when it comes to

value judgement. I go on to show how a more nuanced understanding of value

pluralism can actually provide foundations for liberalism and deliberative democracy.

Mouffes agonistic democracy

Mouffes starting point is a critique of liberalism, towards which she is deeply

ambivalent. On the one hand she is at pains to insist that the left should no longer be

opposed to liberalism root and branch. Liberal democracy is not the enemy to be

1See in particular Rawls 1993; Berlin 1990, 2000, 2002.

2Gray 1993, 1995a, 1995b, 2000; Kekes 1993, 1997, 1998.

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destroyed (2005: 32). Indeed, the liberal ethical principle, liberty and equality for

all, is indispensable: it is not possible to find more radical principles for organizing

society (1992: 1). The problem is not the basic ideals of liberalism but rather their

implementation. Consequently, the goal of the left should not be the rejection of

liberal democracy but rather its radicalization that is, the more consistent and

thorough expression of its professed norms. Presumably no current form of liberal

democracy is wholly satisfactory in this regard, but Mouffe clearly sees some forms

of liberalism as more objectionable than others she frequently singles out the

neoliberal emphasis on the unfettered market. Still, even a radicalized liberal

democracy remains a liberal democracy. Mouffe appears to be proposing reforms

within the liberal-democratic framework.

Yet at the same time she seems to want to retain a wholesale Marxist opposition to

capitalism, which one would have thought was an institution that is hard to separate,

at least in some form, from liberalism. Anticipating the objection that capitalist

relations constitute an insuperable obstacle to the realization of democracy, she says

only that the identification of liberalism with capitalism is not a necessary one

(1992: 2). To a degree this is refreshing, since writers with Marxist backgrounds so

often tend to see liberalism, one-dimensionally, as merely a political expression of

capitalism, ignoring the extent to which liberal principles have frequently, and rightly,

acted as a brake on capitalism. However, it is one thing to see that the relation

between liberalism and capitalism is complex, another to imagine that the two can be

separated altogether. Surely it is hard to conceive of a form of liberalism that would,

in Nozicks phrase, prohibit capitalist acts between consenting adults. In what sense,

then, does Mouffe imagine that a liberal framework can be retained while capitalism

is rejected?

Furthermore, Mouffes acceptance of a liberal framework or starting point seems at

odds with her extensive list of complaints about features that she ascribes to

liberalism without qualification. Individualism falls into this category, although it

is unclear what Mouffe means by this. One possible sense is ethical individualism,

meaning a special concern for the human individual basically Kants respect for

persons but Mouffe endorses this when she approves of the liberal commitment to

liberty and equality for all. Her chief target is apparently a methodological

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individualism that denies the reality of group identities (2005: 11). But although she

seems to attribute this view to liberalism as such, it clearly applies to some liberalisms

rather than others, as she partly acknowledges (2005: 10). Similar points could be

made about Mouffes tendency to describe liberalism as rationalist, meaning that it

is committed to a uniform reason that excludes legitimate passion and plurality, and as

denying the permanent reality of conflict. I shall return to these exaggerated claims

later. For the present I note that to the extent that these criticisms of liberalism

succeed, they seem to be at odds with Mouffes claims to accept a liberal-democratic

framework. In fact they do not succeed (as I show later), but that is in spite of

Mouffes best efforts.

Mouffes attitude to liberalism in general is therefore equivocal to say the least. She

goes on to examine two main liberal paradigms in the field of democratic theory: the

aggregative and deliberative models.

The aggregative model is basically the dominant theoretical description of the

standard form taken by democracy in most contemporary liberal democracies.

Democracy, on the view made famous by Schumpeter (1943), is a process by which

political representatives compete for the votes of citizens at periodic elections. There

is little pretence on this view that a democratic society is one in which a united

popular will seeks the common good. Rather, it is accepted that any modern society is

irreducibly fragmented into a series of competing interests, and that one or other

constellation of interests will win out at any one time.

Mouffe actually spends little time attacking the aggregative model, although it is clear

that she is dissatisfied with it. Her basic objection is that this model discourages

popular participation, leaving people alienated from mainstream political processes

and tempted by more aggressive and destructive forms of expression (2000: 80). This

much she has in common with proponents of the deliberative model. Significantly,

however, she departs from them when they go on to criticise the aggregative model on

moral grounds, as encouraging decision-making on the basis of interests rather than

right and wrong. For the deliberative democrats, the aggregative model, with its

acceptance of self-interest as the universal currency of politics, is morally bankrupt.

Mouffe, however, follows Foucault and Gramsci in regarding moral judgements as

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themselves masked expressions of interests or power.3 Indeed, for Mouffe, the

moralistic tendency in democratic theory is especially dangerous, because it

descends so easily into violent antagonism (2005: 5). The Foucauldian reduction of

ethics to power, and Mouffes own equation of ethical argument with intransigent

moralism are further dubious assumptions I shall have to come back to.

The allegation of moralism is only one of several criticisms that Mouffe launches

against the deliberative model of democracy, which is her principal critical target.

The case for deliberation starts from dissatisfaction with the aggregative status quo

with its amoral, interest-driven character and its discouraging of participation, as

already mentioned, and also with its irrationalism. Under the aggregative system,

ordinary people are not required to give reasons for the way they vote, so there is

nothing to stop them voting on the basis of prejudice or ignorance. That prejudice and

ignorance are in part the result of manipulation by political elites, who are in turn

increasingly guided by public opinion studies that merely identify the prejudices to

which they need to appeal in order to maintain popular support (Ackerman and

Fishkin 2003: 9-10).

