Theorizing Conflict, Agonism, and Realism in Democratic Thought

Room – HBS G6

Dulyaphab Chaturongkul (KCL); Gianni Sarra (KCL)

The nature, normativity and phenomena of conflict in politics have come to occupy a central role in democratic thought over the years. Polarization and populism, which thrives on the antagonisms of identity politics, have placed currently existing democracies under tremendous stress. Is conflict of such an intense and irreconcilable kind inevitable in democratic society? Is this for better or worse? What can democrats learn from conflicts that are left untreated? Do such predicaments call for substitutes or radically new understandings of democracy? What implications does an understanding of conflict have for how we view political ethics?

Agonism emerges as the main intellectual paradigm through which conflict is given its most systematic treatment in democratic theory and practice. Agonists focus on how conflict need not be viewed as some pathological dysfunction but instead as a potentially positive force. Is this the right approach to conflict?

Another candidate, political realism, is being revived as an alternative to so-called moralistic and/or idealistic approaches to political theorizing, which stand accused of glossing over the realities of political conflict and contestation. What can realist political theory say about our arguments for or against democracy in times of such stress? How can or should we theorize conflict from a realist perspective? Carlo Burelli (2021), for example, has opted for a realistic conception of conflict, wherein conflict is categorically distinct from mere disagreement or reasonable forms of disagreement. Conflict so-understood can neither be settled nor valorized by appealing to the ‘burdens of judgment’ (Rawls) or the demands of ‘value pluralism’ (Berlin). 

Another way of vexing this issue is to ask whether or how agonism and realism can meaningfully interact. Manon Westphal (2022), an agonist, recently argued that agonism can both offer a democratic supplement to realist standards of legitimacy and draw on realist justifications like contextualism at the same time when describing its normative ‘baggage’. 

More broadly, political-ethical concepts like adversarial ethics, power structures within democracy and compromise, not to mention legitimacy, can be further enriched by adopting similar kinds of exercise. How we understand conflict seems to affect the answers to debates such as how we treat our adversaries, view the compromises we make and treat inequalities in bargaining power. 

The aim of this panel is to bring together agonistic, realist and democratic theorists who are interested in questions of conflict in contemporary democracies. We invite papers which include (but are not limited to) discussions of:

• The relation between the political as a realm of conflict, coercion and contestation and the ethical broadly conceived;
• The extent to which political disagreement/conflict is desirable and/or inevitable for democracy;
• Ethical demands on our political conduct in conditions of conflict;
• Normative aspects of agonism and realist standards of legitimacy;
• Opposition and countervailing power in democracy; 
• How contemporary focuses of democratic theory and political ethics, such as elite capture, populism and questions of adversarial ethics, interact with conflict;
• Modus vivendi versus overlapping consensus;
• Justification and analysis of different types of compromise.