Democracy in Question: Democratic Openness in a Time of Political Closure

by Alan Keenan

Overview

This book explores the theoretical paradoxes and practical dilemmas that flow from the still radical idea that in a democracy it is the people who rule, and argues that accepting the open and uncertain character of democratic politics can lead to more sustainable and widespread forms of democratic engagement.

The author engages theorists from a range of democratic thought—Rousseau, Arendt, Benhabib, Sandel, Laclau, and Mouffe—to show how each either ignores or downplays the difficulties that democratic principles pose. Though there can be no entirely valid solution to the paradoxes that plague democracy, the author nonetheless argues that democratic politics—particularly under contemporary conditions of social fragmentation and insecurity—urgently requires new practical and rhetorical strategies. The book concludes by addressing the American context, elaborating the need for a language of democratic engagement less ensnared in the anti-political logic of moralism and resentment that now characterizes the American political spectrum.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804738651
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	02/21/2003
Edition description:	1
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Alan Keenan is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Peace and Conflict Studies at Bryn Mawr College, where he teaches classes in the Political Science department. He spent most of the preceding three years in Sri Lanka conducting research on the politics of human rights and the role of local civil society organizations in peace and conflict dynamics. He received his PhD in political theory from Johns Hopkins Universityand has taught at various institutions across the country. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: On the Politics of Human Rights and Civil Society Building in Sri Lanka."

What People are Saying About This

Jeffrey K. Tulis

Paradox is the heart of the democratic idea in Alan Keenan's impressive book. A democracy worthy of the name seems to require inclusiveness and restriction, contestability and boundedness, openness and closure. Democracy makes possible popular sovereignty yet seems to presuppose the very people that it makes. Keenan's rich account of these contradictions in theory concludes with an arresting, if somewhat paradoxical, suggestion for the improvement of democratic practice-that the key to a more robust political future is the cultivation of more modest democratic virtues, such as capacity for self-limitation in support of democracy always in question. Profoundly radical and eminently sober at the same time, this book is democratic theory at its best.
—Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin

Bonnie Honig

There is a paradox at the heart of the idea of democracy, a product of its commitment to freedom combined with its need to found that freedom in a foundation that constrains. Democracy, devoted to freedom, is always, ineluctably implicated in sovereignty, violence and rule. This paradox is ignored or resolved by most democratic theorists, but not by Alan Keenan. In "Democracy in Question," Keenan relentlessly tracks the mischief worked by democracy's fundamental paradox in the thinking of Castoriadis, Rousseau, Arendt, Laclau and Mouffe, and Sandel. Keenan's readings of all these thinkers are masterful. On Arendt, in particular, he is brilliant. This book, rigorous, penetrating and clearly written, is no less than a must-read for everyone interested in democratic theory and the politics of freedom and legitimation.
—Northwestern University and American Bar Foundation

Mark E. Warren

"The very features of democracy that make it attractive-its openness, reflexivity, and fluidity-also generate objectionable qualities. Even at its best, democracy generates serial resolutions, each of which brings into existence new closures, manifest in the new and serial "we's" constituted by democratic procedures. In this fine book, Alan Keenan argues that democrats must understand that these objectionable features are essential to what democracy is. Examining a number of contemporary democratic theories committed to openness and inclusion, Keenan shows how often strategies for grounding democratic openness edge toward closure, and do so while failing to acknowledge the basic risks of democratic experience. What if, Keenan asks, the search for unquestionable grounds for democratic openness turns out to undermine democracy, not because of the substance of the grounds, but because of the nature of the search? Would it be possible to transform the objectionable features of democracy into a source of a democratic ethos? Keenan suggests that the risks of democracy might be affirmed as a shared fate in ways that support openness, providing an ethical complement to more traditional approaches to democratic theory and practice. Whether or not they agree with his solution, it will be hard for democratic theorists to ignore Keenan's powerful formulation of the problem.
—Professor of Government, Georgetown University

Editorial Reviews

"The very features of democracy that make it attractive—its openness, reflexivity, and fluidity—also generates objectionable qualities. Even at its best, democracy generates serial resolutions, each of which brings into existence new closures, manifest in the new and serial 'we's' constituted by democratic procedures. In this fine book, Alan Keenan argues that democrats must understand that these objectionable features are essential to what democracy is. Examining a number of contemporary democratic theories committed to openness and inclusion, Keenan shows how often strategies for grounding democratic openness edge toward closure, and do so while failing to acknowledge the basic risks of democratic experience. What if, Keenan asks, the search for unquestionable grounds for democratic openness turns out to undermine democracy, not because of the substance of the grounds, but because of the nature of the search? Would it be possible to transform the objectionable features of democracy into a source of a democratic ethos? Keenan suggests that the risks of democracy might be affirmed as a shared fate in ways that support openness, providing an ethical complement to more traditional approaches to democratic theory and practice. Whether or not they agree with his solution, it will be hard for democratic theorists to ignore Keenan's powerful formulation of the problem." —Professor Mark E. Warren,Georgetown University

