Democratic Legitimacy and the Real World

Room – Roscoe 2.10

Matej Cíbik (Central European University, Vienna); Attila Mráz (ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)

Even the strongest democracies in the Global North and West fall short of the ambitious ideals set by democratic theory. Around the world, liberal democracies face rising challenges—from populism and oligarchy to the growing threat of autocratization—moving many ever further away from these ideals. Moreover, electoral but non-democratic regimes have expanded globally.

How does political philosophy make sense of these trends? Do the tools and frameworks developed in analytic political philosophy still respond to our realities? This panel explores new directions in political philosophy and theory, inviting contributions that examine key issues and propose fresh approaches to the established debates concerning democratic legitimacy, authority, and the ethics of political participation—with particular attention to the above phenomena.

The expanding literature on non-ideal theory (e.g., Hänel & Müller 2024) has examined what theories of justice can say about institutional reform in societies that fall far short of just ideals, as well as the ethics of political action under conditions of severe injustice—from voting to civil disobedience and even uncivil resistance. However, there is still much room for similar reflection on how normative theories of democratic legitimacy and authority (e.g., Applbaum 2019, Buchanan 2002, Christiano 2008) can help us think about (re)building or (re)forming democratic institutions in flawed or non-democratic contexts, and how democratic ideals should guide political action in such settings.

Realist approaches to democratic theory have stressed the need to theorize deeply flawed democracies as well as outright non-democratic regimes, calling for more nuanced perspectives on legitimacy, authority, and political action in such cases (e.g., Bagg 2022, Jubb 2024, Schedler 2021, Szűcs 2023). Meanwhile, scholars outside the realist camp have also questioned whether ideal theories of democratic legitimacy and authority (e.g., Christiano 2008, Kolodny 2014, Habermas 1973) provide the right tools for analyzing autocratic regimes, democratic backsliding, or de-democratization (Wolkenstein 2023), or for guiding political action under autocracy (e.g., Kirshner 2014, 2022). Yet, while these realist and critical perspectives offer valuable insights, they leave us in need of more normative reflection on these non-ideal conditions with an action-guiding ambition—particularly in ways that connect back to democratic ideals.

This panel seeks contributions that critically examine the concepts, theories, and arguments used to justify or challenge the legitimacy, authority, or moral value of liberal democracies. Our aim is to explore how these frameworks apply to deeply flawed democracies or non-democratic regimes. Ultimately, our goal is to develop a theoretical toolkit that is both empirically grounded and morally ambitious—one that allows us to better understand and evaluate under-theorized regimes, their institutions, and guide political actions within them.

Paper topics include but are not limited to:

• Concepts and ideals of political, democratic legitimacy and authority as they bear on non-ideal conditions, imperfect or defective democracies and “soft” authoritarian systems.
• Explanations of how imperfect or defective democracies and “soft” authoritarian systems hold on, lose or construe their claims to legitimate power by using concepts and ideals of democratic legitimacy.
• Different justifications of democracy and democratic rule, especially as applied to imperfect or defective democracies.
• The value of elections, their legitimacy and authority, as well as their role in creating or maintaining regime-legitimacy and authority (if any) in non-ideal conditions.
• Ethical norms governing the conduct of individuals (e.g., candidates), collective agents and institutions (e.g., parties, civil society organizations, press and media) around elections in non-ideal conditions.
• The ethics of political participation and non-participation, including electoral and non-electoral forms, in imperfect or defective democracies and non-democratic regimes.
• The ethics of civil and uncivil disobedience and resistance against autocratic, illegitimate, or partially legitimate regimes.