Against the amorality, irrationality and non-participatory tendency of the aggregative

model, deliberative democrats seek, in Mouffes words, rational consensus through

free discussion (2005: 13). They seek, that is, not merely a modus vivendi settlement

of competing interests, but an ethically-based agreement on the common good. They

seek not merely a shouting-match of prejudices but a decision based on sound and

mutually acceptable reasons. And they seek greater participation not in the form of

direct engagement in law-making (which they accept is impossible given the scale and

complexity of modern societies) but widespread dialogue with fellow-citizens in order

to try to understand one another before making judgements.

Crucially, the deliberative dialogue must take place in public and under fair

conditions. Different deliberative theorists give somewhat different accounts of what

these fair conditions are, the principal versions being those of Habermass ideal

3For an account of Mouffe as a follower of Foucault, see McNay 1998.

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speech situation and Rawlss idea of public reason.4 What these rival views have in

common is a basic commitment to including in the discussion as great a range of

voices as possible, to requiring that all participants give one another a respectful and

even generous hearing, and to insisting that the participants be prepared not only to

assert but also to justify their views, and to justify them in terms accessible to the

other participants.

Mouffe rejects the deliberative picture of democracy because it denies what she calls

the political. While the deliberators envisage the political as a space of freedom

and public deliberation, Mouffe sees it as a space of power, conflict and antagonism

(2005: 9). There are thus several dimensions to the reality that Mouffe claims is being

denied here. The first is the fundamental role of power, already mentioned in

connection with Foucault and with Gramscis notion of hegemony.

Second, there is the idea of antagonism, which Mouffe takes from Carl Schmitt

(1996). For Schmitt, there is a deep-seated natural human tendency to antagonism,

or the urge to separate into mutually opposed camps of friend versus enemy, us

versus them. The tendency to antagonism is the essence of the political(2005: 8).

But the political is denied by liberal rationalism, which seeks agreement and harmony

against the grain of human antagonism, and by liberal individualism, which prevents

us from understanding the primacy of collective identity.

Third, there is behind the notion of antagonism the still deeper idea of value

pluralism, which Mouffe takes from Max Weber (1948). For Weber, the modern

disenchantment of the world means the abandonment of the premodern notion of an

objective and harmonious moral order. Instead, we see ourselves as creating our own

values and as choosing among them without objective guidance when they conflict.

Consequently our moral choices are fundamentally subjective, non-rational.

Something like the idea of value pluralism lies behind Schmitts doctrine of

decisionism, according to which political conflicts cannot strictly be resolved, but

only decided by an act of arbitrary will. Schmitt goes on to use this doctrine to defend

4Habermas 1996, 1998; Rawls 1993, 1999.

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the principle of dictatorship in general and the Nazi fhrerprinzip in particular.

Mouffe, however, sees decisionism, and the value pluralism she associates with it, as

a basis for democratic theory. Her first step in this direction is to deploy these ideas

against deliberative democracy and liberalism, agreeing with Schmitt that liberal

deliberation is too rationalistic, and too oriented to consensus, to accommodate the

deep plurality of values. If values are plural in Webers sense, then they will always

conflict and there can be no final, correct answer to the question of how the conflict

ought to be resolved: such conflicts will be undecidable (2000: 103), people will

always disagree about them. Moreover, people will disagree not just as a matter of

rational argumentation but passionately. Here is another failing of liberal rationalism,

according to Mouffe: it ignores the affective dimension of the political (2005: 6).

To sum up, according to Mouffe, the trouble with deliberative democracy, and with

liberalism more generally, is that they try to evade the political. Their moralism

invites intransigence, their rationalism denigrates the passions, their quest for

consensus denies the tendency to antagonism, and their search for final answers flies

in the face of value pluralism. Mouffe adds to this list the pretense of neutrality

offered by many contemporary liberalisms and deliberative theories, according to

which key claims are said to be neutral among rival conceptions of the good that is,

independent of any particular view of how life should be lived, and consequently

acceptable to people from any way of life. For Mouffe, the realities of antagonism

and value pluralism show that there can be no such neutral territory. The domain of

politics even when fundamental issues like justice or basic principles are concerned

is not a neutral terrain that could be insulated from the pluralism of values and

where rational, universal solutions could be formulated (2000: 92). To attempt to

evade this truth is both unrealistic and dangerous dangerous because political

conflict is likely to manifest itself with greater violence if it is not allowed proper

outlets.

What does Mouffe propose instead? Clearly, her preferred democratic model must

give due recognition to the tendency to antagonism and the value pluralism

underlying it. This is her agonistic model of democracy. Its central feature is the

centrality and permanence of conflict in political life. Against the consensus and

harmony that Mouffe associates with the liberals and deliberators, agonism regards

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political struggle as ineradicable (2000: 105). Moreover, struggle is also a positive

value, since it is a condition for real democracy it is only where partisan political

combat is allowed to express itself that the political sphere is alive and healthy.

Mouffe also stresses the hegemonic nature of political conflict. Such conflict is

fundamentally a contest for the power to determine what counts as legitimate:

legitimacy on this view is simply successful power (2000: 100). Unlike the liberal

and deliberative ideal, agonism does not try to eliminate or diminish power, since

power is inescapable and consitutive of ones very identity. Rather, the goal of

agonistic politics is to constitute or mobilise power in a democratic way that is,

to empower a multiplicity of democratic voices to enter the struggle for hegemony.

The same principle applies to the passions: these must be mobilised rather than

subordinated to reason, as on the liberal-deliberative view. Another contrast with that

view is that the hegemony that is the goal of agonism cannot be a truth that is fixed

once and for all (2000: 93), but rather a provisional settlement that is always

contested, and that holds only as long as people are prepared to maintain their

allegiance to it.

