TITLE:
An Agonistic Theory of Democratic Parliamentarism. The Case of the Walloon Parliament
AUTHORS:
Archibald Gustin
KEYWORDS:
Chantal Mouffe, Agonistic Democracy, Democratic Theory, Parliament of Wallonia
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.12 No.1,
January
24,
2022
ABSTRACT: Chantal
Mouffe is one of the most discussed political theorists of recent years. One of
her most important theoretical contributions is her critique of deliberative
democracy for its inability to think the political in terms of antagonism and
dissensus. The aim of this paper is therefore to examine to what extent Mouffe’s
theory of democracy, which she calls “agonistic pluralism” and which she
proposes as an alternative to deliberative democracy, can be used to think
about the role of the parliamentary institution in a democratic polity. To this
end, we mobilize a qualitative method based on the realisation of fifteen
semi-structured interviews in order to analyze the case of the Walloon
Parliament, with the aim of showing how democratic parliamentarism realizes the
staging of the antagonism which, according to Mouffe, founds the domain of the political1.