Abstract
Contemporary democracies are more polarized than ever and this chapter inquiries not only about the conditions of possibility for democracy in the context of polarization but also on whether the relationship is one of compatibility or incompatibility. The claim is that if democracy is possible here and there—in contexts characterized by their polarization—it is possible everywhere as long as certain conditions are met. Hence, the response to polarization provides a hint on the (minimal) conditions of possibility for democracy and polarization more than a problem is a great opportunity for democracy and a greater democratization.
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Keep in mind, the Québéçois bloc and the separatist movement in Canada; the presidential elections in the United States of America in 2000, including the Florida saga of butterfly ballots, hanging chads, counts, recounts and re-recounts… and the usual deadlock in Congress; the controversial presidential elections in Mexico in 2006 and the post-electoral conflict; the hang parliamentary elections in both Australia and Belgium in 2010, and the closest ones since 1992 in the United Kingdom also in 2010; the 2011 local elections in Milan with a virtual tie between the ruling party and the opposition after an absolute dominance since 1996; the fact that most systems with a ballotage system end up in the second round, for instance, Colombia, France and Peru in 2011; and, more recently, the ordinary and extraordinary presidential elections in Venezuela in both 2012 and 2013. Clearly, polarization is not reduced to Election Day, but too-close-to-call or hung elections do exemplify it pretty well.
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I am grateful to Mario Conetti for pointing me to the historical cases of Venice and Florence as representative of the majoritarian and the partnership conceptions, respectively.
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Pollyanna is a fictional character of Eleanor H. Porter that embodies optimism, and Cassandra is the mythical Greek prophet that represents pessimism—and even fatalism.
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Even the most polarized society can reach a common agreement or shared purpose: sometimes in the form of a common enemy either internal or external.
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I have presented different versions of this chapter in many places: Facultad de Derecho, UNAM (Mexico); Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain); Instituto Federal Electoral (Mexico); McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario (Canada); Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, UNAM (Mexico); Center for Transnational Legal Studies, London (UK); Universita’Degli Studi Dell’Insubria, Como (Italy); Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, Heidelberg (Germany); and AMINTAPHIL Conference, Baltimore, Maryland (USA); and have incurred in a great debt with many individuals: Edgar R. Aguilera, Armin von Bogdandy, Giuseppe D’Elia, Matthew Grellette, César Jauregui Robles, Giorgio La Rosa, Luis J. Molina Piñeiro, Mariela Morales Antoniazzi, Arturo Nuñez Jiménez, José Fernando Ojesto Martínez Porcayo, Victor V. Ramraj, Adrián Rentería Díaz, Mortimer Sellers, José María Serna de la Garza, and Wilfrid J. Waluchow for comments and critiques; Mario Conetti for a public commentary; Ann E. Cudd and Sally Scholz for helpful suggestions on editing and preparing it for publication; and, finally, Hazel Blackmore for daily deliberations and discussions. Clearly errors are mine.
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Flores, I.B. (2014). The Problem of Democracy in the Context of Polarization. In: Cudd, A., Scholz, S. (eds) Philosophical Perspectives on Democracy in the 21st Century. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02312-0_8
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