"There is a paradox at the heart of the idea of democracy a product of its commitment to freedom combined with its need to found that freedom in a foundation that constrains. Democracy, devoted to freedom, is always, ineluctably implicated in sovereignty, violence and rule. This paradox is ignored or resolved by most democratic theorists, but not by Alan Keenan. In Democracy in Question, Keenan relentlessly tracks the mischief worked by democracyís fundamental paradox in the thinking of Castoriadis, Rousseau, Arendt, Laclau and Mouffe, and Sandel. Keenanís readings of all these thinkers are masterful. On Arendt, in particular, he is brilliant. This book, rigorous, penetrating and clearly written, is no less than a must-read for everyone interested in democratic theory and the politics of freedom and legitimation." —Bonnie Honig,Northwestern University & The American Bar Foundation

"Democracy makes possible popular sovereignty yet seems to presuppose the very people that it makes. Keenan's rich account of this and other contradictions in theory concludes with an arresting, if somewhat paradoxical, suggestion for the improvement of democratic practice—that the key to a more robust political future is the cultivation of more modest democratic virtues, such as capacity for self-limitation in support of democracy always in question. Profoundly radical and eminently sober at the same time, this book is democratic theory at its best." —Jeffrey K. Tulis,University of Texas at Austin

From the Publisher

In his provocative and excellent work of democratic theory, Alan Keenan, a visiting fellow at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, in Sri Lanka, posits a fundamental paradox at the heart of the idea of rule by the people. Through engagement with the works of Rousseau, Castoriadis, Sandel, Arendt, and others, Keenan uncovers an unsolvable tension between the requirement that the people have a stable identity based on particular traditions and institutions and the basic openness at the heart of democracy, including an openness to revising the very boundaries of the "we" who rule. Keenan does not provide a theoretical resolution of this tension (such a move would violate the deconstructive spirit of the work and produce its own violent closures), but neither is he content to expose a hidden paradox. Rather, Keenan attempts to negotiate the tension between openness and closure in the service of a "chastened" approach to radical democracy. This sober approach actually involves a more robust commitment to openness: By coming to grips with the inevitable closures required by the constitution of a democracy "we," this approach does not smuggle in violent and forceful closures under, for instance, the sign of unconstrained dialogue.

The paradoxes of openness and closure are given a temporal inflexion in Keenan's insightful reading of Arendt. Freedom as the open possibility of a new beginning appears to be in tension with the need for a stable, durable setting for political action. According to Keenan, Arendt overburdens the faculty of promising as the means for reconciling freedom and temporal continuity. Arendt can embrace the openness of political foundings and free action only by mistakenly banishing rule, force, and sovereignty to the realm of the "nonpolitical" and by "assuming that the political community is already fully formed" (99). Keenan turns to Rousseau to help us navigate these tensions, not so much for his solutions as for his sober appreciation of the difficulties of producing a "democratic we" of self-governing citizens. Keenan is not embracing Rousseau's solution--the lawgiver and his tricks--so much as he is pointing out that an honest confrontation with the paradoxes of constituting a democracy must lead to the recognition that there is no purely open, free act of democratic will formation that is not stained by some element of forceful closure.

Keenan makes productive use of these insights to critique theorists of deliberative democracy, but he is at his most original when turning these insights against the deconstructive critics themselves. Chapter 3 does just this, with a critique of the work of Laclau and Mouffe. Although clearly inspired by their approach, Keenan reads their work as downplaying the closure needed in a democracy and thus evading the paradox of openness and closure. Although Keenan claims that his goal in the concluding chapter is "to push beyond the overly formal and theoretical 'affirmation' of democratic openness" (20) of much of poststructuralist political theory, I cannot help but feel that this is something of a weakness in his own text, only partially remedied by the concluding chapter. One wishes that Keenan had explored the evolution of democracy's constitutive tensions in particular arenas of practical politics (such as immigration, national security discourse, or welfare reform), rather than providing a truncated reading of other theorists' investigations of contemporary political conflicts in the final chapter. Still, Democracy in Question is a penetrating examination of the tensions and paradoxes of democracy. (Fall 2003 v32 i4 p245(1) )

Perspectives on Political Science