Radical Democratic Theory

Contemporary ‘crisis studies’ seek to advance democracy by emphasizing the threats that technocracy and populism pose to a specific form of it, liberal-democracy. Crisis studies argue that, since the 1970s, technocratic policymaking has deepened economic inequality. This has fostered citizenly anger, which populists exploit. Four well-known iterations of this argument are evaluated using a political realist lens. Political realism emphasizes the historical context of politics, actors’ possible motives, and a normative orientation derived from the political order itself, rather than an external ethico-moral ideal. The realist lens encourages comparison of crisis studies with historical political theory, which situates liberal-democracy within the long-term development of oligarchic systems of authority, and political history, which portrays technocracy as a product of the well-funded reaction to assertions of the democratic impulse that began in the 1970s. Populism is in this view not so much a perversion of liberal-democracy as it is a perhaps unintended consequence of anti-democratic reaction. The crisis studies make this error because based on a moral defence of the justice of the liberal-democratic order. Revealing the democratically unhelpful moralism at the core of crisis studies demonstrates the usefulness of political realism as a form of applied political theory, and not simply theory about theory.

The paper explores the political implications of the late Bernard Stiegler’s critical philosophy of technology, specifically in the context of radical democratic theory. Political theory has recently undergone “an ontological turn” insofar as radical democratic theorists have sought to construct theories that ontologically distinguish between politics and the political; the former refers to the (primarily statist) organisation and strategies of distributing power and resources, whilst the latter refers to the conditions by which a situation, institution or event becomes a site of politics. If the political is said to emerge in moments of social crisis, what are the implications of the view that technology acts as the primary catalyst for such crises? How may a reassessment of the inherent relatedness of technics and the political undermine the technocratic neoliberal governmentality of the status quo?

As mandates for social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities remain unfulfilled, many scholars question if the concept of inclusion is to blame. Critics worry that quantitative measurements of inclusion miss what should count: a meaningful life gained from a sense of belonging. We argue that both concepts—inclusion and belonging—embody a communitarian ethos in which citizens mirror the values of their community. In contrast, Chantal Mouffe’s radical democratic approach to inclusion emphasizes the importance of difference and the inevitability of exclusion. Mouffe thus offers a way to broaden our approach to social inclusion in the twenty-first century.