A bitey intervention into liberal democratic theory, written against the comforting idea that democracy is a system where conflict can simply be reasoned away.

Mouffe argues that liberal democracy is built on a productive but unresolved tension: liberalism’s language of rights, individual liberty and the rule of law sits uneasily beside democracy’s language of popular sovereignty, equality and collective power. The point is not to solve the paradox, but to understand what political life loses when that tension is denied.

This work is anti-consensus, anti-technocratic, and deeply suspicious of any politics that imagines itself above antagonism. Drawing on Wittgenstein, Schmitt, Rawls, Habermas and post-Marxist theory, she makes the case for “agonistic” democracy — a political order where opponents are not enemies to be destroyed, but adversaries whose conflict keeps democratic life alive. Strong for readers of political theory, left theory, post-Marxism, democracy studies, hegemony, populism, and anyone trying to think past the dead language of “sensible centrism.”

Verso paperback. First published by Verso in 2000. Good second-hand condition overall, with light cover marking/foxing, minor handling wear and some page edge spotting.