2025/02/04 by K Walz · 1 voice · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Epistemology #Globalization and political ideologies #Philosophy #Pluralism (philosophy) #Political science #Populism, Right-Wing Movements #Socio-political and Technological Issues #Sociology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s12286-024-00622-x
published in Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 19(4), 491-516 (Springer VS)
openalex publication_date 2025/02/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Abstract In recent years, the issue of possible early warning signs for democratic regression has become increasingly relevant. In this regard, the focus is often on how democracy-threatening actors can be identified as early as possible. Within this debate, one term has recently emerged again, as various contributions suggest that anti-pluralist actors are in the driver’s seat of democratic backsliding. However, anti-pluralism in this literature usually remains completely undefined, or at least undertheorized. This study intends to contribute to clarifying the theoretical dimension of these issues by specifying anti-pluralism as a concept and discussing its relationships to competing concepts for identifying actors threatening democracy. The conceptual analysis shows that anti-pluralism is best understood as the negation of the benefits of societal diversity and thereby also the functional and normative necessity, purpose, and merit of pluralism as a structure principle. Furthermore, it can be shown that anti-pluralism is a feature of various other isms that are commonly used as indicators to identify actors threatening democracy. I conclude that while anti-pluralism is not necessary for actors to threaten democracy, it is sufficient to identify potentially threatening actors and has advantages over competing markers such as populism and extremism.