Agonistic democracy and constitutionalism in the age of populism

Abstract

The article examines the compatibility of agonistic democracy and populism as well as their relationship to the idea of constitutionalism. The first part shows that Chantal Mouffe’s recent attempts to reconcile her normative approach of an agonistic pluralism with a populist style of politics are not fully convincing. Although there are undeniable commonalities between an agonistic and a populist understanding of politics – the appreciation of conflict, the rejection of moralistic and juridical modes of conflict resolution etc. – the populist mode of the construction of the people (and the denunciation of political opponents as enemies of the people) risks impeding the transformation of antagonistic into agonistic modes of political contest. The tensions between agonism and populism are especially evident in matters of constitutionalism. This topic is examined in the second part of the article, which provides some ideas for reducing the normative and institutional blind spots of contemporary theories of agonistic democracy. It focuses on elementary principles for an agonistic concept of democratic constitutionalism that differs from the populist view of the relationship between politics and law, especially in respect of its interpretation of the concept of ‘resistibility’ of legal norms.

Populism and the political system: A critical systems theory approach to the study of populism

“…In contrast to centrist politics, centrist populism takes on a different form: It not only aims at conducting more moderate policies, but it also envisages the breakthrough of a reasonable popular common-sense against the quarrelling elites by invoking the people/elite distinction. A similar observation can be made in the field of left-populism (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, 2014;Mouffe, 2018;Howse, 2019;Michelsen, 2019); not only does it plead in favour of social justice on the policy level (as classical social-democratic politics would do), but it also strives for the disempowerment of the power bloc by mobilising inclusive peoplehood. A further difference must be drawn in comparison with folk politics.…”

Understanding democratic conflicts: The failures of agonistic theory

“…2005: 119). However, scholars have pointed out that this binary opposition of left and right is at odds with the project of pluralizing political conflicts (Straßenberger, 2016; Michelsen, 2022). Moreover, what kind of institutions realize agonistic conflict best is unclear.…”

Constitutionalism and Crisis Narratives in Post-Brexit Politics

“…The alternative to this liberal-legalist narrative is not, certainly, to nihilistically embrace raw power-politics unbounded by law, or to denigrate ‘constitutionalism’ tout court. Rather, we can look to constitutions not to dissolve political conflict around false universalism and false consensus, but rather to provide an arena in which – in Chantal Mouffe’s sense – political conflict can be conducted as ‘agonism’ not ‘antagonism’, where deep adversarialism can be conducted, yet contained, without the false pretence of thick normative consensus (Michelsen, 2019).…”