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ARTIGOS • Kriterion 60 (144) • 2019 • https://doi.org/10.1590/0100-512X2019n14405ghd   copy

DEMOCRACY AS COMPROMISE: AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE AGONISTIC VS. EPISTEMIC DIVIDE* * This article is part of a doctoral dissertation, which was supervised by Alberto Ribeiro G. de Barros, co-supervised by Maria Isabel Limongi and examined by Cicero Romão de Araujo, Silvana de Souza Ramos, and Nadia Urbinati (see Dalaqua, 2019). I am grateful to all these scholars for their critical comments. I am also grateful to participants at the Compromise and Representation Conference, where a part of this article was presented in 2017 at the University of Copenhagen.

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ABSTRACT

The agonistic vs. epistemic dichotomy is fairly widespread in contemporary democratic theory and is endorsed by scholars as outstanding as Luis Felipe Miguel, Chantal Mouffe, and Nadia Urbinati. According to them, the idea that democratic deliberation can work as a rational exchange of arguments that aims at truth is incompatible with the recognition of conflict as a central feature of politics. In other words, the epistemic approach is bound to obliterate the agonistic and conflictive dimension of democracy. This article takes this dichotomized way of thinking to task by reconstructing the association between democracy and compromise made by John Stuart Mill, John Morley, and Hans Kelsen. It concludes that the conceptualization of democracy as compromise offers an alternative to the agonistic vs. epistemic divide that disconcerts a significant part of political philosophy today.

Keywords
Democratic theory; compromise; epistemic democracy; John Stuart Mill; John Morley; Hans Kelsen

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