International workshop "Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up"

This event is co-organised by Charles Girard, Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Université Lyon 3, and Peter Niesen,  Professor of Political Theory at the University of Hamburg / Fellow 2024-25 Collegium de Lyon. The workshop will take the form of a discussion on the articles read beforehand. The articles will be in French or English and the discussion will be in English.

Western democracies are currently facing some of the most serious challenges since the Second World War. Despite providing for public education at a very high level, relatively free public spheres and rule-of-law mechanisms, mostly decent standard of health care, advances toward full employment and near comprehensive social security safety nets, trust in political institutions has fallen to alarming levels, especially for electoral institutions. Anti-system parties and right-wing extremists habe been building increasingly popular platforms, the cordons sanitaires toward them are under stress even in long-established democracies, and observers have provided diagnoses of the ‘regression’, ‘erosion’ or even (for Hungary and the US) ‘death’ of democracy. The question is how long the ‘ratchet effects’ of constitutional democracies will prevail (Niesen 2023). Faced with these challenges, it is suggested that we need to rethink democratic categories, and, if necessary, rebuild democracy from the ground up as a conceptual, institutional and practical matter. The workshop proposes to discuss both general and incremental suggestions to this effect, from perspectives in normative political philosophy/political theory.

Political Theory has so far reacted defensively to the degenerative trends with approaches labelled “democratic” or “critical realism”, highly popular views that challenge our foundational conceptions of democracy both in diagnostic/analytic as well as evaluative terms. Democratic and critical realists propose to redefine democracy, moving away from an understanding of citizens as co-authors of laws toward a more modest function such as the dispersion of political power (Bagg 2024). In our workshop, this confrontation will play out between the skeptical proposal of Philippe Urfalino, who argues that “self-government” was never a coherent notion for polities to aspire to in modern times, and the radical-democratic conception that Clotilde Nouët is trying to salvage from early Habermas, which however has been confronted with the objection of utopianism.

Another new take on democracy that, at least in its early stages, was often seen as a way of operating without the notions of autonomy or self-government (in the sense of Urfalino) was the rediscovery of the early modern vocabulary of republicanism and its central notion of freedom as non-domination. This vocabulary his been modernized by “neo-Roman” authors such as Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, partly based on skepticism toward “positive” notion of freedom as autonomy or self-government (Skinner 2002). Neo-republican conceptions, at least when read through the lens of feminist critics like Iris Marion Young (1990), however can be shown to be even more demanding in terms of social justice, the removal of structural restrictions on social and political equality, and the distribution of social and political power (Sophie Guérard de Latour). They aim at ‘completing’ democracy in Nouët’s sense, not reducing expectations in the sense democratic realists aspire to.

A success condition for all democracies, not only under a Habermasian understandings, is the existence and protection of a vibrant and pluralistic public sphere, awarding all different groups of citizens a voice (Girard 2019), but also capable of rationalizing public opinion. Here doubts are being raised whether democratic public exchanges are still capable of reproducing public discourse, given the highly charged and ‘moralized’ exchanges in social media, all in the hand of private platforms. A third democratic realist project is therefore purging public discourse from ‘moralist’ arguments. From Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen to Niklas Luhmann and Enzo Rossi, authors have insisted on a de-moralization of democratic politics, in order to cope with reasonable disagreements on questions of fundamental value. Here, Cord Schmelzle argues against a narrow understanding both of morality and the function of moral interventions, and for giving morality its due in a democratic public sphere if non-pejoratively conceived. Although not centrally concerned with the moral content of public discourse, Charles Girard argues that a necessary condition for a re-juvenation of democratic ideals and practices is an interventionist approach to private publishing power, since it can amount to the silencing of less powerful voices. Girard discusses whether this can be usefully understood as ‘censorship’, and whether we can distinguish legitimate from illegimate cases. Johanna Lenne-Cornuez and Nicolas Nayfeld, finally, will discuss what is often falsely regarded a merely “moral” topic and thus unfit for punishment: private violence against women. They argue that the notion of “impunity” still holds ambiguities that would have to be cleared up conceptually in order to put its feminist critique on safer ground

Peter Niesen’s topic, Political Sufficiency, at first glance seems to go along with a realist mindset in trying to steer discussion from political equality of all citizens to political sufficiency for all agents (human and non-human). But Niesen’s aim is to show that political sufficiency is more demanding in some aspects than current practices in Western democracies allow for. Is trying to steer clear of conceptually too ambitious, “utopian” conceptions a way of salvaging democratic practices? Or is democracy in need of new foundations that look at the feasibility of given strategies unflinchingly?

Abstracts

Philippe Urfalino, EHESS, CNRS : The myth of self-government
The notion of self-government is incompatible with a human way of life and is a philosophical myth. However, the theories of democracy that make use of this notion propose a watered-down and less demanding version of it. Highlighting the philosophical myth of self-government is therefore not intended to demystify it, but rather to provide an analytical tool. In particular, it allows us to better understand why these theories propose very different conceptions of the relationship between self-government and representative democracy, a relationship that varies from assimilation to approximation. Finally, we will show why it is better to abandon this notion to describe representative democracy.

