Ideology Critique and Its Limits

I have a new article out in New Political Science. You can read it here. Here’s the abstract:

Legitimacy and ideology both involve explaining controversial action. Discourses of legitimacy emphasize the sense in which these explanations can be genuinely meaningful, while discourses of ideology emphasize the sense in which these explanations are insufficient. It follows that discourses of legitimacy and ideology can be too one sided. In periods of social fragmentation, it becomes harder to successfully legitimate controversial action, and ideology critique proliferates. The existing order is disgraced, but this does not necessarily cause a viable alternative to emerge. Writing in the 1970s, Jürgen Habermas proposed to overcome social fracturing through forms of management. But instead of uniting subjects around a legitimate alternative, management has tended to reinforce and contribute to the fracturing that generates ideology critique. It has also produced subjects whose horizons are always already managerial, who tend to make demands in exclusively managerial terms. Rather than provide an alternative to ideology critique and managerial horizons, political science has internalized these features, becoming merely another instantiation of this problem. Instead of engaging in discourse management or ideology critique, radical political scientists need to take a sincere interest in discovering, articulating, and operating with the diverse plurality of legitimation stories that do in fact persuade the people they live among to accept controversial action. This has become particularly pressing at a time when the humanities and social sciences are struggling to legitimate themselves to the public and have consequently become perennial targets for the Trump administration. Without a capacity for legitimation, political science is susceptible to ideology critique.

Some of you may have heard that S. Matisko and I have gotten married. There will be a major post on Substack this coming Sunday discussing the modernization of my life, including the enlarged role that Substack is going to play going forward.

Stable to the Point of Dysfunction: Why the Liberal System Is Here to Stay (and frustrate us indefinitely)

I have a new chapter out in a new edited volume, Postliberalism: A Transatlantic Debate, published by Suhrkamp. Veith Selk and Julian Nicolai Hofmann edited the book, which has been published entirely in German. They have made sure it contains a genuine diversity of viewpoints, with chapters by Stefan Borg, Annelein de Dijn, Samuel Moyn, Nadia Urbinati, Philip Manow, Claudia Weisner, Christopher Daase, Thomas Biebricher, Adrian Pabst, Patrick Deneen, Anton Jäger, Dirk Jörke, Oliver Eberl, Ingolfur Blühdorn, Elif Özmen, Jan-Werner Müller, Fabio Wolkenstein, and Andrew Scerri. The book is available for €28 via Suhrkamp’s own website and Amazon.

My chapter makes the provocative argument that liberalism renews itself by feeding on the alternatives to it. The problems that have emerged with liberalism have emerged precisely because the alternatives are in such a sorry state. If the opponents of liberalism cannot credibly threaten to overcome liberalism, liberal institutions become excessively stable. I characterize postliberalism as a demand by the critics of liberalism to be taken seriously. But without the political capacity to threaten liberalism, postliberalism makes toothless demands; it issues bluffs that can be called. Beneath the bluster, what I call “postliberal liberalism” remains bound to operate within liberal institutions, never escaping them. I therefore suggest postliberalism is a kind of liberal democratic excrement rather than a true alternative. I make this point explicitly:

the question is not “how long can democracy hold out against authoritarianism,” it is “how long can democracy swim in its own filth?”

If you read German, I hope you’ll consider the book! Maybe, if it does well enough, Suhrkamp will partner with translators, and the chapter will appear in additional languages.

The Last Argument for Democracy

I have a new open access journal article out in Democratic Theory, “The Last Argument for Democracy: The Unsettling Reliance of Embedded Democracies on Authoritarian Specter Regimes.” As it’s open access, there are no paywalls. You can read it here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S2332889426000333.

Here’s the abstract:

Winston Churchill’s line—that democracy is “the worst form of Government” except all other forms that have been tried—concedes that liberal democracy cannot normatively satisfy us. In the absence of compelling positive arguments, liberals retreat to the Churchill line. But the Churchill line operates by comparing democracy with other, even worse forms of government. In the older embedded democracies, there is no recent direct experience of other forms of government. The Churchill line therefore requires a “specter regime”—a repugnant, yet viable foreign authoritarian regime that can serve as a foil. Without the USSR, it is difficult to find such regimes. Efforts to make China, Russia, and Iran into specter regimes carry enormous costs. But without positive arguments, these costs become hard to avoid.

Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies Affordable Paperback Release

My second book, Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies, has been released today in paperback. It’s available for under $25 (under £20). You can get it from the publisher:

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-legitimacy-in-liberal-democracies.html

Or you can get it from Amazon: https://a.co/d/0dtSVtsC

This is, in my view, the best thing I have made, at the most affordable price we are likely to see for the foreseeable future. If it does well, I am hopeful that I will be able to publish more affordable books.