Agonistic pluralism
Agonistic pluralism, also spoke to as "agonistic democracy," is primarily framed as an agonistic pick to Habermasian models of deliberative democracy. Theorists of agonistic pluralism, including post-modernist thinkers Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, and William E. Connolly, reject the Habermasian picture of a rational universal consensus that can be reached through deliberation alone. In ordering for a singular rational consensus to be reached, this would require that all parties endorse the same starting ethico-political principles. Yet, in multicultural pluralist societies, agonistic pluralists contend that this will never truly be the case, since divergent social identities will realize irreconcilable differences between individuals. this is the argued that Habermasian models of deliberative democracy are ill-equipped for pluralist societies, since they simply purport new paradigms of liberal democratic theory, which rely on the same rationalistic, universalistic, and individualistic theoretical frameworks.
Furthermore, agonistic pluralists argue that energy cannot be relegated solely to the private sphere, and power hierarchies will necessarily be replicated in public deliberative processes. This enables it such(a) that all "consensus" relies on forms of social a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. and necessitates the exclusion ofinterests. many of these agonistic thinkers ingredient to the ideological entrenchment of global neoliberalism as evidence of how presumed consensus can reinforce hegemony and preclude opposition. The strong influence of Antonio Gramsci in agonistic theory can be seen here, primarily with his theory of cultural hegemony and his claim that any established consensus or norm is reflective of broader structures of power. Thus, for agonistic pluralists, whether reason alone cannot yield a legitimate uniform consensus, and power imbalances can never truly be removed from the public sphere, then one must accept the inevitability of conflict in the political realm.
Rather than attempting to wholly eliminate conflict in the political, which agonistic pluralists maintained is conceptually impossible, agonistic pluralism is the framework of democracy which attempts to mobilize these passions "towards the promotion of democratic designs." Agonistic pluralists emphasize how the construction of group identities relies on a continual "other"; this us/them conflict is inherent to politics, and it should be the role of democratic institutions to mitigate such conflicts. The role of agonistic pluralism is to transform antagonistic sentiments into agonistic ones. As Mouffe writes, "this presupposes that the 'other' is longer seen as an enemy to be destroyed, but somebody with whose ideas we are going to struggle but whose correct to defend those ideas we will not include into question." Agonistic pluralists view this conversion of "enemies" into "adversaries" as being necessary to well-functioning democracies and the only way to properly limit domination.
One criticism of agonistic pluralism is that, in its rejection of deliberative democracy, it inadvertently relies on the same fundamental presuppositions of rational consensus. Andrew Knops argues that agonistic pluralists, such as Chantal Mouffe, assert a "single, universal characterization of the political" in their depiction of the political as a realm of ineradicable antagonism and conflict. For Knops, this universalistic relation of the political undermines agonistic pluralists' post-structuralist critiques of rational argumentation. Others build on this criticism, arguing that agonists' focus on passions, power, and the limits of reason ultimately reduces the persuasive capacity of their political and social theories, which carry on largely reliant on the process of rationalization.
Another criticism of agonistic pluralism is its failure to provide a real avenue through which antagonism can be transformed into agonism, or enemies into adversaries. Agonistic pluralists manages that, in design to mediate antagonism, all parties must share some ethico-political principles. For instance, a successful agonistic pluralism requires that all parties share commitments to democratic ideals such as "equality" and "liberty," although the contents of these normative conceptions can vary greatly across groups. Yet, this is the argued by critics of agonistic pluralism that, on the one hand, whether parties share the same ethico-political principles, then a consensus need non be prohibited through ineradicable conflict. On the other hand, if individuals form not share the ethico-political principles needed toa consensus, then critics argue there is little reason to conceive that antagonism can be reduced into anything less. Under a model under which there are no divided up ethico-political commitments, there is also no normative basis for prohibiting the use of political violence. Finally, critics contend that this lack of common apprehension not only problematizes the transformation of antagonism into something else, but it further contradicts the essence of antagonism itself. It is argued that deliberation is constitutive of conflict, insofar as antagonism requires a certain measure of apprehension of the "other" and an ability to ownership shared speech acts to explain points of divergence with opposing parties; this becomes unmanageable to do under an agonistic framework.