Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory最新文献

{"title":"Secularism, Authority, and Democratic Reason: The Political Thought of Christopher Hitchens","authors":"Mitchell Gallagher","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70046","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"354-364"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148909922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond the Populist Moment: Nationalism and the Democratic Chain of Conflict","authors":"Michaelangelo Anastasiou","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70056","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The relationship between populism and democracy constitutes one of the principal thematic foci of scholarly work on populism. The “nature” of this relationship is to this day highly contested. Although mainstream scholarship typically considers populism to be a threat to democracy, recent literature has effectively “neutralized” it. Granted, the diversity of opinions reflects theoretical and epistemological differences, but controversy outpours from ethico-political considerations as well (Laclau <span>2005</span>; Rovira Kaltwasser <span>2012</span>, 185). Does populism behold the embryo of democratic potential, or is it anathema to democracy? Opinions span the full spectrum.</p><p>Given the acuteness of the controversy, one is compelled to inquire whether disagreements about the nature of populism are symptomatic of populism's inherent ambiguity. Is it perhaps the case that populism “resists” being grounded in the operational logic of the social sciences and the rigidity of universal values, precisely because it is governed by a constitutive ambiguity that eludes determinate definitions? The political category “the people”—so central to populist politics—far from being a static object of analysis, is an ongoing cultural construction, a field of potential antagonisms, and, therefore, the site of ongoing political projects.</p><p>This is the perspective that is currently gaining momentum and which has increasingly displaced substantivist and value-laden understandings of populism (Laclau <span>2005</span>; Panizza <span>2005</span>). Discourse-oriented theorists and in particular those associated with the “Essex School” are at the forefront of this impetus. “Essex School” approaches highlight that populism is not reducible to any <i>essential</i> characteristic. Populism is, rather, understood as a political logic, whereby the social comes to be symbolically divided by an antagonistic frontier separating two oppositional camps, typically “the people” and “the establishment.” Each antagonistic frontier may encapsulate heterogeneous identities and, therefore, a diversity of political demands and imaginaries, many of which may even be “contradictory.” Populism may therefore assume a variety of forms and is entirely context-dependent.</p><p>Building on these premises, recent studies suggest that populism can assume a democratic form to the extent that articulations of “the people,” as a category deployed to signify populist totalities, remain <i>empty</i> (Stavrakakis et al. <span>2017</span>). “The people” can be deployed inclusively and incorporate all-the-more identities if it is not symbolically tied to particularistic and therefore exclusionary content, for example, ethnocentric conceptions of “the people” (see De Cleen and Stavrakakis <span>2017</span>; Stavrakakis et al. <span>2017</span>). Populism is by extension understood as potentially beholding the embryo of democratic projects (Mouffe <span>2018</span>; Stavrakakis <span>2014</span>)","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"402-413"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70056","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148909838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pain Beyond Disvalue: On Constitutive Role of Pain in Moral and Democratic Life","authors":"Gizem Kayahan-Dal","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70057","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"365-379"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148909870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Propaganda: Reinterpreting the Democratic Problem","authors":"Siri Sylvan","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70048","url":null,"abstract":"<p>It is widely acknowledged that democratic societies are currently facing significant threats from efforts to manipulate public opinion. In both public and scholarly debates, these threats are typically linked to the rapid technological advancements of the 21st century. Digital technologies have expanded the reach of disinformation and other forms of manipulative content, and the proliferation of generative AI tools has made fake photos and videos an online staple. Many commentators have emphasized the democratic challenges posed by such technologies. For instance, Jürgen Habermas (<span>2023</span>) argues, in a brief sequel to his classic work from 1962, that the digital revolution has sparked a “new structural transformation of the public sphere.”1 In his view, a central aspect of this transformation is that citizens have been assigned a new role: “Just as printing made everyone a potential reader, today digitalization is turning everyone into a potential author” (38). This shift in the role of citizens—from readership to authorship—has weakened the authority of traditional gatekeepers such as professional journalists and destabilized established procedures for organizing public discourse. In response to this challenge, Habermas suggests that a central task for democratic societies is to initiate learning processes through which citizens can learn to exercise their role as authors more competently, while simultaneously counteracting the menacing fragmentation that threatens the inclusiveness of the public conversation.</p><p>The digitalization of the public realm has certainly exposed some of democracy's core vulnerabilities. Yet, the theoretical issue at the heart of these debates is neither new nor unfamiliar to students of political thought. Democracy, according to a classic adage, means “rule by opinion.” Many political thinkers throughout history have warned that this feature makes democratic systems susceptible to manipulation. Public opinion does not necessarily reflect the free, critical, and open exchange of ideas; it can also be the product of demagoguery and propaganda. This problem was addressed already by Plato, who regarded democracy as a hopelessly unstable system of government for precisely this reason. Ordinary citizens, he contended, are too easily swayed by rhetoric, meaning that democracy has an inherent tendency to degenerate into tyranny (Plato 375 B.C./<span>2015</span>: Book VIII). Similar concerns have been reiterated throughout the history of political thought and are often used to buttress an elitist critique against participatory conceptions of democracy (see, e.g., Burke 1790/<span>2017</span>; Lippmann 1922/<span>2007</span>; Loewenstein <span>1937</span>; Schumpeter <span>1942/2015</span>). From a philosophical point of view, therefore, the malleability of opinion and its implications for democracy are issues that appear as old as democracy itself.