Between Trust and Contestation

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

One of the primary cleavages in political theory lies between (1) visions of democracy that highlight the possibility of cooperation, trust, and even friendship among citizens and (2) visions that emphasize the persistence of distrust and enmity among citizens who disagree.

The first perspective is championed perhaps most prominently by deliberative democrats (e.g., Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, Joshua Cohen, Amy Gutmann/Dennis Thompson), but also by advocates of solidarity (David Miller, Will Kymlicka, Yael Tamir), proponents of a politics of care (e.g., Joan Tronto, Carol Gilligan, Sibyl Schwarzenbach), and readers of Aristotle who aim to resuscitate his notion of political friendship (e.g., Danielle Allen, Jill Frank, Paul Ludwig). These theorists do not deny that differences and disagreements exist among citizens. Nor do they deny that conflict and enmity are recurrent features of politics. However, these theorists insist that democratic legitimacy depends on the attainment of the right sorts of civic cooperation and/or that democracies can only sustain themselves if citizens at least work towards sharing in trust and friendship, appropriately defined.

The second perspective, in opposition, casts doubt over the first perspective’s apparent optimism. As argued by the so-called realist school of political theory (e.g., Bernard Williams, Raymond Geuss, William Galston), not only is conflict an indelible feature of politics; efforts to cultivate harmony – artificially, as it were – are bound to either (a) hide hierarchies and perpetuate relations of domination or (b) suppress the necessary expression of difference and disagreement, thereby leading (ironically) to the eruption of even more intense antagonisms. Some realists or ‘agonists’ (e.g., William Connolly, Chantal Mouffe, Bonnie Honig) attribute these possibilities to the persistence of base passions and anxieties – and they criticize some iterations of the first perspective for their misplaced faith in rational discourse and persuasion. Accordingly, democratic realists insist upon the need to identify institutional set-ups and forms of contestation that channel those antagonisms so as to buttress democracy, rather than undermine it.

This panel operates in the space between these two divergent perspectives. The panel consists of four papers that, in different ways, consider the relationship between democratic trust and deliberation on the one hand and contestation and enmity on the other hand. Stephanie Ahrens’s paper develops a more capacious conception of democratic trust which incorporates the important contributions of skepticism and accountability, arguing that such trust can help forestall the corrosive effects of distrust among citizens who disagree. Similarly, Mary Scudder’s paper argues that deliberative and agonistic approaches to democracy each capture important facets of democracy, and develops an understanding of the ‘normative core’ of democracy which can acknowledge the contributions of both approaches – the value of both discourse and contestation among those whom we can call members of the democratic mainstream. In contrast, Eric Cheng’s paper considers the periphery of the democratic mainstream, probing how democrats ought to confront those who wish to do democracy harm in manners that either (a) safeguard the trust which exists among mainstream or (b) do not further aggravate the distrust which might exist (among the mainstream). Finally, Kevin Elliott’s paper draws on both empirical and theoretical work to urge political theorists to more finely discriminate between partisans who identify with specific political parties and partisans who only have ‘psychological proximity or closeness’ to those parties. On his account, given that the latter sort of partisans are more likely open to defect under the right circumstances, observing this distinction can help theorists envision a sort of partisanship that can buttress, rather than corrode, democracy.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• The Two Faces of Democracy: Between Agonism and Deliberation - Molly Scudder, Purdue University; Stephen K. White, University of Virginia

• Trust, Enmity, and the Necessity of Atonement - Eric Cheng, Waseda University

• Why Democratic Trust Needs Mistrust - Stephanie Ahrens, Princeton University

• What Is It Like to be a Partisan? Measuring Partisanship & Its Democratic Value - Kevin J. Elliott, Murray State University

Chair

• Nadia Urbinati Columbia University

Discussants

• Paul W. Ludwig St. John's College

• Stephen Macedo Princeton University