Mark Wenman

What is Politics? The Approach of Radical Pluralism

In this article I evaluate the conceptions of politics and of ‘the political’ characteristic of ‘radical pluralism’. I argue that in order to comprehend the radically pluralist conception of politics it is necessary to grasp the post-structuralist critique of the philosophical principle of identity. The concern with the interface between politics and ethics – which is typical of the radical pluralist approach – is also explored. Throughout the article contrast is made with the conventional pluralism of American political science. I conclude with a consideration of the importance of radical pluralism, with reference to the difficulties this may present for the methods and suppositions of political science traditionally understood.

English Pluralism, Functionalism and Corporatism: The Legacy of Paul Hirst

Paul Hirst began his career as a Marxist, and in his later work he made important contributions to numerous debates, the most notorious of which was his pronounced scepticism towards the idea of globalisation. However, Hirsts principal legacy to political theory was the development of his normative theory of ‘associative democracy’. This article presents a critique of Hirsts theory emphasising his indebtedness to the tradition of English political pluralism. On a preliminary analysis, Hirsts project appears to have been predicated on a normative defence of voluntarism, individualism and pluralism. However, I make the case that on closer examination this is undermined and contradicted in his work – and in the work of the earlier English pluralists – by an implicit assumption of social unity. This assumption is manifest in the functionalism and corporatism that Hirst presented as necessary components of pluralism, which in turn reflect his unwarranted presumption that industrial productivity, efficient economic governance and welfare provision represent impartial and incontestable axioms of social organisation.

William E. Connolly Resuming the Pluralist Tradition in American Political Science

William Connolly has made important interventions in political theory over a period of four decades, and the past few years have seen a surge in recognition of his contribution. Those who are familiar with Connolly’s ideas will know the role that continental theorists—especially Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze—have played in the development of his thought, and more recently the uses he has made of advances in the natural sciences, for example in complexity theory, in the work of the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, and the Nobel Prize–winning chemist Ilya Prigogine. With reference to these innovations, a consensus has emerged in recent discussions, that there is a basic discontinuity between Connolly’s “postmodern” theory of pluralism and the “old” pluralism of the generation of post-war political scientists. By way of contrast, in this essay I outline the congruity between Connolly’s ideas and earlier iterations of pluralism. I trace the essential continuities between Connolly and the leading post-war writers, especially Robert Dahl, Charles Lindblom, David Truman, and David Easton, and also his proximity to a tradition of pluralism that flourished in the early part of the twentieth century and was exemplified in the work of Arthur Bentley. Indeed, I make the case that Connolly’s work is best understood as the resumption and enhancement of a distinct canon of pluralism in American political thought.

The Politics of Poststructuralism Today

It is generally acknowledged that poststructuralism has impacted the study of politics in the UK and the United States over the past 30 years. However, it is also clear from a number of recent publications that there is renewed interest in the questions of how to define poststructuralism and to evaluate its overall significance.1 Indeed, some half-century after the publication of seminal texts such as Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization, Gilles Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Philosophy and Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology, it would be fair to say that the legacy and impact of ‘poststructuralism’ remain hotly contested. Both supporters and critics remain divided on whether or not poststructuralism represents a distinct tradition, and the ways in which poststructuralist theory can enhance the study of politics. The essays collected in this symposium address these questions and aim to take stock of the politics of poststructuralism today. We do not claim to provide an exhaustive account of current debates, but the contributors hope that these essays nonetheless deliver a wide-ranging conceptual map of contemporary poststructuralist theory, as well as a critical appraisal of some of the issues that will shape the development of the field in the future. In part, the essays are designed to introduce colleagues working across the disciplines of political science and international relations to these debates, as well as to take the arguments forward and so, we hope, being of interest to more specialist readers in the field as well. In the current context of ‘post-truth politics’, this would seem to be a timely discussion. Indeed, several commentators have sought to blame poststructuralism for what feels like the sudden onset of the dizzying world in which we now find ourselves – of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news’ – which has characterised public debate in the context of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. The suggestion seems to be that several decades of poststructuralist talk about ‘anti-foundationalism’ and ‘anti-essentialism’ has prepared the ground for this moment, where the gloves come off, and populist politicians can now openly manipulate ‘the truth’ to suit their own cynical objectives. However, we could turn this image on its head and consider instead how contemporary political debate seems finally to have caught up with certain key observations that poststructuralists have made for many years, that is, the circumstances of epistemological groundlessness that are, in the end, deeply rooted

On the Risk and Opportunity in the Mouffean Encounter with Carl Schmitt

Over the past two decades Chantal Mouffe has developed a distinct mode of agonistic democracy, and Mouffe’s brand of agonism has been forged above all through her encounter with what she calls the ‘challenge’ of Carl Schmitt. Mouffe has engaged recurrently with Schmitt’s thought on law and politics, and she has been particularly focused on his formulation of the ‘essence of the political’ in hisThe Concept of the Political, first published in 1927. In this paper, I consider some of the implications of the Mouffean encounter with Schmitt, and I make the case that she shrewdly exploits several opportunities in Schmitt’s thought. In particular, Mouffe mobilises his concept of the political, and his understanding of the priority of politics over law, in a sustained critique of the predominant modes of rationalism and normativism in post-Rawlsian Anglo-American political theory. Mouffe also shares with Schmitt an understanding of the value (and not just the inevitability) of enmity, and this sentiment underpins her agonism, with its stress on the need to sublimate relations of antagonism into constructive modes of agonism. These are crucial interventions, and they represent the core strengths and advantages of Mouffe’s political theory.

On the Young Hirst: A Rejoinder to Jason Edwards and Kelvin Knight

In a recent article in Political Studies I presented a critical overview of Paul Hirsts theory of ‘associative democracy’ (Wenman, 2007). I emphasised his proximity to English pluralism and especially to the work of G. D. H. Cole. I argued that — like Cole — Hirsts theory moves in a contradictory fashion between an advocacy of pluralism and the assumption of a unified social purpose which is manifest in his defence of functionalism and corporatism. In their response, also in this journal, Jason Edwards and Kelvin Knight claim that I ‘overstate’ the ‘intellectual continuity between Hirst and the English pluralists’ and so my reading misrepresents the ‘character’ and ‘intent’ of associative democracy (Edwards and Knight, 2008). They make numerous substantive points in support of this view; I address each of them in turn.

Much Ado about ‘Nothing’: Evaluating Three Immanent Critiques of Poststructuralism

In this article, I defend Jacques Derrida’s assumptions about language and discourse from three immanent critiques of poststructuralism. I refer to these as the ethical, metaphysical and political critiques. At the heart of Derrida’s approach is an emphasis on the terrain of signification, understood as a precondition of our perception of/engagement with ‘the world’. This is encapsulated in his statement that ‘there is no(thing) outside of the text’, and the ethical, metaphysical and political critiques turn on what can or cannot be said about this ‘nothingness’ that marks the limit of the discursive terrain. I examine the assertions that the extra-discursive ‘nothingness’ is (a) the source of an inscrutable ethical demand, (b) can be understood as a material realm of ‘vital forces’ and alternatively (c) that nothing positive can be said about this limit point of the discursive, but ‘it’ nonetheless becomes manifest within the terrain of signification in the form of a disruptive event. While I reject the ethical and metaphysical responses, I feel sympathy for the political critique of deconstruction. Indeed, I argue that politics unfolds in a tension between the manifestation of the event and the kinds of manoeuvres that are possible within the field of signification.