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The Demos and Its Critics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2019

Aaron Maltais ,
Jonas Hultin Rosenberg  and
Ludvig Beckman
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Abstract

The “demos paradox” is the idea that the composition of a demos could never secure democratic legitimacy because the composition of a demos cannot itself be democratically decided. Those who view this problem as unsolvable argue that this insight allows them to adopt a critical perspective towards common ideas about who has legitimate standing to participate in democratic decision-making. We argue that the opposite is true and that endorsing the demos paradox actually undermines our ability to critically engage with common ideas about legitimate standing. We challenge the conception of legitimacy that lurks behind the demos paradox and argue that the real impossibility is to endorse democracy without also being committed to significant procedure-independent standards for the legitimate composition of the demos. We show that trying to solve the problem of the demos by appeal to some normative conception of democratic legitimacy is a worthwhile project that is not undermined by paradox.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , Summer 2019 , pp. 435 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2019 

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References

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48 Ibid., 626, 642.

49 Donahue and Ochoa Espejo, “Analytical-Continental Divide,” 151. Mouffe's approach (to which Donahue and Ochoa Espejo also refer) to the problem of the demos is in a sense an “impossibilist” position because she does not think a legitimate demarcation of the demos is achievable. However, it is important to see that Mouffe does not base this claim on the idea that any demarcation of the demos necessarily leads to the paradox of the demos as we described it in the introduction. Instead, she argues that the question of the demos's composition can never be legitimately closed because there is a tension between the individualistic universalism of liberalism and the excluding particularism inherent to democratic practice. She argues that this tension is intractable for liberal democratic theory. Mouffe clearly does not adopt the strongly procedural theory of democratic legitimacy that some impossibilists endorse. Rather she recognizes that procedural justice and democratic procedures “presupposes acceptance of certain values” (Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 68–69). Given her normative commitments, what is surprising in Mouffe's case is how little theoretical progress she thinks can be made on the problem of the legitimate composition of the demos.

50 Ochoa Espejo, Time of Popular Sovereignty, 174.

51 Ibid., 177.

52 Ibid., 178.

53 A similar critique of paradox in democratic theory and a call for a problem-based approach to democratic problems, based on a normative understanding of democracy, is defended in Warren, Mark E., “A Problem-Based Approach to Democratic Theory,” American Political Science Review 111 (2017): 39–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.