Beyond the democratic state: anti-authoritarian interventions in democratic theory

III. Difference, Diversity and Pluralism in Democratic Theory
It has become commonplace to locate the starting point for one’s democratic theory in the 
fact of difference, diversity, and pluralism. Various thinkers articulate this in different, but 
similar ways. Arendt (1958, 7) identifies this as “the human condition of plurality, the fact that 
men, not Man, live on earth and inhabit the world…[T]his plurality is specifically 
the
condition…of all political life.” For Habermas, our “lifeworld” has become “pluralized and ever 
more differentiated” (Habermas 1996, 26). Or, as Rehg puts it in his introduction to Habermas’ 
Betweeen Facts and Norms
(1996, xvii):
Modern societies witness an increasing variety of groups and subcultures, each 
having its own distinct traditions, values, and worldview. As a result, more and 
more conflicts must be settled by reaching explicit agreement on a greater range 
of contestable matters, under conditions in which the shared basis for reaching 
such agreement is diminishing. 
For Rawls (1993, 3-4), the “political culture of a democratic society is always marked by a 
diversity of opposing and irreconcilable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines.”
Moreover, this “diversity of reasonable comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral 
doctrines found in modern democratic societies is not a mere historical condition that may soon 
pass away; it is a permanent feature of the public culture of democracy” (
ibid
. 36). How, then, 
Rawls (and others) wonders, is a stable, just and democratic society possible, given these 
unavoidable and irresolvable differences? For Cohen (1996, 96): “My question…is prompted by 
the aim of formulating a conception of democracy suited to the kind of human difference 
captured in the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’ – the fact that there are distinct, incompatible 
understandings of value…” 
In short, democratic theory is preoccupied with issues of diversity, difference, and 
pluralism. On the one hand, they seem clearly to be the facts of modern societies, and, on the 

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other hand, they are potentially problematic for democracy (and, hence, for a theory of self-
governance). Indeed, democracy is often understood as requiring some basic forms of 
commonality between “the people” in order to enable them to act as a cohesive political body, a 
unit of collective decision-making. Ferguson identifies three democratic requirements that lead 
theorists to focus on commonality and see difference as a problem. 
Democracy, in its most basic definition, is the rule of the demos, or the people.
Yet every demos is composed of a multiplicity of individuals. The first 
requirement of democracy is to constitute from this multiplicity a cohesive group.
This is the requirement for a 
collective identity
that unites disparate persons into a 
people…Democracy’s second requirement is…for some kind of 
horizontal affect
, 
a bond between the individuals who make up the demos that sustains their 
commitment to sharing in rule with one another…Finally, for the people to 
govern itself, the many individuals that make it up, each with their own individual 
wills, must be able together to constitute a single, 
collective agency
(Ferguson 
2012, 23-24). 
Whether we focus on identity, affect, or agency, democracy seems to require some form 
of commonality.
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Thus, the facts of difference, diversity, and pluralism, which seem to 
suggest a lack of or a threat to commonality, have rightly become the starting point for a 
variety of democratic theories. These facts, however, can be responded to in different 
ways. I see two broad trends or arguments that develop from these theories. One 
approach is oriented toward bracketing differences in an effort to find consensus among 
diversity, while the other approach emphasizes the unavoidability – and democratic 
necessity – of conflict. The first approach can be characterized by two strategies, one 
adopted by Rawls and the other by Habermas. The Rawlsian approach works to bracket 
the most problematic differences by relegating them to outside the political sphere. The 
goal is to suppress differences first, so that coming to democratic agreements is easier. 
The Habermasian approach, in contrast, does not bracket most differences at the outset, 
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In this chapter, I mainly interested in disrupting the third “democratic requirement”: the need for a single 
collective agent in order to enable collective agency. 

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but still is oriented toward the production of consensus and agreement. If the first 
suppresses difference at the beginning of the democratic process, the second suppress 
differences at the end of that process. I outline and critique these two strategies below, 
and then move on to the second major approach as articulated by Mouffe.