Author:

Keywords:

Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary, Social Sciences - Other Topics, consensus, deliberation, democracy, empty place of power, Jurgen Habermas, Claude Lefort, DEMOCRACY, 1606 Political Science, 2202 History and Philosophy of Specific Fields, 2203 Philosophy, 4408 Political science, 4410 Sociology, 5003 Philosophy

Abstract:

In this article I confront Jrgen Habermas' deliberative model of democracy with Claude Lefort's analysis of democracy as a regime in which the locus of power remains an empty place. This confrontation reveals several structural similarities between the two authors and explains how the proceduralization of popular sovereignty provides a discourse-theoretical interpretation of the empty place of power. At the same time, Lefort's insistence on the open-ended nature of the democratic struggle also points towards an unresolved tension at the core of Habermas' model between the cognitive nature of deliberation on the one hand and the freedom of moral and political agents on the other. A proper solution of this tension requires a full appreciation of the ineliminable gap between actual and ideal deliberation. Because actual deliberation can never result in an ideal consensus, the actual exercise of democratic power should be understood as an unavoidable interruption of deliberation. © 2008 SAGE Publications.