Table Of ContentRECLAIMING DEMOCRACY
Democracy is in shambles, economically and politically. The recent economic
meltdown in Europe and the US has substituted democratic deliberation with
technocratic decisions. In Athens, Madrid, Lisbon, New York, Pittsburgh, and
Istanbul, protesters have denounced the incapacity and unwillingness of elected
officials to heed to their voices.
While the diagnosis of our political-economic illness has been established,
remedies are hard to come by. What can we do to restore our broken democ-
racy? Which modes of political participation are likely to have an impact? And
what are the loci of political innovation in the wake of the crisis? It is with
these questions that Reclaiming Democracy engages. We argue that the managerial
approach to solving the crisis violates ‘a right to politics,’ that is, a right that our
collective life be guided by genuine politics: by discussion of and decision among
genuinely alternative principles and policies. The contributors to this volume
are united in their commitment to exploring how and where this right can be
affirmed in a way that resuscitates democracy in the wake of the crisis. Mixing
theoretical reflection and empirical analysis, the book offers fresh insights into
democracy’s current conundrum and makes concrete proposals about how ‘the
right to politics’ can be protected.
Albena Azmanova teaches political theory at the University of Kent’s Brussels
School of International Studies, where she heads the postgraduate program in
international political economy.
Mihaela Mihai is the 50th Anniversary Lecturer at the University of York, UK.
Her research interests cut across political theory, political science, and law.
Routledge Advances in Democratic Theory
Edited by David Chandler and Paulina Tambakaki (both University of
Westminster)
Advisory Board: Benjamin Barber (City University of New York), Rajeev
Bhargava (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies), Bhikhu Parekh
(House of Lords), Fred Dallmayr (University of Notre Dame), John Keane
(University of Sydney), Chantal Mouffe (University of Westminster)
Democracy is being rethought almost everywhere today: with the widespread
questioning of the rationalist assumptions of classical liberalism and the implica-
tions this has for representational competition; with the Arab Spring, destabilising
many assumptions about the geographic spread of democracy; with the defi-
cits of democracy apparent in the Eurozone crisis, especially as it affects Greece
and Italy; with democracy increasingly being understood as a process of social
empowerment and equalisation, blurring the lines of division between formal and
informal spheres; and with growing demands for democracy to be reformulated
to include the needs of those currently marginalized or even to include the rep-
resentation of nonhuman forms of life with whom we share our planet.
Routledge Advances in Democratic Theory publishes state-of-the-art theoretical
reflection on the problems and prospects of democratic theory as many of the
traditional categories and concepts are being reworked and rethought in our glo-
balised and complex times.
The series is published in cooperation with the Centre for the Study of Democracy,
University of Westminster, London, UK.
1. Nations and Democracy
New Theoretical Perspectives
Amanda Machin
2. Reclaiming Democracy
Judgment, Responsibility, and the Right to Politics
Edited by Albena Azmanova and Mihaela Mihai
RECLAIMING
DEMOCRACY
Judgment, Responsibility, and
the Right to Politics
Edited by
Albena Azmanova and Mihaela Mihai
First published 2015
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Reclaiming democracy: judgment, responsibility and the right to politics /
edited by Albena Azmanova and Mihaela Mihai.
pages cm.—(Routledge advances in democratic theory; 2)
Includes index.
1. Democracy. 2. Representative government and representation.
I. Azmanova, Albena. II. Mihai, Mihaela.
JC423.R3258 2015
321.8—dc23
2014034938
ISBN: 978-1-138-02199-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-85091-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-77737-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Albena Azmanova and Mihaela Mihai
PART I
Loci of Democratic Politics 15
1 Agonism and the Crisis of Representative Democracy 17
Paulina Tambakaki
2 Freedom, Democracy, and Working Life 34
Keith Breen
3 Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism 50
Jodi Dean
4 Ungovernability 77
Claus Offe
vi Contents
PART II
Modes of Democratic Politics 87
5 Democracy, Law, and Global Finance: A Legal and
Institutional Perspective 89
Tamara Lothian
6 Democracy and the Absolute Power of Disembedded
Financial Markets 110
Alessandro Ferrara
7 Success and Failure in the Deliberative Economy 126
Arjun Appadurai
8 The Promise of Global Transparency: Between
Information and Emancipation 144
Matthew Fluck
PART III
Democratic Critique 163
9 Neoliberalism, the Street, and the Forum 165
Noëlle McAfee
10 Founding Political Critique in a Post-Political World:
Towards a Renewal of Utopian Energies 184
Nikolas Kompridis
11 From the Assembly to the Agora: Nonlinear Politics and
the Politicisation of Everyday Life 202
David Chandler
List of Contributors 219
Index 223
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The series editors, Paulina Tambakaki and David Chandler, encouraged us
throughout the whole process. Our editors at Routledge, Natalja Mortensen,
Lillian Rand, and Darcy Bullock, offered their professional help at all stages.
We would like to thank our universities and families for providing us with the
necessary support to complete this project. We acknowledge that, while work-
ing on this collection has supplied plenty of evidence in support of the adage
‘Academic cooperation is much like herding wildcats,’ the pleasure of intellec-
tual companionship that came with it decidedly offsets the scratches and the
shortness of breath. We probably owe an apology to all contributors for the
likely misunderstanding to which we are exposing their work by enabling unin-
tended associations among the ten pieces, but we hope they will never request
it. It is with curiosity—not guilt—that we look forward to the debates the book
might trigger.
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INTRODUCTION
Albena Azmanova and Mihaela Mihai
The ‘government of anybody and everybody’ is bound to attract the hatred
of all those who are entitled to govern men by their birth, wealth, or science.
—Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy
Liberal democracy is in dire straits: the street revolts against markets and
governments; voters propel anti-establishment parties into parliament; heads of
state venture to save private banks with public money; and well-meaning public
intellectuals of the left and the right demand, in the name of democracy, that
more power be given to the people who are already at a loss how to handle the
maddening complexity of the world they inhabit. In a word, democratic hopes
have been thwarted by the current economic—turned social, turned political—
crisis. Notwithstanding increased street mobilisation, the impact citizens have on
politics has reached its nadir. Public discontent, which was rising even during the
prosperous 1990s, has reached new heights since the onset of the financial melt-
down of 2008 and the ensuing economic and social destitution. The formerly
silent spectators are not just demanding more accountability and transparency;
they request different politics: they are turning to contention and contestation,
rather than validation of rule through the rituals of electoral democracy. From
Athens to Madrid, from Lisbon to New York and Istanbul, los Indignados, the
99%, the Occupiers, and a Geração à Rasca all send the same anxious message—a
deep distrust in the capacity and willingness of elected officials to manage the
crisis in ways that serve the common good.
And here we face a paradox: while the streets have seen the most intensive
social mobilisation of the past decades, nothing meaningful follows in policy.
The apparent impotence of social protest marks liberal democracies’ unglamorous
