Abstract
The thesis deals with the relationship among democracy and agonism. It defends the idea that certain problematic aspects of contemporary liberal democracies do not have their origin primarily in the change of social conditions, that made original democratic promises unrealizable, but in certain oblivion of agon.
Agon is understood as a constitutive feature of a democratic society and this oblivion is seen not to be accidental. To defend this proposition I focuse on interpretation of the dialogue between populist republicanism (Machiavelli) and elitist republicanism (Guicciardini).
The thesis explains that in Machiavelli’s political theory two notions of agonism are present – pragmatic agon that sees conflict as a basis of social cohesion and strategic agon that is described as a ferocious egalitarianism employed by the second rate citizens to gain equality from the first rate citizens. These two forms of agonism are explained to form the axis of Machiavelli’s notion of the political and also of a free republic and democracy.
Guicciardini’s elitist republicanism is shown to stand in opposition to Machiavelli’s understanding of agonism. The interpretation of Guicciardini describes both the way in which the egalitarian demand of strategic agon is falsified and substituted by an affirmation of inequality and it also pays attention to the resemblance of Guicciardini’s elitist republicanism to Schumpeterian competitive elitism that is usually understood to be a realistic model of contemporary liberal democracies.
This confrontation of Machiavelli and Guicciardini reveals that the key moment of their approaches towards agon is the concept of representation. While elitists emphasise the distinction between representative and represented and so makes the representative independent of the will of the represented to eliminate the strategic agon, populist representation strives to institutionalize conflict and agon to make representation more responsive.