In the past months, Trudeau has survived two non-confidence votes despite just 33 per cent of Canadians approving of the Prime Minister’s leadership. This separation between the popular will and the Parliament meant to represent it seems at odds with responsible government, a core principle of Canada’s constitutional democracy. The distance that has seemed to grow between the people and the institutions of government supposed to represent them is symptomatic of post-democracy, a term originated by the political scientist Colin Crouch to describe a society that goes through the motions of democracy—such as holding elections allowing freedom of speech—but is really governed by “closed elites” and corporate interests (Crouch 2004, 104). So, why is it important to know about post-democracy, and how can this knowledge help us improve our democratic institutions?

Further developed by the Belgian theorist Chantal Mouffe, the theory of post-democracy contends that the tensions between “liberal and democratic principles” have been erased, meaning that instead of protecting popular sovereignty, “politics […] has become a mere issue of managing the established order, a domain reserved for experts” (Mouffe 2019, 17). Ultimately, examining current political issues through a post-democratic framework allows us to tackle the crux of democracy’s flaws rather than how they appear on the surface, and recognizing the implications of our post-democratic societies can point us to a mechanism to revitalize our institutions: Mouffe’s theory of democratic agonism.

Key Features of Post-Democracy

At the core of post-democracy is the disappearance of the conflict and dispute that is key to a healthy public debate, thereby reducing politics to the “sole interplay of state mechanisms and combinations of social energies and interests (Rancière 1999, 102). Exemplary of this is the United States’ behavior regarding the conflict in the Middle East. At least 44,118 people have been killed in Israel, Gaza, and the occupied West Bank since October 2023. Despite the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the escalation of the war in Lebanon, the US has continued to authorize military aid toward the Israeli government, totaling at least $12.5 billion between October 2023 and March 2024. This seems contrary to public opinion, as the majority of Americans have expressed that they disapprove of Israel’s military action in Gaza. In general, foreign policy stances have been somewhat excused by their having intricate motivations, as well as their complex implications and consequences. While this issue—and all conflicts—are undeniably difficult to simplify, US action regarding the conflict in the Middle East does not seem to register public concern. The antagonism and reactionism that have surrounded public debate over the conflict in the Middle East are further representative of the breakdown of dialogue and legitimate contestation democracy is meant to espouse.

Moreover, the processes of creating a political community—a demos—and the representation of the popular will are inherent to the democratic process. In post-democracy however, the demos is reduced to economic calculations and is thereby overshadowed by corporate interests. Illustrative of this phenomenon is the Canadian state’s continued exploitation of Indigenous peoples and the disregard for their rights in the service of natural resource extraction. Although Indigenous peoples in Canada have legal treaty claims to their land, the de facto integrity of these entitlements is put into question by the actions of the legal system. In 2020, the Supreme Court disallowed an appeal from the Squamish Nation, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, and Coldwater Indian Band in British Columbia over the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, just one example of the continued disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Forms of Indigenous resistance like barricades and protests, which circumvent legal action, also highlight the breakdown of democratic mechanisms of representation as Indigenous peoples continue to be underrepresented in the Canadian political system. Hence, the issues that lie behind the decay of democracy into post-democracy are not only the loss of democratic vitality in institutions and the increase of antagonism but also the loss of popular sovereignty created by the primacy of economic liberalism over political liberalism. The demos has become an economic community rather than a political one, for post-democracy “has eliminated the appearance, miscount, and dispute of the people” itself.

Toward a Solution

Mouffe and other thinkers in the radical democratic tradition of political theory concede that the emergence of post-democracy has been caused by the tension between the universalism of political liberalism and the democratic tradition, in which rule is based on the construction of a defined people. However, the post-democracy created by this tension and loss of popular sovereignty it engenders is not inevitable nor irreversible. Mouffe recognizes that conflict—be it over competing interests or what constitutes the demos—is an intrinsic feature of democracy. Her solution is to formalize this conflict through the practice of what she labels “agonism”, rather than the antagonism that post-democracy fosters. As Mouffe outlines, “politics aims at the creation of unity in a context of conflict and diversity; it is always concerned with the creation of an ‘us’ by the determination of a ‘them’”(Mouffe 2019, 101). Agonism is concerned with treating those we disagree with as “legitimate opponents”, or adversaries, “[those] whose ideas we combat but whose right to defend those ideas we do not put into question” (Mouffe 2019, 102). This form of ‘agonistic pluralism’ is not aimed at harmony or consensus, but promotes popular sovereignty by “mobilizing […] passions towards democratic designs” (Mouffe 2019, 103). 

To halt the slide into post-democracy and protect our political values—that ‘democracies’ as such are representative, pluralistic, and responsive—we must all agree that our different identities and conceptions of the common good all belong to the same system, and that conflict is necessarily inevitable. Mouffe’s formulation of agonistic pluralism is hence the way we can formalize this conflict and is an operational approach in the constant project of perfecting democracy.

Edited by Éva Leblanc

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and they do not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science or the Political Science Students’ Association.

Featured image by Michel Rathwell 

References:

Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism (Verso, 2019).

John Borrows, “The Environment, First Nations, and Democracy” in Recovering Canada: The 

Resurgence of Indigenous Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002).

Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2004)

Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis: 

University of Minnesota Press, 1999)