2025/11/14 by Dirk Jörke, Benjamin M. Studebaker · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Critical Theory and Philosophy #Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy #Political Theology and Sovereignty
paper · doi:10.1177/13684310251393914
openalex created_date 2025/11/14 · openalex publication_date 2025/11/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Democratic theorists often argue that democracy is in crisis, but nonetheless maintain democracy can be revived. In contrast, this paper argues that modernisation and democracy have become opposed. Drawing on the work of Michael Th. Greven and Hartmut Rosa, it argues that as modernisation intensifies, it erodes the preconditions necessary for democracy to credibly make the promises long associated with it. This process of debilitation involves ‘ratchet effects’, such that it becomes steadily less possible to restore lost capacities. The regime that remains is like a marathon runner who has been subjected to an amputation – it continues on in a minimalist sense, but its horizons of possibility are irrevocably altered. Because this debilitated democracy is unable to check or manage modernisation, it will remain subject to the process that has debilitated it, further reducing its horizons in the years to come.