</p><p>Much of the literature on democratic resilience falls int","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"391-401"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70048","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148909875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jürgen Habermas: Public Intellectual and Engaged Critical Theorist","authors":"Ben Randolph","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70064","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"430-432"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148910016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought","authors":"Amy Allen","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70059","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"425-427"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148909859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Legalist Paradigm in Moral and Political Thought","authors":"Jamie Mayerfeld","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70050","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Charles Dickens wrote, “In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice” (<span>1861</span>, 75). He meant that cruelties of various kinds are correctly perceived by children as unjust, because they subject their victims to treatment that is not right. Injustice includes violence, exploitation, unfairness, emotional abuse, and much else besides. It can occur in public, institutional, and intimate settings (the last being the setting to which Dickens's sentence immediately refers). The premise of this article is that we should recover an understanding of justice in Dickens's sense of the term.1</p><p>Opposed to this primary and I believe correct understanding of justice is what I call the “legalist paradigm,” a recurrent impulse among political theorists and laypeople to convert questions about justice into questions about what the state should do.2 The impulse is widespread but not ubiquitous, sometimes but not always explicit. Its core tenet is that if a practice is unjust, it should be met with corrective action by the state.3 To call something unjust is to ask for a state remedy. The view often goes beyond this, by making state action not only required but central. My hope is to discourage this framing, to encourage a sense of justice less connected to the need for state supervision and enforcement, and (without encouraging bullying or harassment) to foster a practice of addressing claims of justice directly to other persons and nonstate agents whether or not state involvement is warranted.</p><p>State action is often associated with enforcement, because we think of force as a potential when not primary means for a state to implement (many of) its decisions.4 Belief that justice requires enforcement—a view I shall call the “enforcement paradigm”—typically lies behind the legalist paradigm. The mistake made by many political theorists and laypeople is to rush from the question “what is just?” to the question “how may justice be secured?” and to dwell on enforcement as a supposedly necessary and appropriate means of securing justice. One aim of this article is to challenge the enforcement paradigm to which the legalist paradigm is typically connected.</p><p>Enforcement is not identical to punishment, but those who subscribe to the legalist paradigm often view punishment as a necessary response to individual-level injustice. The thought that “the state must do something” is often connected to the view that the state should prohibit and deter individual-level injustice by means of negative sanctions. The legalist paradigm does not imply support for punishment as a matter of strict logic, but the two are often linked in practice.</p><p>I shall also challenge what I call the “institutionalist paradigm,” the view that justice pertains only to state or nonstate institutions and not to individual choices. I propose that the legalist, enforceme","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"343-353"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70050","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148909982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"International Progress and Colonial Critique in E.H. Carr's Reflexive Realism","authors":"Arturo Chang","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70051","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As ecological, material, and social crises converge on the global stage, research in political theory has returned to debates on the importance of utopian critiques that remain attentive to the inescapability of power (Brincat <span>2009</span>; Butler <span>2015</span>; Thaler <span>2018</span>, <span>2024</span>; Wagle <span>2022</span>). This wave of scholarship centers on the transformative dimensions of critical imagination—as manifested in both popular politics and individual works—to problematize the notion that aspirational politics produce little more than an <i>appeal</i> to change. These interventions emerge as others call for “realistic” utopias, a term that assumes the relative impracticality of ideal proposals and seeks to ground ideal proposals in “real-world” politics (Wright <span>2010</span>; Bregman <span>2017</span>). In other words, the field continues to situate utopia and reality in contention to one another. As a result, the value of ideal politics as a dimension of critique remains unsettled.1</p><p>While the linguistic bannisters that surround political change span appeals to “ideal,” “aspirational,” “imaginative,” “objective,” and “empirical” lenses, they have importantly mapped onto the binary of “realistic” and “idealistic” interpretation. These categories are particularly salient in international relations (IR) theory and political theory, two research areas with overlapping concerns but largely segregated conversations. In IR, structural and neoclassical realism have taken hold as central frameworks in the discipline that operate on the assumption that aspirational politics must be displaced in favor of “objective” accounts of