At this stage one might suspect that Mouffe is offering a recipe for might-is-right

anarchy. To this she would reply that she is not advocating a total pluralism, and

that some limits need to be put to the kind of confrontation which is going to be seen

as legitimate in the public sphere (2000: 93). These limits are, of course, political

in nature rather than moral or rational.

The key limit is recognition that the aim of democratic politics is to transform

antagonism into agonism (2000: 103). Schmittian antagonism is conflict between

enemies who seek each others destruction. But agonism is conflict between

adversaries who oppose one another but who also regard each other as holding

legitimate views. An adversary is somebody whose ideas we combat but whose

right to defend those ideas we do not put into question, a legitimate enemy with

whom we have a shared adhesion to the ethico-political principles of liberal

democracy: liberty and equality (2000: 102). This is the real meaning of liberal-

democratic tolerance. Nevertheless, the relation between agonistic adversaries is not

the same as that between liberal competitors. While competitors are rivals for

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dominance within the existing hegemonic system, adversaries put into question the

dominant hegemony itself (2005: 21).

To summarise, Mouffes agonistic model of democracy seeks a vibrant clash of

democratic political positions (2000: 104). It emphasises permanent conflict rather

than consensus, the primacy of power over morality, hegemony rather than consent,

and the passions rather than reason. At the same time it seeks to defuse or tame

antagonism (2000:101, 2005: 19, 20), converting it into agonism, which involves

respect for the freedom and equality of persons and toleration for the expression of

their views even if we oppose them. The tendency to antagonism must be

acknowledged as permanent, but it can and should be channelled into a less

destructive but still vigorous form of struggle that is characteristic of the political.

Problems with agonism

Mouffes picture of agonistic democracy may seem attractive to some people, but

there are serious problems with it. In this section I shall discuss three sources of

difficulty with Mouffes view her supposed radicalism, the extent to which her

position can be justified, and her critical account of liberalism and deliberation

reserving a fourth, her understanding of value pluralism, for the final section

How radical is Mouffe?

Mouffe presents her model of democracy as radical, but in what sense is this so?

One possibility is that it opposes the dominant liberal-deliberative paradigm. But we

have already seen that in this respect Mouffes position is highly ambivalent.

Although she criticises various aspects of liberalism and deliberative democracy (as

she presents these), at the same time she denies that liberalism is the enemy and

claims to be working within a liberal-democratic framework. This stance is

confirmed by her insistence that agonism, as opposed to antagonism, involves

acceptance of political opponents as holding legitimate views that they are entitled

to express an explicit endorsement of liberal-democratic tolerance. So far,

agonistic democracy seems indistinguishable from liberal-democratic orthodoxy.

Perhaps the difference lies in the agonistic insistence on the primacy of power as

against the liberal-deliberative commitment to the restraint of power? In this

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connection, Mouffe speaks of agonism as involving the constitution or mobilising of

power rather than its elimination. One problem with this formulation is with its

assumption that liberals are committed to eliminating power (in favour of a total

neutrality), but I shall have to return to this. One may also ask what kind of power

is being constituted or mobilised here: is it any form of power, such as that of anti-

democratic groups like neo-Nazis? It turns out that Mouffe has in mind only certain,

approved kinds of empowerment. What she wants is summed up in her phrase, a

vibrant clash of democratic positions (my emphasis) that is, a contest between

views that are all committed to a shared set of democratic principles, including respect

of persons, toleration of others right to speak, and so forth. This would be a vibrant

clash of the right-thinking: actually more restrictive than liberal-democratic

orthodoxy, which permits the expression of anti-democratic positions at least in the

form of speech.

The same point emerges when we consider Mouffes use of the idea of hegemony.

She presents this as another radical feature of her position, asserting that while liberal

competitors are merely rivals for power within the existing structures of liberal

democracy, agonistic adversaries seek hegemony, or the dominance of their

preferred world-view. But adversaries are also defined by Mouffe as legitimate

opponents, and legitimate is in turn understood in hegemonic terms as expressing

whatever outlook is dominant de facto: successful power. If fascism achieved

ideological dominance, then presumably it would be fascist values that were

legitimate. Since the current hegemony is liberal, it seems that liberal values are

legitimate, for us now.5 If adversaries are legitimate enemies, then only those

willing to accept liberal values can count as adversaries. And since the political is a

sphere of struggle between adversaries, the political must now be a sphere of

struggle within liberalism rather than between liberalism and alternatives to

liberalism.

Indeed, Mouffes emphasis on hegemony suggests that the net practical effect of

agonism will be not so much liberal as conservative. If our values are no more than

expressions of dominant power formations, then even the most radical normative

5Whether Mouffe would accept that liberal hegemony extends globally, so that liberal values

are legitimate for all human beings now, is a question I shall leave aside.

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alternatives we could imagine must be in some way complicit with existing structures.

On this reading, the hegemonic approach, far from enabling a more radical

questioning of the status quo, actually imprisons us within it. In this respect Mouffe is

open to a familiar criticism of structuralist and post-structuralist theory. The point is

well made by Habermas, for example, who aptly describes this kind of theory

(associated with Foucault and Derrida) as, despite its typically radical pretensions,

fundamentally neoconservative in its political implications (1981: 13). Once ethics

has been reduced to a function of power, the net result is to play into the hands of

those who possess power already, and to rob the powerless of their best weapons:

appeals to reason and justice. The upshot of Mouffes supposedly radical form of

democracy is that its likely to resemble nothing so much as the aggregative or

interest-group form of liberal democracy that is currently dominant that is, the

pursuit of economic and sectarian interests within a framework of basic liberal-

democratic values.

