Abstract
In this chapter, Rodríguez Rial approaches the weariness of democracy from the perspective of the republican debate. She addresses the topic through a consideration of “Accountability Horizontal,” one of the most important works from the leading Argentinian political scientist, Guillermo O’Donnell. Rodríguez Rial interrogates O’Donnell’s interpretation of the republican tradition and compares it to the neo-republican perspective and its critics, such as McCormick and Urbinati. In the end, Rodríguez Rial considers whether the weariness of democracy might be exorcized by the republicanization of democracy, and while she believes neo-republicanism has many virtues, she is less optimistic. She believes the problem is not simply the weariness of democracy but also disenchantment with republicanism.
“S’il y avait un peuple de dieux, il se gouvernerait démocratiquement. Un gouvernement si parfait ne convient pas à des hommes” Jean Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, Livre III, Chap. 4.
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Notes
- 1.
Claude Lefort, Essais sur le Politique XIX–XX Siècles (Paris: Seuil, [1986] 2001), 282. To Lefort, democracy is not a system regulated by laws but a model of society deprived of substantial unity where the place of power is empty. English version: Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory, trans. David Mancey (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).
- 2.
Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy , trans. Steve Corcoran (New York: Verso, 2009), 94–95.
- 3.
We need only be reminded of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s phrase quoted as epigraph, included in book III, chapter 4, of “Du Contrat Social”: “S’il y avait un peuple de dieux, il se gouvernerait démocratiquement. Un gouvernement si parfait ne convient pas à des hommes” and James Madison’s criticism of the factious spirit of pure democracy. Alexander Hamilton et al., The Federalist with Letter of Brutus, ed. Terence Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 43.
- 4.
Robert Dahl uses the concept of polyarchy to differentiate contemporary democracies from the “classic model” of the Greek polis. A polyarchy entails, besides the periodic elections of a typical representative government, a set of rights within the liberal rule of law, such as freedom of speech or association. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971). We have used the definition of “horizontal accountability” by O’Donnell, which will be analyzed in section III. Guillermo O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” Estudios Políticos 19 (1998): 10. In English: “Horizontal accountability and New Poliarchies,” in Andreas Shendler, Larry Diamond and Marc. C Plattner ed. Accountability in New Democracies (Boulder, Lynne Rienner, 1999), 29–59.
- 5.
The most complete intellectual biography on Guillermo O’Donnell in Spanish is Martín D’Alessandro and Gabriela Ippolito-O’Donnell, ed., La Ciencia Política de Guillermo O’Donnell (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 2015). In English, see the interview included in Gerardo Munck and Richard Snyder, ed., Passion, Craft and Method in Comparative Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 273–304.
There is still an open debate on whether political thought, nineteenth-century political sociology (clearly represented by Alexis de Tocqueville), and legal institutional analysis as conducted until the twentieth century are part of the past or present history of political science. According to the main political analysts, political science originated at the beginning of the twentieth century, when this science separated from legal studies, political philosophy, and the history of institutions, and moved away from normativism. O’Donnell was a part of this “mainstream” group, yet always maintained a critical approach, which is why he is such an interesting character.
O’Donnell’s work on political issues is reflected in, for instance, the invention of the term “authoritarian bureaucratic state” to describe the Brazilian and Argentine political processes that began after the 1964 and 1966 coups d’état, when he began his career. The coups were also interesting examples of the political setting that surrounded him when he analyzed “delegate democracies,” that is, those where the executive branch carries more weight due to its direct or plebiscitary connection to the people, and the impact of inequality of the 1990s and 2000s political style. Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernización y Autoritarismo (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1972). In English: Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 7 (1994): 34–51.
- 6.
Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, Laurence Whitehead ed., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospect for Democracy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986).
- 7.
Quentin Skinner, Vision of Politics, Volume 2: Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
- 8.
John Grenville Agard Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
- 9.
A “conceptual moment” is an analytical tool of the history of concepts used to address semantic relationships between political terms within a certain (historic or textual) context. Each concept’s meaning is less relevant than its relationship (complementary, opposing, or in conflict) with other concepts.
- 10.
Maurizio Viroli, Per Amore della Patria: Patriotismo e Nacionalismo nella Storia (Bari: Editori Laterza, 2001).
- 11.
Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 100.
- 12.
Quentin Skinner, “The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives,” in Philosophy in History: Essay on the Historiography of Philosophy, ed. Richard Rorty, J.B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 193–94, 205, 215–19.
- 13.
Pettit, Republicanism, 11.
- 14.
