Democracy and the Social Question

In a time of mounting challenges to democracy worldwide, scholars and politicians pay increasing attention to “the social question”: growing poverty and social inequality. To fight authoritarian populism and recreate confidence in democracy it is not enough to support rule of law and elections. A stable democracy also requires economic security and social integration. It diminishes hostility between groups and increases toleration in society.

Still, many democratic theorists hesitate to include the social question in the concept of democracy. They argue that doing so undermines democracy: it satisfies human needs at the expense of freedom, it confuses democracy with the ideological contents of politics and/or it demoralises democracy as a means to a certain justified end.

The purpose of this book project is to examine the underlying assumptions behind these arguments, and show that they all rely on a reductionist understanding of democracy: as ideational, procedural and instrumental respectively. By redefining democracy as a political lifeform (in Montesquieu’s sense of the term) it is possible to integrate the social question in the concept of democracy without falling prey to said dilemmas.

The project is important as it demonstrates how attention to the social question may contribute to the defence of democracy. In addition, it offers better theoretical tools to evaluate and predict trends of democratic decline and development, including variation in democratic resilience.