Can agonism be justified?

Perhaps someone might reply that, whether one calls Mouffes position radical or

not, it is well-founded and persuasive. This response appeals to a notion of

justification, which raises a further set of difficulties. On the hegemonic view she

accepts, normative justifications are nothing more than disguised expressions of

interests or power relations. While this kind of view may seem to give the critic a

strong weapon, since any critical target can be exhibited as expressing norms that are

merely contingent and interest-serving, the weapon is obviously double-edged, since

it can be turned against the critics own position. In this connection Mouffes position

begs two obvious questions. First, why should Schmittian anatagonism be defused

into Mouffian agonism? Second, why should we choose democracy at all? If all

normative commitments are merely expressions of interests, then why should we

prefer democratic interests to anti-democratic interests?

Mouffes reply would probably be that answering these questions is both impossible

and unnecessary. Its impossible, because ultimate, reasoned justifications or

foundations for normative commitments are not to be had in the end because of

value pluralism. I shall return to this later. Its also unnecessary, because we

generally sustain these commitments not on the basis of rational argument but through

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emotional identification. Allegiance to democracy and belief in the value of its

institutions do not depend on giving them an intellectual foundation. It is more in the

nature of what Wittgenstein likens to a passionate commitment to a system of

reference (2000: 97). Perhaps Mouffe is not constructing a reasoned case at all but

merely motivating a passionate commitment to a democratic system of reference in

general and to agonistic democracy in particular?

If this were all that Mouffe was doing the results would be patchy. No doubt some

people may like her vision of politics as a struggle for power between us and them,

like a football match, but others will find this unappealing. In any case, this is clearly

not all that Mouffe is doing. Despite the rhetoric of passionate commitment, she is

offering arguments. At most Mouffe might claim that her arguments are intended

only for fellow-democrats, treating non-democrats as beyond the pale of debate, and

simply assuming acceptance of fundamental democratic values: equality, liberty,

toleration. Even that is not really true, because part of Mouffes argument is with

Schmitt, who is no democrat. But supposing that we accept that Mouffes point is not

to argue for democracy in general, she is surely attempting to argue i.e. to provide a

reasoned case for agonistic democracy. The case has to be made against two

opponents. On one side, the democratic values listed above are common to

deliberative as well as agonistic democracy, and Mouffe is trying to persuade us to

reject the former and accept the latter. On the other side she wants us to endorse

Schmitts notion of natural antagonism but also to oppose his dismissal of democracy

and to accept the possibility and desirability of agonism. Antagonism may be natural

and inevitable but agonism is not: a case has to be made for it.

What is Mouffes case for agonism against Schmitts acceptance of antagonism? She

seems to give two answers, one prudential, the other moral. First, part of her answer

seems to be that a society based on antagonism would be self-destructive. But

Schmitt argues that antagonism within a society can be managed through dictatorship

rather than democracy, and the decade-long success of the Nazi regime before it was

overcome by external force is evidence for his view. In more general terms, a society

obviously does not have to be democratic in order to survive. Mouffes stronger

reason for defusing antagonism and affirming democracy is her starting point in

liberal respect for persons and toleration. But then, the force of that assumption is

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undermined by her own insistence that such principles are merely hegemonic, or

expressive of dominant interests within liberal democracies. The question remains,

why should those interests be privileged over the interests preferred by Schmitt?

There is in short a massive contradiction in Mouffes argument between, on the one

hand, the ethical commitments she needs to sustain her case for agonistic democracy,

and on the other hand her insistence that ethical claims are merely expressions of

power relations. In the face of this one may ask why Mouffe is so keen to insist on

the ultimate reality of hegemony. There seem to be several answers, but none is

much help to her case overall.

One explanation is that she thinks that only struggle at the level of hegemony is

sufficiently radical to challenge existing relations of power and inequality (2005: 21).

That brings us back to the issue of Mouffes tangled and dubious claims to radicalism,

already discussed. Another answer is that she sees moralism as leading to

antagonism rather than agonism, because it turns the we/they confrontation into one

between good and evil in which the opponent can be perceived only as an enemy to

be destroyed (2005: 5). But why should framing the debate in terms of power and

interests be any less antagonistic in potential than framing the debate in moral terms?

The history of class and ethnic warfare is not encouraging in this respect. Conversely,

must moral debate be seen as antagonistic? Its true that moral debate is sometimes

understood by the participants in terms of good vs evil, but that neednt be the case.

Argument on ethical grounds is compatible with seeing ones opponent as simply

mistaken, or as not appreciating the whole picture either of which is, in turn,

compatible with Mouffes notion of the adversary, and therefore with the political.

Mouffe would no doubt reply that appeals to reason and ethics are ultimately

disguised expressions of power. Whatever the limitations of hegemonic political

action, the alternative rationalistic and moralistic view is unacceptable because it

rests on an untenable essentialist understanding of values. Notions of a universal

rationality and morality presuppose conceptions of a universal human nature and

human good. But all identities are necessarily precarious and unstable (1992:

10), they can never be completely fixed (2005: 18). Therefore, radical and plural

democracy requires a non-essentialist framework (1992: 10). Liberal ideals of

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consensus and consent violate such a framework by proposing a permanent model of

what counts as reasonable and justifiable for all human beings.