power (Waltz <span>1979</span>; Booth <span>1991</span>; Mearsheimer <span>2005</span>, <span>2019</span>; Booth <span>2010</span>). These ontologies have been critiqued in IR theory, but they remain fundamental to the field's macrostructural understanding of both international order and the justification of power (Booth <span>1991</span>, <span>2010</span>; Mearsheimer <span>2005</span>; Brincat <span>2009</span>; Kohn and McBride <span>2011</span>). Simultaneously, theories of utopia and reality among political philosophers contend for the importance of normative models within realistic lenses (Aytac and Rossi <span>2022</span>; Favara <span>2022</span>; Rossi <span>2019</span>; Sigwart <span>2013</span>). Similarly, scholars of utopia argue for the critical dimensions of imaginative and aspirational politics (Wagle <span>2022</span>; Thaler <span>2018</span>; Shklar <span>1969a</span>, <span>1998a</span>, <span>1998b</span>; Moylan <span>2014</span>). As the separation between realist IR and realist political philosophy endures, so do methodological, interpretive, and political problems regarding the relation between ideal politics and the justification of power in international politics.2 The tension between utopia and reality perseveres when the two categories are primarily treated as ","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"311-320"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70051","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148909936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Purview of the Particular: Power and Method in Foucaultian Genealogy","authors":"Matt Kelley","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70052","url":null,"abstract":"<p>If Foucault was anything, he was a particularist. And yet, if we are to find valuable tools in his method today, they must be able to assist our framing and analysis of non-particular issues. By what means can Foucault's methods grasp trans-contextual problems? I investigate this question by reconsidering the status of power in Foucault's genealogical method. Rather than acting as an <i>object</i> of inquiry, I propose that power operates as an orienting <i>analytical category</i> at the level of Foucault's method. I make the case that conceiving of power in this way facilitates a substantial degree of generalization of his approach that he and his commentators have frequently been wary of claiming. This rethinking of power and method establishes the capacity for Foucaultian methods to address contemporary systemic and global problems.</p>","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"331-342"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70052","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148909941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Firebrands Echo: National Fantasy as an Obstacle to Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Populist Spectacle","authors":"Reid A. Kleinberg","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70044","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;During the 2016–2017 French presidential election season, the established playing field of political parties and voter affiliations was ruptured. The longstanding center-left and center-right parties collapsed, and Emanuel Macron rode this wave to an electoral victory. Candidates at opposite ends of the political spectrum—the far-right Marine Le Pen (FN) and the left-populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI)—jostled for favor with the French public. Reviewing the results of this competition, scholars agree that Le Pen consolidated a committed voting base drawn to chauvinistic French nationalism (Shields &lt;span&gt;2018&lt;/span&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Le Pen's success in preserving her coalition problematizes the strategy of combining left-wing populism with nationalism. Over the last decade, left-wing populism has intertwined with the political theory of discourse theory (DT), following the tradition of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau and the Essex School of Discourse Analysis (Glynos and Howarth &lt;span&gt;2007&lt;/span&gt;). DT accounts advocating left-populism as a political strategy have pointed to how practices of articulation can create viable left-populisms, galvanizing support for insurgent movements promoting novel identities (Laclau &lt;span&gt;2005&lt;/span&gt;; Mouffe &lt;span&gt;2018&lt;/span&gt;). Preceding (and proceeding) 2017, a sample of important scholars and politicians of this conjuncture claim(ed) that left populists could find a strategic advantage by creating discourses of progressive nationalism. In addition to the normative claims that left-populism could embrace national identity while remaining “progressive,” this camp argued that emotionally-charged  patriotic and nationalist displays would win-back voters seduced by the chauvinistic political right—I call this specific proposition the “conversion strategy” (Custodi &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;; Mouffe &lt;span&gt;2018&lt;/span&gt;; Mouffe and Bherer &lt;span&gt;2016&lt;/span&gt;; Gerbaudo &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;, 131; Mouffe and Bechler &lt;span&gt;2018&lt;/span&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Competing with Le Pen in 2017, the left-populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon put the conversion strategy into practice. Mélenchon is an iconoclast politician. While consistently self-identifying as left-republican, his career spans decades and can heuristically be divided into different stages, depending on his primary discursive emphasis: (1) A“first” career with the French Socialist Party (PS) from the 1970s until the early 2000s featured a traditional Marxist discourse (Alexandre et al. &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;, 936) (2) A left-populist phase in the 2010s—while Mélenchon's embrace of left-populism occurred over a long-term engagement with Latin American left-populism and neo-Gramscian thinkers—Mélenchon's populism became explicit after he broke with the PS (Alexandre et al. &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;, 937–938). (3) A post-2020 turn to abandon the insistence on national identity and promote the unique concept of “créolisation,” which emphasizes the hybridity of Frenchness and the importance of incorporating immigrants, Muslims, an","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 3","pages":"414-424"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70044","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148910026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}