In order to differentiate republican freedom from liberal freedom, Pettit combines two arguments: a historical one that he develops throughout Chap. 1 and Chaps. 4 to 6, which involves the “republicanization” of John Locke’s political ideas, and another logical (conceptual) argument, which is presented mainly in Chaps. 2 and 3. This last argument is based on the distinction between domination and interference and the possible combinations between the two of them. Republican freedom is equal to non-domination, which can imply interference or not, yet this last one should not be set upon an arbitrary basis; for example, a public policy of the welfarist type (basic income) which interferes with individual courses of action, yet not in an arbitrary or illegal way.
- 15.
Viroli, Per Amore, 169.
- 16.
Pettit, Republicanism, 230–40; Phillip Pettit, On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and a Model of Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 5–9.
- 17.
Phillip Pettit, “Republican Freedom and Contestatory Democratization,” in Democracy’s Values, ed. Ian Shapiro & Casiano Hacker-Cordón (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
- 18.
Nadia Urbinati, “Republicanism: Democratic or Popular?” Good Society 20 (2011): 167; Nadia Urbinati, “Competing for Liberty: the Republican Critic of Democracy,” American Political Science Review 106 (2012): 613, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055412000317; John McCormick, “Machiavelli Against Republicanism: On Cambridge School’s Guicciardini Moments” Political Theory 31, no. 5 (Oct. 2003): 616–18; John McCormick, “The New Ochlophobia? Populism, Majority Rule and Prospects for Democratic Republicanism” Republicanism and the Future of Democracy, ed. Yiftah Elazar and Geneviève Rousselière (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, forthcoming), 122–42.
- 19.
McCormick, “Machiavelli,” 617, 635; Urbinati, “Republicanism,” 163–166.
- 20.
McCormick, “Machiavelli,” 636; McCormick, “The New Ochlophobia?” 8, 10, 15–16.
- 21.
Urbinati, “Competing,” 616–617; Urbinati, “Republicanism,” 161–64; McCormick,” Machiavelli,” 637.
- 22.
Urbinati, “Competing,” 616; Urbinati, “Republicanism,” 163–64.
- 23.
McCormick, “The New Ochlophobia?” 19–23.
- 24.
Urbinati, “Competing,” 609.
- 25.
Urbinati, “Competing,” 607.
- 26.
A conceptual political analysis is the examination of the meaning of political concepts through its usage in certain expository contexts. As in this case we will be focusing on a specific text, and an onomastic dimension will prevail, that is, the study of the meaning of a concept through its relationship with other concepts (for example: democracy, republic, rule of law) instead of the semantic analysis of the changes of a concept’s meaning over time. For further detail, you may consult the conceptual semantics of Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
- 27.
There are no reciprocal citations between O’Donnell and the previously mentioned authors. Nevertheless, in his review of the republican tradition, O’Donnell mentions some of the contributions of the Cambridge School to the study of political ideas, without quoting Skinner or Pocock. There are also some common references worth highlighting. Bernard Manin is quoted by Urbinati, Pettit, McCormick, and O’Donnell . Rawls is mentioned both by Pettit and O’Donnell and in Mogens Herman Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), which is a key piece in the reconstruction of the Athenian institutions and democratic tradition, by both Urbinati and O’Donnell.
Urbinati, “Competing,” 609; O’Donnell “Accountability Horizontal,” 18, 30; Pettit, Republicanism, 102, 111, 117, 169, 263.
- 28.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 26.
- 29.
O`Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 11, 20, 27, 33.
- 30.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 10.
- 31.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 14–18.
- 32.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal” 13, 14, 17, 18 24.
- 33.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 13–18, 21, 34.
- 34.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 20, 33.
- 35.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 8, 11, 27.
- 36.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 25–26.
- 37.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,”18.
- 38.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 21–22.
- 39.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 40–41. The “Madisonian legacy” stands for the impact of the assimilation of the republic with the representative government and its recommendation as a system of government superior to ancient democracies, in the liberal democracies of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, as proposed by James Madison in The Federalist Paper No.10. We have addressed this topic in Gabriela Rodríguez Rial, “La Filosofía Republicana de Alexander Hamilton,” Cuadernos Filosóficos, Nueva Época X (2013), 11–46; McCormick, “Machiavelli,” 616–18, 622, 625, 637.
- 40.
O’Donnell, “Accountability,” 29–40.
- 41.
O’Donnell, “Accountability,” 36.
- 42.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 38–39.
- 43.
O’Donnell, “Accountability Horizontal,” 19.
- 44.
D’Alessandro, La Ciencia Política de Guillermo O’Donnell, 320.
- 45.
O’Donnell affirmed this in an interview in 2002. D’Alessandro, La Ciencia Política de Guillermo O’Donnell, 313.
- 46.
Rancière, Hatred of Democracy , 73, 94.
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Rodríguez Rial, G. (2020). Republicanizing Democracy: An Antidote to Weariness?. In: Frausto, O., Powell, J., Vitale, S. (eds) The Weariness of Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19341-6_8
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