However, all political positions rely on essentialist claims, because all propose norms

that imply conceptions of human nature and the human good. Mouffes own position

is no exception. First, her whole preference for democracy depends, as we have seen,

on her accepting the liberal principle of respect for persons as fundamentally free and

equal (1992: 12, 2000: 81, 2005: 32). Without this, why should she not follow

Schmitt and embrace antagonism? Second, the emphasis on antagonism as a

permanent potentiality in human experience is also an essentialist claim. According

to Mouffe, the task of political theory is to inquire into the essence of the political

(2005: 8). That essence is the tendency to antagonism, which as Schmitt says, is an

ever present possibility; the political belongs to our ontological condition (2005: 16).

Antagonism is inherent in human ends (2005: 11), an inescapable feature of our

human form of life (2000: 98). The crowd phenomenon described by Elias Canetti,

and endorsed by Mouffe, is part and parcel of the psychological make-up of human

beings, as is the aggressive instinct noted by Freud (2005: 24, 26).

So, the antagonistic dimension of the political is, for Mouffe as for Schmitt, an

essential element of human nature. It is less likely that she regards antagonism as an

element of the human good, since she apparently sees the actual flourishing of

antagonism as undesirable. On the other hand, she comes close to presenting agonism

as a universal value, since she describes its denial as fraught with political dangers

(2005: 2, 30) and its presence as necessary for a political system to be well-

functioning (2000: 104). One gets the general impression that she has in mind

something like the classical image of the healthy body politic. Indeed, there is a

distant echo of this in her reference, in connection with the idea of the ineradicable

nature of collective identification and antagonism, to Lacans notion of the human

bodys tendency to seek enjoyment (jouissance) (2005: 26-7).

The reality is that, despite her claims to be championing an open-ended and open-

minded outlook emphasising contingency and non-essentialism, Mouffe is working

with quite specific background conceptions of human nature and the human good.

Her Schmittian picture of human nature is basically a collectivised version of Hobbes,

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emphasising the natural tendency of groups of human beings to enter into violent

competition with other groups.6 Her conception of the human good is partly liberal,

stressing the human potential for freedom and equality, partly republican, placing

active political participation at the centre of a healthy collective life, and partly

Schmittian, regarding the tendency to conflict as not only a fact of human nature but a

cause for celebration.

At the same time, Mouffes substantial descriptive and value commitments are

sharply contradicted by her professed acceptance of hegemony. Once she has said

that all identities are contingent, and all values and beliefs hegemonic, how can she

then propose respect for persons as a necessary political starting point, or insist that

the tendency to antagonism is ontological? Its hard to avoid concluding that

Mouffes thought is in this regard deeply confused, an object lesson in the

impossibility of combining the humanist tradition of the liberals and the early Marx

with the anti-humanist tradition of Nietzsche and Foucault.

Does Mouffe misrepresent liberalism and deliberative democracy?

Might Mouffe respond that even if her view suffers from inconsistencies and tensions,

at least it is an advance on the liberalism and deliberative democracy she criticises?

At one point she concedes that she is unlikely to convince liberals and deliberators

that agonism is the true understanding of the political; rather, she will bring to

the fore the consequences for democratic politics of the denial of the political as I

define it which of course is the besetting sin of liberalism and deliberation (2005:

4). But liberals and deliberators can respond that her criticisms on this score rest on

some gross misrepresentations of their views.

First, the claim that liberalism denies the permanent reality of disagreement and

conflict in the political sphere will come as astonishing news to liberals. The

permanence of social and political disagreement and conflict is in fact a cornerstone

of the liberal outlook, going back to the birth of liberalism in the wake of the

seventeenth-century wars of religion. It is precisely because people will always

disagree about the nature of the human good that liberals argue for mutual toleration

6The alignment with Hobbes is accepted by Mouffe herself (1996: 146). See also the

comparisons by Keane 2003: 180, Wenman 2003: 181.

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and limited government corresponding to the recognition of personal rights and

liberties. As Charles Larmore puts it, liberalism has taken to heart one of the

cardinal experiences of modernity. It is the increasing awareness that reasonable

people tend naturally to differ and disagree about the nature of the good life (1996:

122). Liberalism emphatically does not deny the permanence of social conflict; on

the contrary, the permanence of social conflict is a condition for liberalism. If

anything its the Marxist tradition that looks forward to the emergence of a perfected

society at the end of history, in which significant social conflicts are transcended.

Its true that liberals do seek consensus on the terms of a political framework with

which to contain and manage social conflict. Rawls, for example, distinguishes the

good, on which agreement is not to be expected, from the right, or the framework

of rules on which agreement is possible and desirable (1971: 446-449). Could Mouffe

maintain her objection to liberal consensus at this level? The trouble here is that her

own position is no different. She agrees that a pluralist democracy demands a certain

amount of consensus and that it requires allegiance to the values which constitute its

ethico-political principles that is, freedom, equality and toleration (2000: 103).

She adds that this is nevertheless a conflictual consensus, in which disputes continue

about how the framework principles should be interpreted. But this point, too, can be

accommodated by liberals if Rawlss theory of the right is supplemented by

deliberative democracy. That brings me to the next issue.

