Democracy and Justice by Czajka Agnes

Author:Czajka, Agnes [Czajka, Agnes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Conclusion

Having explored Derrida’s contributions to theorizing democracy in the first two chapters, this chapter turned to democracy in Turkey, and thus began to explore the potential contribution that Derrida’s work can make to understanding particular democracies. The chapter opened with a consideration of theories of democratization. Theories of democratization, the chapter suggested, seem grounded in the premise that authoritarianism and liberal democracy constitute opposite poles of a spectrum, with a host of hybrid regimes in between, progressing from the authoritarian toward the democratic side of the spectrum. The literature has thus focussed on conceptualizing democratizing or hybrid regimes, and exploring the process of consolidation. The issue of what to call hybrid regimes has resulted in the proliferation of concepts with which to label ‘not-quite-democracies’ or ‘authoritarianisms-plus’, including those that have featured in recent struggles and debates over Turkish democracy: authoritarian democracy, competitive authoritarianism, electoral democracy, boxocracy, and so on. On the issue of when (if not how) democracies are consolidated, democratization theory has come to something of an imperfect consensus: democracy is consolidated when it becomes ‘the only game in town’.

The chapter proceeded to reflect on the ways in which Derrida’s work challenges some of the fundamental assumptions of democratization theory. It suggested that deconstruction and différance compel us to abandon both the notion that authoritarianism and democracy form opposite ends of a spectrum, and the spectrum itself. The différance that deconstruction reveals to be the essence of all identities, concepts and regimes precludes not only the existence of pure democracy (or pure authoritarianism), but also the linear conception of progress and regress on which democratization theories are grounded. Suggesting as more appropriate the image of a Möbius strip of authoritarian-democratic gradations, I alluded to the possibility of conceptualizing democracy-to-come as perforations in the closed curvature of such a topology – something I will explore in greater detail in subsequent chapters.

Thus, the chapter suggested, Derrida’s attention to the différance inherent in democracy unsettles the premises of democratization theory whilst simultaneously pushing them to their extreme – to the identification of all regimes as hybrid, polygot and indeed, autoimmune. Democratization theory’s proliferation of concepts with which to describe such hybrid regimes and its assumption that even those regimes lacking most of the qualities of democracy are indeed qualified democracies could thus be understood in the context of Derrida’s contention that multiplicity constitutes and inhabits democracy, and that such heterogeneity (and indeed, irreconcilability) is made possible by the structure of democracy itself. Yet, as the chapter again cautioned, the inherent hybridity and autoimmunity of democratic regimes, and thus the ultimate futility of pursuing and imagining democratic consolidation in the manner of democratization theory, does not free us from the responsibility of perfecting democracy, or from the responsibility of democracy-to-come.

The chapter then turned explicitly to Turkey, focussing on the state of Turkish democracy since 2002. The 2002 election and subsequent re-elections of the AKP constituted, for many, a watershed moment in the history of Turkish democracy. By the time the AKP was embarking on its third term in office, Turkey was internationally acclaimed as a ‘model democracy’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.