The Two Faces of Democracy: Decentering Agonism and Deliberation

The democratic imagination is facing significant challenges. These challenges involve not only philosophical questions about the core values of democratic life, but also pressing practical issues related to how we should understand and confront current threats to democracy. Those who want to defend democracy against anti-democratic forces are at odds: some want a politics that puts vehement conflict at the center of democratic strategies, while others assert the necessity of more civil and deliberative strategies. What should our stance be as defenders of democratic life?

In The Two Faces of Democracy, Mary F. (Molly) Scudder and Stephen K. White present an analysis of these two stances, the deliberative and agonistic models of democracy, arguing that neither is adequate on its own. The deliberative model emphasizes reasoned discussion, but some worry that this discounts structures of injustice that distort civil deliberation. The agonistic model prioritizes contestation and conflict, but this prime orientation to defeating political antagonists risks corroding our commitment to normative democratic restraints, like fairness.

In developing an understanding of the moral core of democracy, Scudder and White show that these two faces of democratic life each have a significant, but constrained, role to play in a more capacious comprehension of what our democratic commitments require of us. An original and timely contribution to democratic theory, Scudder and White illuminate the tensional congruence of these two faces of democracy, and, in doing so, argue for the importance of both models in the current struggle for a healthy democratic future.