A second feature of liberalism and deliberation that Mouffe objects to is their alleged

finality that is, trying to fix once and for all the meaning and hierarchy of the

central liberal-democratic values (2000: 93). There is some truth in this claim as a

description of traditional liberal theory, but whether it points to anything

objectionable is another matter. We have already seen that Mouffe fixes some

meanings and hierarchies of values herself. Indeed, thats unavoidable for any

political position. Moreover, some forms of liberalism may be more flexible than

others, especially when supplemented by deliberative democracy. The leading

theorists of liberal-oriented deliberation are clear that the deliberative process is open-

ended and that the decisions that are necessary under that process are only provisional

(e.g. Gutmann and Thompson 2004: 6-7). This provisionality applies not only to

ordinary decisions under deliberation but also to the acceptance of deliberation

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itself. In this respect the deliberative view is more reflexive than that of Mouffe, who

never considers what would happen if her preferred agonism were applied to itself

that is, if agonistic arrangements were themselves the subject of a passionate contest

for hegemony between rival collective identities.7

A third aspect of the liberal-deliberative approach objected to by Mouffe is its

tendency to underestimate the political role of the passions, especially so far as these

are associated with collective identities. The mistake of liberal rationalism is to

ignore the affective dimension mobilised by collective identifications and to imagine

that those supposedly archaic passions are bound to disappear with the advance of

individualism and the progress of rationality (2005: 6). It is true that liberalism in

general does appeal to rational argument. The traditional model of liberal rationality,

the social contract, tries to capture the idea that social and political systems are not

part of the furniture of the universe, as on typically premodern views, but human

arrangements which those living under them may or may not have good reason to

accept. But the basic point of this rationalism is to pay due respect to persons as

autonomous beings capable of governing their own lives the same notion of persons

as fundamentally free and equal that Mouffe says she accepts.

It may also be true that some versions of liberalism place too much emphasis on

reason and are neglectful of the role of the emotions as a constructive force in politics.

But this is at most a matter of degree, and is certainly not equally true of all forms of

liberalism. Mouffes judgement may apply in the case of some forms of liberalism

strongly influenced by Kant, who understood moral autonomy as the conquest of the

passions by reason. But liberalism has many sources other than Kant, including Mill,

who is very far from denying to the emotions a central role in moral experience and

judgement. For Mill, individuality is a matter not just of cold reason but of

experiments in living that require the application of all [a persons] faculties

(1974: 123). Even in the case of Kantian liberals Mouffes claim is dubious, since the

leading example, Rawls, does not deny the importance of the emotions either in the

life of the liberal citizen or in his own arguments for justice as fairness (1971: ch. 8).

7What would happen, I suggest, is that some people will identify with the agonistic camp and

some will not. This would probably leave matters much as they are at present.

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Similarly, in the case of deliberative democracy, it is true that deliberation involves

reasoning, but that need not amount to ignoring or leaving aside or eliminating

the emotions, as Mouffe alleges (2005: 6, 2000: 95, 103). Obviously, people engaged

in deliberation may have strong feelings about the questions at issue. The point about

reason is that it provides a crucial check on those emotions, getting people to respond

to political questions not only vigorously but fairly since one thing reason can do is

remind people that their arguments must be applied consistently and that the interests

of others are, prima facie, just as worthy of respect as their own. Recall that the

deliberative stress on reasoned justification is in part a response to the aggregative

model, in which self-interest and irrational prejudice are indefeasible.

Mouffes exaggerated claims about the alleged liberal-deliberative denial of the

passions are linked to a one-dimensional assumption that liberal rationalism cannot

accept the permanent reality of collective identifications. She gives the example of

nationalism as one of the mass movements that liberals and deliberators will

disappear with the advance of individualism and the progress of rationality (2005:

6). Here again, the most liberals should concede is that certain kinds of liberalism are

guilty on this count; many others are not. Mouffe herself allows some notable

exceptions to her rule, including Isaiah Berlin, Joseph Raz and Michael Walzer (also

John Gray, whom I would hesitate to count as a genuine liberal). Other names that

could be added to this list are William Galston (2002) and Will Kymlicka (1995).

These are hardly marginal figures in contemporary liberal theory. What they show is

that liberalism is by no means ill-equipped to take account of group identifications

such as nationalism, since a sense of group belonging can be understood as a crucial

dimension of individual well-being.

A similar response can be made to a fourth criticism launched by Mouffe against

liberals and deliberators. This is that they seek to derive their conclusions from a

process of reasoning that claims an impossible neutrality or impartiality or

proceduralism that owes nothing to any particular conception of the good, and so

can be accepted by everyone equally (2000: 86-9, 91-2). Here, once more, the

accusation attaches more convincingly to some kinds of liberalism than to others.

Some liberals, like Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, have claimed that the basic principles

of liberalism are neutral among conceptions of the good (Rawls 1971, Dworkin

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1977, 1985). But others, such as Galston, Kymlicka and Raz have denied this claim

and argued the case for liberalism on explicitly comprehensive grounds that is, as

grounded in a particular conception of the human good.

I agree with Mouffe that neutralist justifications of liberalism cannot be sustained, but

that still leaves the comprehensive justifications. Its also worth noting that there is a

sense in which a more relaxed version of neutrality is acceptable, and intersects with

the comprehensive view. The idea of neutrality is essentially a late development of

the basic liberal commitment to toleration and accommodation of different ways of

life. This remains a valuable ideal on Mouffes view too. Even if no political form

can be absolutely neutral among conceptions of the good, some political forms

approach that ideal more closely than others hence, the notion of neutrality might

not be abandoned altogether if it takes the form of an approximate neutrality that

simply maximised the range of ways of life to be accommodated (Kekes 1997: 175).

Much the same position can be reached by those comprehensive liberals who argue

that the liberal conception of the good can be understood in a capacious or

parsimonious way that leaves room for many different interpretations (Galston 1991,

2002).

