Staging democracy: rethinking political legitimacy and the public sphere

Abstract

By now it has become a common observation that liberal and republican models of democracy are inadequate in making sense of the expansive political landscape in today’s complex and pluralistic societies. Deliberative democracy has become a new favorite amongst scholars in the attempt to reinvigorate democracy through normative frameworks that emphasize rationality, consensus and informed discussions. On the other hand, scholars have questioned whether the this model is effective with regards to present forms of political engagements that are often mediatized and staged in ways that fall short of deliberative ideals.

This research moves beyond these models in the attempt to better capture the complex power relations that underpin contemporary liberal democratic societies. This involves rethinking concepts of political legitimacy and the public sphere. Through interrogating Habermas’s discourse model of democracy and putting him in dialogue with the works of Lefort and Foucault, it will be demonstrated that it is useful to view political legitimacy not as a status but a process in which individuals legitimate or de-legitimate the power relations that they find themselves in. In addition, the public sphere should be conceptualized as the public stage, in which individuals must struggle with not only the state apparatuses, but also with oppressive or dominating forms of power, in the government of both themselves and others. By redefining these two important concepts in political philosophy, this research seeks to rethink modern democracy as constituting the very condition of indeterminacy.