The concept of agonistic democracy has been around for some time but has often suffered from underdetermination. This is partly due to the fact that it is commonly defined in contrast to deliberative democracy. Deliberative democracy prioritizes consensus and mutual understanding; agonistic democracy acknowledges the role of conflict and contestation in the public sphere. This sort of thin differentiation is not particularly satisfying and became even more problematic when it was clear that deliberative democracy did not, or did not have to, exclude conflict and contestation. If agnostic democracy is to offer a real and significant alternative to mainstream accounts of democracy, it has to be about more than consensus versus contest. Marc Wenman's book offers a great deal more. Rather than presenting agonistic theory as a response to other conceptions of democracy, Wenman reads this tradition in a stand-alone way that conveys the power and significance of agonism as a rich tradition in its own right. Of course, Wenman does employ comparison and contrast. There is an excellent chapter laying out various models of democracy in relation to agonistic theory. The first and best strength of this book, however, is the way Wenman reconstructs the defining features of this tradition and anchors it deeply in the history of political philosophy as well as contemporary aporias and issues facing political actors today.
The book is broken up into three parts. In the first Wenman offers this compelling account of what stands at the heart of agonistic theory and ties the various practitioners together. This was my favorite part of the book although the whole is a very good read. The second section contains four chapters each covering an agonistic thinker: William Connolly, James Tully, Chantal Mouffe, and Bonnie Honig. These chapters are also very nicely done, offering clear and critical expositions. In the final section of the book Wenman offers his own version of agonism in part built out of what he thinks are weaknesses of the four preceding exemplars. Again the argument is nicely done and Wenman's insistence that we need to take our ideas of democracy to a cosmopolitan level is well taken but in the end the position he stakes out strikes me as dangerously extreme.
What pushes Wenman's discussion past the old “conflict versus consensus” trope is his argument that the primacy of constituent power is the link connecting agonistic theories of democracy. Mainstream views of democracy “tend to subordinate politics to constituted authority in one form or another” (15). Agonistic theories see politics as animated by an originary generative energy. Stressing constituent power in relation to agonism is not new but Wenman targets it as the defining feature of agonistic democracy. In a sense, then, for agonists, all politics are constitutional politics. The primacy of constituent power is then given content by a political ontology that sees pluralism, tragedy, and conflict as inescapable but ultimately productive. The final plank in Wenman's general conceptualization of agonism is that constituent power can be understood in terms of either augmentation or revolution. Augmentation, although often aspiring to radical transformation, works to some extent within the system while revolution aims for something truly beyond where we are now. Wenman thinks that agonists are for the most part held captive by the augmentation model; radical democrats (Badiou, Laclau, Rancière, Žižek), by contrast, are inspired by the revolutionary model. Wenman himself advocates a middle position.
Wenman offers a clear and compelling reading of all four augmentation thinkers, with his sympathies lying most closely with Honig. There is an interesting and not entirely intuitive progression in the treatment of these four: they are read as increasingly radical or at least less and less “hemmed in” by existing constitutional givens. Thus Wenman begins with Connolly as the most caught within liberal paradigms. After an informative and for the most part positive exposition of Connolly's contribution, Wenman ends with a big “however.” This pattern of informative and positive exposition ending with a big “however” appears in all four chapters. Connolly's “however” is that he is overly concerned with the inner or existential suffering of individuals and so is unable to engage in serious structural critique. In the end his position “resonates with liberal notions of tolerance and individuality” (135), a sure sign that he has failed to reach full escape velocity from existing power structures.
Tully is also read as too cozy with constituted authority in his attempts at rapprochement between agonist and deliberative democracy. Mouffe is praised for her “resolute denunciation of deliberative democracy,” but the radical potential of her ideas is hemmed in by her insistence that “struggles must unfold within the basic horizon of liberal democratic constitutionalism” (216). An interesting dimension of Mouffe's agonism is a realism that shuns any optimism about human agency. This leads her to worry (sensibly it seems to me) about violence and order and so lean towards Hobbes in her political philosophy. Wenman sees this as a weakness. But if Wenman is going to take the revolutionary road, he too needs to address questions of violence and order. Honig's work rounds out the foursome and she is defended as having the strongest aspirational dimension that sees agonistic democracy as pointing beyond our present neoliberalism. But “with her explicit disavowal of the ideas of revolution” (259), she too is unable to meet the most pressing challenges we face such as global climate change, nuclear proliferation, and global poverty. These problems require conceptualizing democracy in such a way that it can be open to truly radical alternatives to the existing order. Ultimately “the exclusive emphasis on augmentation characteristic of Connolly, Tully, Mouffe, and Honig leaves them forever hemmed in within the horizons of possibility established in the revolutions of the eighteenth century and their founding principles” (297).
It seems to me that there are two ways in which these thinkers can be understood as “hemmed in” by liberal constitutionalism. The first is that remaining within the framework of liberal constitutionalism makes it difficult for democracy to address, let alone resolve, crises on a global scale. Here Wenman is right to highlight a disconnect between the scale of our problems and the scale of our democratic theories. But the eighteenth century also brought us rights. The second way is that these thinkers are not ready to throw out rights and the rule of law as we search for new political orders. Wenman argues that the “radical capacity for innovation” can only be nurtured if we move beyond the augmentation model and embrace features of the revolutionary model. If this is true, then we need to be clear eyed and honest about the potential for tragedy. I do not see this honesty in Wenman's embrace of revolution. I see no recognition of the ways revolution can go wrong nor of the dangers of politics that are not hemmed in by something. I see no recognition that fascist groups are as eager to innovate our political world as cosmopolitans. I understand Wenman's frustration with the way that liberal constitutionalism curbs our imagination about prospects of a cosmopolitan future. But the dangers of radically innovative politics outweigh the hope that they will bring a global transformation for the better. So, much to my surprise, I find myself happy to stay with Connolly, Tully, Mouffe, and Honig within the framework of augmentation and very hesitant to follow Wenman to the next level of revolution.