A final thought in this connection is that, despite her complaints about liberal

neutrality, Mouffe claims a spurious neutrality of her own. As we have seen, she

claims that her position is anti-essentialist, when in fact it rests on essentialist claims

concerning the person and the political. I would go further: Mouffes essentialism is

actually narrower, or more demanding, than that of most kinds of liberalism. That is

because of her insistence, reminiscent of classical republicanism, on placing politics at

the centre of peoples lives. While liberals typically acknowledge that people are

animated by a great variety of conceptions of the good, in which political participation

may play a greater or lesser role, Mouffe appears to believe, without quite saying so

(because explicitly normative language is to be avoided ), that the human good is

essentially that of the political participator.

Value pluralism, liberalism and deliberative democracy

So far, Ive challenged Mouffes agonistic model of democracy by bringing out the

hollowness of its pretensions to radicalism, the sense in which it both requires and is

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incapable of justification, and the various ways in which its criticisms of liberalism

and deliberative democracy rest on misrepresentations of those views. I now turn to

the bedrock of Mouffes case, her notion of value pluralism. The human tendency to

antagonism that she says is denied by liberal deliberation and acknowledged by

antagonism is rooted in the ultimate plurality of values. It is because values are plural

that, according to Mouffe, there can be no rational resolution of value conflicts (2000:

102). If value conflicts cannot be resolved rationally, then that would seem to rule out

the liberal and deliberative quest for reasoned justification of fundamental principles.

However, I do not believe that Mouffe possesses the best understanding of value

pluralism and its implications. She is right that the plurality of values implies the

permanence of political disagreement and conflict, but this is not as unrestricted and

non-rational as she supposes. On the contrary, value pluralism suggests a case in

favour of liberalism and deliberation.

Before proceeding, I note that if we were to accept Mouffes irrationalist

interpretation of decision making under value pluralism, that would rebound against

her own position too. After all, Mouffe is attempting a reasoned justification of

agonistic democracy, at least within the limits identified earlier. If she were correct in

her claim that no position can be insulated from the need for non-rational choice

among conflicting plural values, then that stricture would apply no less to her own

arguments than to those of her opponents.

Should we accept Mouffes irrationalism, however? As mentioned earlier, her notion

of value pluralism is taken from Weber. For Weber, modern disenchantment has

created a moral world characterised by a pervasive subjectivism. Even our most

fundamental values are subjective, because ascribed to features of the world rather

than discovered as objective features of the world. Consequently, our judgements

when those values come into conflict are also subjective. This, it seems to me, is an

unnecessarily bleak and narrow view of human value and its plurality. We may no

longer conceive of the world as a divinely ordered cosmos, but that in itself does not

mean the end of any notion of value as objective. A naturalistic conception of the

human good of what counts as living well for any human being is still possible on

the evidence of human experience as recorded in history, literature, and even the

social sciences. This conception of the human good will, of course, be a framework

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rather than a detailed blueprint, since it must accommodate much of the variety of

lives that human beings have in fact regarded as valuable. But to say that the human

good must be thinly described in order to accommodate diversity is not to deny that

it can be described at all.

There may by many candidates for the best description along these lines, but as space

is short I shall simply nominate Martha Nussbaums theory of human capabilities as

at least a leading contender: there is a set of basic capabilities, reflecting the

experiences of many different cultures, without which a life cannot count as good

human life (see, e.g., Nussbaum 2000: 78-80). These capabilities are

incommensurable with one another that is, they are without a common measure,

irreducibly distinct, each bearing its own intrinsic value. This makes Nussbaums

position a value-pluralist one, but without the blank subjectivism of Weber.

However, it is one thing to show that ultimately plural values can be objective in

Nussbaums sense, another to show that our choices among those values, when they

conflict, could be rational. If values are incommensurable, then doesnt it follow that

our choices among such values must be non-rational? If incommensurability means

the absence of a common measure, doesnt that mean the absence of any criterion

according to which one value might be given a greater weighting than another?

Simply to assume, as Mouffe and others do, that choices among incommensurables

must be non-rational or decisionist is to ignore a substantial and sophisticated

literature that argues otherwise. Writers who defend the possibility of practical

reasoning under value pluralism include Isaiah Berlin, Bernard Williams, Martha

Nussbaum, Henry Richardson, John Gray, John Kekes, William Galston and Ruth

Chang. 8 Although its impossible to do full justice to their views here, the relevant

common ground they share can be roughly summarised as follows. When values are

incommensurable with one another, that means that they are so distinct that they

cannot be brought within a single measure or a single ranking that applies in the

abstract or in every case. Liberty and equality, for example are distinct

8

Berlin and Williams 1994; Nussbaum 1992, 2001; Richardson 1997, 2003; Gray 1995a:154-5, 2000: 36; Kekes 1993: ch. 5, Chang 1997 (which contains several articles along these

lines).

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considerations: neither can be reduced to the other or to units of some meta-value like

utility, and neither always outweighs the other. However, that does not preclude the

possibility that there may be good reason to rank liberty before equality, or vice versa,

in a particular case or context. What makes this possible is that a particular context

may involve, or generate, a covering value (Chang 1997: 5) or set of background

criteria according to which the goods in question (that is, the particular instances of

these that concern us here) may be ranked or traded off for good reason. So, for

example, in the context of a society-wide commitment to reform in the direction of

greater social justice, there may be good reason to diminish the liberty of taxpayers in

order to expand equality of opportunity in education, health care and so forth. The

decision process would not be quantifiable, it would not be algorithmic, but it would

still be rational in the sense that there would in that situation be a decisive reason to

favour one possible outcome over another. This is not to say that every conflict of

plural values has a rational solution; only that, given an appropriate understanding of

what counts as rational in value judgement, reasoned decisions in this field are

possible. That is enough to falsify Mouffes blanket assumption that no value conflict

is rationally resolvable.