Clotilde Nouet, Mohamed VI Rabat : Habermas, two models of democracy
The aim of this paper is to explore the existence of two distinct models of democracy in the political thought of Jürgen Habermas. One, outlined in one of Habermas's first published texts, 'Reflections on the Concept of Political Participation' (1958), was at the centre of his work until the 1970s and claimed to be a socialist model of democracy. The other, presented in 'La souveraineté populaire comme procédure. Un concept normatif d'espace public' (1989), is defended in Droit et démocratie (1992) and is explicitly part of a liberal tradition. To what extent are these models in tension and do they challenge the more general category of 'deliberative democracy'? What critique of liberal democracy does the first model allow us to formulate? This paper will address these questions by combining contextual and historical analysis with a normative approach.

 Cord Schmelzle, Research Institute Social Cohesion, Goethe University Frankfurt : Reasons for Moralising
No political debate these days is complete without complaints about an alleged moralisation of public discourse. Whether the issue is climate, migration, gender or foreign policy, the use of moral categories and moral criticism is regularly rejected as intrusive, naive, polarising or even malicious. At the same time, those who want to subject these practices to moral scrutiny point out that minimum moral standards that now seem self-evident, such as the condemnation of racism and slavery, gender equality or non-violent education, had to be successfully moralised in order to achieve political progress. Which of these perspectives is correct? Is the trend towards moralisation a danger to democracy and cohesion, or is it the -- sometimes dissonant -- background music of social progress?
In this paper I will first distinguish between a pejorative and a neutral understanding of moralising. In a second step, I will distinguish four criticisms of the use of moral categories in public debates. In a third step, I will contrast these four criticisms with four reasons for moralising, each of which responds to the criticisms and offers explanations and justifications for moralising speech. Finally, I will argue that although the use of moral categories in political disputes is associated with certain pathologies, it would be impossible, unjust and unproductive to dispense with the moralisation of political conditions.

Charles Girard, Jean Moulin Lyon III : Private Censorship and Freedom of Expression
The paper investigates the ways in which non-state actors can use the rights associated with freedom of expression to prevent others from expressing themselves. This happens, for example, when hecklers interrupt a public meeting in defence a cause (invoking their own freedom of expression), when property owners select the demonstrators they allow into private spaces that are partially open to the public (invoking their right to control the expressive use made of their property), or when social networks choose to make some content invisible (invoking editorial freedom). Such actions are difficult to categorize and evaluate. They are simultaneously denounced as forms of "private censorship" that should be prevented, and defended as legitimate ways of exercising communication rights that should on the contrary be protected. The difficulty is conceptual as well as normative. Conceptually, the power of censorship has been seen of as a prerogative of the State since the beginning of modernity, so much so that the very relevance of the idea of 'private censorship' is contested. How can we describe the power of these private actors in preventing certain voices from being heard? Normatively, criticism of censorship is complicated when it does not result from illegal acts or abuses of state power, but from private individuals exercising their rights. How can we determine whether the contested use of rights, particularly those associated with freedom of expression, is a normal exercise of that freedom or, on the contrary, an abuse that arbitrarily prevents others from exercising it? The aim of this project is to shed light on the controversies surrounding 'private censorship' by proposing: i) a conceptual analysis of the idea of private interference with and through the freedom of communication, and ii) a normative analysis of the principles mobilized to assess whether forms of private interference are illegitimate or not.

 Johanna Lenne-Cornuez & Nicolas Nayfeld, both Lyon III : Feminism and the Fight against Impunity
Since the MeToo movement, the fight against impunity for violence against women has been a dominant watchword in feminist discourse. However, the meaning of this impunity and the implications of the fight against it are not without ambiguity. This contribution will seek to clarify the definition of the concept of impunity and question the meaning of commitment to this feminist struggle.

Peter Niesen, University of Hamburg and Collegium Lyon : Political Sufficiency: How to Make Representation Count
Political representation is traditionally discussed under the heading of political equality: How can we make sure that representative institutions count the opinions and interests of all citizens equally? What has not been discussed so far is whether representation can ensure a sufficient uptake of opinions and interests of individuals and groups. While for humans, sufficiency adds a further normative concern to the realization of political equality, I will argue that the representation of non-human interests (animals, eco-systems) stands in need of a coherent and separate understanding of political sufficiency, independently of any claims to equality.
I argue that political sufficiency is made up out of three features: a) a threshold number of representatives, sufficient to ensure that the group’s views and interests are effectively expressed, b) an agenda-setting capacity, c) the chance to make the group’s impact felt in parliamentary votes. I discuss and reject a fourth feature d) that one’s vital interests are protected by parliamentary decisions. I close in comparatively discussing several institutional suggestions that aim to realize political sufficiency a)-d).

Literature
Bagg, Samuel 2024, The Dispersion of Power. A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Niesen, Peter (ed.) 2023, Zur Diagnose demokratischer Regression. Leviathan Sonderband 40, Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Girard, Charles 2019, Délibérer entre égaux - Enquête sur l'idéal démocratique. Paris: Vrin.
Young, Iris 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Skinner, Quentin 2002, A Third Concept of Liberty. Proceedings of the British Academy 117, 237–268.