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January 2, 2007
In the eighth chapter in her The Return of the Political, which is entitled 'Pluralism and Modern Democracy', Chantal Mouffe addresses a question raised by Noberto Bobbio: do the liberal democracies, after the fall of Communism, have the reources and ideals to confront those problems (poverty and justice) that gave rise to the Communist challenge? It is a good question and one not often raised in public discourse in Australia, even though the defects of liberal democracy are widely known.---eg., executive dominance, the decline of parliamentary, the hegemony of corporate interests, etc
I recall Michael Sandel published a book entitled Democracy’s Discontent a decade or so ago in which he had argued that American politics were in a bad way. Citizens were anxious and fearful, and felt helpless in the face of the seemingly irresistible unravelling of the “moral fabric of community” and American politicians were incapable of making sense of this condition of popular discontent. Sandel traced this political predicament to a defect in the public philosophy by which Americans live. Political liberalism he argued produced a “procedural republic”, in which the procedures for public decision-making, which are based on values of fairness and openness, made no reference to more substantive ethical, moral or religious premises.
Since reasonable people cannot agree on the best way to live, government should be neutral on the question of the good life. So in politics people’s most fundamental convictions needed to be set aside. The challenge for political philosophy was to figure out how political discourse might “engage rather than avoid the moral and religious convictions people bring to the public realm.” Well, that is happening now with the rebirth of the religious Right.
Mouffe's response is that:
The point is no longer to provide an apologia for democracy but to analyze its principles, examine its operation, discover its limitations and bring out its potentalities.To do this we must grasp the specificity of pluralist liberal democracy as a political form of society , as a new regime (politeia), the nature of which, far from consisting in the articulation of democracy and capitalism, as some claim, is to be sought exclusively on the level of the political. (p.117)
It is here that Mouffe turns to Carl Schmitt, a conservative opponent of liberal democracy, to engage with his account of the weak points of liberal democracy so that these may be remedied.
Schmitt had argued that the key to parliamentary democracy was liberalism, which held that the truth can be arrived at through the unfettered conflict of opinions. The raison d'etre of Parliament is the public deliberation of argument, public debate and discussion. However, the Parliament of mass democracy replaces the public discussion through the dialectical interplay of opinion with partisan negotiation and the calculation of interests, as the parties have become pressure groups calculating their rmutual interests and opportunities for power, and they actually agree on compromisies and coalitions on this basis.
Mouffe says that Schmitt has to be taken seriously when he points to the deficiencies of liberal parliamentary democracy. Liberal democracy has become an instrument for choosing and empowering governments, it has been reduced to a competition between political elites and citizens are treated as consumers in the political marketplace. Mouffe asks: How then is liberal democracy to be given those intellectual foundations without which it is unable to command solid suport?
This, says Mouffe, is the challenge Schmitt poses for those who wish to defend a liberal democratic regime.
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