Indeed, Id go further: not only is practical reasoning compatible with value pluralism,

but pluralism itself gives us a reason to regard deliberation as an especially important

ethical and political value. Here I can do no more than sketch a case Ive set out in

greater detail elsewhere (Crowder 2002: ch. 8, 2004: ch. 7). The basic argument is

that value pluralism imposes on us hard choices among rival values, and that such

choices that can be made well only by people who possess a capacity for independent

critical reflection.

First, choices among conflicting basic incommensurables, if they are to be made well,

must be made rationally: its not enough to approach such decisions arbitrarily or with

indifference. Thats because of a principle that I call respect for plurality that is,

respect for the plurality of basic values. Given the objectivity of universal values in

Nussbaums sense, they cannot be treated casually but must be taken seriously.

Further, given the plurality or incommensurability of such values in the sense

accepted by all value pluralists, we should respect all such values equally. In the case

of Nussbaums capabilities, for example, we should show the same fundamental

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concern for all of the items on the list, and not just arbitrarily privilege one of these or

a selective package. That means that when they come into conflict, we must take

seriously the decisions we are then faced with concerning sacrifices and trade-offs.

To take such decisions seriously is to require good reasons for them, since the

alternative is to allow some genuine values to be neglected or downgraded as a result

of whims or prejudices or unexamined feelings.

Second, when we try to reason in such cases, we cannot rely conclusively on the usual

suspects among ready-made ethical decision procedures. We cannot rely on simple

monist systems, such as utilitarianism, since these rest on absolute value-rankings

(such as the privileging of utility, however defined) that are subject to reasonable

disagreement on pluralist grounds why should we favour this ranking in every case

rather than some other?9 Nor, for the same reason, can we rely on the rankings

implicit in conservative or relativist appeals to tradition or culture. The same

argument applies to Mouffes appeal to collective identities: these, too, stand for the

privileging of certain values over others in this case the values that identify the

group.

Consequently, value pluralism obliges us to think for ourselves in a strong sense. We

must be prepared to deal with each choice situation on its own terms, weighing all

relevant competing considerations, including those that conflict with rules and

customs. We must be able to stand back from received rules, customs and

identifications, recognise the value rankings these embody, and critically assess their

application in the circumstances. This may involve appeal to background values such

as personal and collective conceptions of the good, but these too must be subject to

revision. In short, value pluralism obliges us to be autonomous or at least to possess

the capacity for autonomy.10

9Note that this leaves open the possibility that there may be good reason to privilege utility or

some other value in someparticularcase.10

My argument is that under pluralism lives can count as good to the extent that they exhibit a

capacity for personal autonomy rather than its actual, or continual, exercise. This leaves open

the possibility that people may choose autonomously to live in traditional, non-autonomousways. For the distinction between capacity and exercise in relation to personal autonomy, see

Brighouse 2000: chs 4-5; Reich 2002.

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This pluralist case for personal autonomy implies a case for both liberalism and

deliberative democracy. If the capacity for critical reflection is such a crucial

component of the human good, then that should be reflected not only in personal but

also in political life. First, people are more likely to possess such a capacity if they

live in a polity that encourages it: a liberal polity. Second, to encourage critical

reflection is not merely to make possible its exercise in private life but in the public

sphere too. What is needed is a society in which the capacity for independent critical

thought is honoured by the culture as a whole. That principle surely extends not only

to the kind of individual lives that can be lived in that culture, but also to the manner

in which its political decisions are made: such decisions should be, where possible,

deliberative.

This view takes issue, of course, with the aggregative status quo, which privileges

interests over reasoned justification. It also opposes Mouffes agonism in much the

same terms. If anything, Mouffes version of democracy appears in this light as

essentially the aggregative model with the addition of Foucauldian and Schmittian

knobs. Just as in the aggregative case, interests and power are paramount for Mouffe,

and reasoned justification is excluded or marginalised. She may protest that her view

is more radical than standard interest-group politics, in that it presents the political

as a contest for hegemony, but I indicated the emptiness of that claim earlier: this

turns out to be a power-driven contest between rival interpretations of liberal

democracy. How is that vision of ignorant armies clashing by night any different

from what we have now? Deliberative democracy, by contrast, offers a vision of

politics in which the critical reflection of ordinary citizens is given a major role. To

argue for this is not to demand that politics become a wholly cerebral field of

dispassionate dispute among disembodied minds. Contrary to Mouffes exaggerated

picture, deliberation does not involve the elimination of the passions, or of

passionate attachments to collective identifications. It involves only the critical

questioning of those attachments and the assumptions they generate.11

11Nor does deliberative democracy require that every political decision be made through

public deliberation, the nature of which is unavoidably cumbersome and open-ended. Rather,the proper role of deliberation is confined to long-term consensus building in matters of

general principle. See Chambers 1995.

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Problems remain with the deliberative model, of course, as with every model. In the

case of deliberation, the most obvious problem is how such an outlook can be

institutionalised. I cannot deal with this here, except to note that the literature of

deliberation contains many interesting suggestions.12 What I do hope to have shown

is that the case for deliberation is not damaged by the criticisms advanced by Mouffe.

Her critique of deliberation and of liberalism more generally is unco-ordinated and

misleading, and her agonistic alternative is nothing more than a description of

orthodox interest-group politics translated into the fashionable and incoherent

language of post-structuralism. In particular, her bedrock understanding of value

pluralism is shallow and self-defeating. Far from undermining liberalism and

deliberative democracy, value pluralism provides them with a foundation.13

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Documents

Chantal Mouffe's Agonistic Democracy