Radical democracy in the time of Duterte

Radical democracy, according to Chantal Mouffe, is about “the abandonment of the idea of a perfect consensus, of a harmonious collective will, and the acceptance of the permanence of conflicts and antagonisms.” The notion of a homogeneous society is to be discarded, but liberal political institutions remain crucial. In this form of political engagement, people form their own concept of the good and organize their ways of living in terms of their chosen ends. The present discourse happening in the country is ripe for such type of political reflection.

The emphasis on the affective sentiments of the people in pursuing the solutions to social problems, the use of nonconventional language in communicating to national and international stakeholders, and the maverick approach in terms of managing foreign relations, are just some of the obvious instances where President Duterte seeks to veer away from tradition. In this postcolonial approach, the opposing poles in our political landscape remain in chaos as one competes with the other for supremacy and relevance.

Radical democracy implies that politics cannot be limited to rational discourse. To do so, Mouffe thinks, is to tie politics “to the limits of rationality itself.” Rational consensus for Mouffe ignores the value of passion in the political. The role of political philosophy, she argues, is not to “decide the true meaning of notions like justice, equality or liberty, but … to formulate the different interpretations of those notions.”

“Far from being a cover-up for the class divisions of capitalist society,” Mouffe explains, political institutions “provide the guarantee that individual freedom would be protected against the tyranny of the majority or the domination of the totalitarian party state.” She thinks that in a modern democracy, the “substantive idea of the good life” that rational individuals agree upon no longer exists. What emerges is a pluralist society that is secured “by the separation of church and state.”

Respect for pluralism means the recognition of diverse rationalities and the dissolution of a uniform identity. People characterize themselves in terms of what sociologist Benedict Anderson calls an “imagined community,” in which no nation actually “imagines itself as coterminous with mankind.” What this means is that people never really “dream of a day when all of the members of the human race will join their nation.” People see themselves as distinct in culture and belief, yet united in a fraternal bond. The desire for self-determination in Muslim Mindanao is a prime example.

Mouffe clarifies that in a radical democracy, the logic of identity of government dissipates. The old concept of the general will is no longer to be defined by strict liberal procedures and rules. There is no longer one universal approach in determining how the mandate of the state to protect the social and political rights of citizens may be employed. But the concept of equality remains the framework with which just institutions are supposed to be anchored, although this equality also means “the exclusion of those who do not belong to the state.”

The rise to power of Mr. Duterte can be attributed to the political disenchantment of the Filipino masses. The elite in Philippine society have failed them for decades. The problem with our brand of democracy is that it has been reduced to the pursuit of personal interests. Bereft of any ethical content, social policy in the country has become an instrument for exclusion. Politics in the not-so-distant past has been pure rhetoric, but characteristically empty in substance. Hence, the real challenge of the present administration is to free itself from the same political malady that most certainly afflicted its predecessors.

Christopher Ryan Maboloc teaches philosophy at Ateneo de Davao University. He has a master’s degree in applied ethics from Linkoping University in Sweden. He is the author of “Ethics and Human Dignity.”