Liberal Disorder, States of Exception, and Populist Politics

Description

Liberal democracy is in trouble. This volume considers the crosscutting causes and manifestations of the current crisis facing the liberal order. Over the last decade, liberal democracy has come under mounting pressure in many unanticipated ways. In response to seemingly endless crisis conditions, governments have turned with alarming frequency to extraordinary emergency powers derogating the rule of law and democratic processes. The shifting interconnections between new technologies and public power have raised questions about threats posed to democratic values and norms. Finally, the liberal order has been challenged by authoritarian and populist forces promoting anti- pluralist agendas. Adopting a synoptic perspective that puts liberal disorder at the center of its investigation, this book uses multiple sources to build a common historical and conceptual framework for understanding major contemporary political currents. The contributions weave together historical studies and conceptual analyses of states of exception, emergency powers, and their links with technological innovations, as well as the tension-ridden relationship between populism and democracy and its theoretical, ideological, and practical implications. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of a number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences: history, political science, philosophy, constitutional and international law, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, and economics. Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Table of contents Illustrations Contributors Preface Abbreviations Introduction Rationalizing the emergency Authoritarian and populist temptations States of exception and the politics of technology Democracy and liberalism: authoritarian, populist, and corporatist challenges Notes Part I Liberal democracy and the use of exceptional powers 1 Carl Schmitt’s conception of sovereignty, the UN Security Council, and the instrumentalization of the “state of exception” The UN Security Council’s P5 as Schmittian ruler Conclusion Notes Bibliography 2 Right, might, and technopolitics: The problem of republican dictatorship from James Harrington to James Madison Machiavelli’s critics Harrington’s response to Hobbes The Dictatorship of Oceana Harringtonian nightmares in the Scottish Enlightenment James Madison and the state of exception Conclusion: republican dictatorship reconsidered Notes Bibliography 3 Exception as alibi: Rhetorics of emergency and bare life in the War on Terror Declarations of national emergency Rethinking subjecthood in the state of exception Notes Bibliography 4 Tactics of battle, strategies of state1: Hurricane Katrina and the counterterror exception Discourses of criminality and insurgency Case study 1: counterinsurgent pacification and Blackwater USA Case study 2: counterterror detention at Camp Greyhound Conclusion Notes Bibliography 5 Exceptional biometrics The EU immigration “crisis” EU immigration and biometrics Externalization as deterrence Externalization and biometrics Exception and biometrics Conclusion Notes Bibliography Part II The liberal state 6 A theory of populist democracy Constitutional democracy as the populist alter An ambiguous term The frame of democratic diarchy An inadequate hyphenation The populist ambition Conclusion Notes Bibliography 7 The populist right: Anti-liberal politics and conservative temptations A “crisis of representation”: the tension between populism and democracy Historicizing the Right: ideological ambiguities and political practices The collaboration between the Radical and Conservative Right Conclusion Notes Bibliography 8 Public engagement: An outline of a critical conception Democratic outcomes and democratic practice Deliberative democracy and beyond Inclusive decision-making Facing the challenges—political agency Conclusion Notes Bibliography 9 Corporatism and economic performance Political economy of corporatism Corporatism in modern-day economies Corporatism and the welfare state Corporatism and economic performance Corporatism and financial crises Conclusions Notes Bibliography Index