Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-2n9c9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-15T05:05:26.524Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Democratic Theory When Democracy Is Fugitive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Ali Aslam,
David McIvor and
Joel Alden Schlosser
Ali Aslam*
Affiliation:
Mount Holyoke College
David McIvor*
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
Joel Alden Schlosser*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
*
E-mail: aaslam@mtholyoke.edu
E-mail: david.mcivor@colostate.edu
E-mail: jschlosser@brynmawr.edu
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Urgent alarms now warn of the erosion of democratic norms and the decline of democratic institutions. These antidemocratic trends have prompted some democratic theorists to reject the seeming inevitability of democratic forms of government and instead to consider democracy as a fugitive phenomenon. Fugitive democracy, as we argue below, is a theory composed of two parts. First, it includes a robust, normative ideal of democracy and, second, a clear-eyed vision of the historical defeats and generic difficulties attendant to that ideal. This article considers how democratic theorists might respond to the challenges posed by fugitive democracy and the implications of such an understanding for future research in democratic theory.

Keywords

democracyfugitivityHannah ArendtSheldon Wolinsocial movements

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Democratic Theory , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , December 2019, pp. 27 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Berghahn Books 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Apostolidis, Paul. 2010. Breaks in the Chain: What Immigrant Workers Can Teach America about Democracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. (1958) 1998. The Human Condition, 2nd Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. (1961) 2006. “What Is Freedom?” In Between Past and Future, ed. J., Kohn, 142–169. Cambridge, UK: Penguin.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. (1963) 1990. On Revolution. Cambridge, UK: Penguin.Google Scholar
Aslam, Ali. 2017. Ordinary Democracy: Sovereignty and Citizenship beyond the Neoliberal Impasse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baehr, Peter, ed. 2000. The Portable Hannah Arendt. Cambridge, UK: Penguin.Google Scholar
Barber, Benjamin. 1984. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry. 2008. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry. 2015. “Facing Up to the Democratic Recession.” Journal of Democracy 26 (1): 141–155.Google Scholar
Beltran, Cristina. 2010. The Problem with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Boyte, Harry. 2004. Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breaugh, Martin. 2013. The Plebeian Experience: A Discontinuous History of Political Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bretherton, Luke. 2015. Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of Common Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution. Cambridge, UK: Zone Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, Charlene. 2019. Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Coles, Romand. 2004. “Moving Democracy: Industrial Areas Foundation Social Movements and the Political Arts of Listening, Traveling, and Tabling. Political Theory 32 (5): 678–705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coles, Romand. 2016. Visionary Pragmatism: Radical and Ecological Democracy in Neoliberal Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Constant, Benjamin. (1819) 1988. “On the Liberty of the Ancients Compared to the Moderns.” Political Writings, 309–328. Translated and edited by B., Fontana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Connolly, William E. 2008. Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Connolly, William E. 2018. Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy under Trumpism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Coulthard, Glen Sean. 2014. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crook, Stephen. 1991. Modernist Radicalism and Its Aftermath: Foundationalism and Anti-Foundationalism in Radical Social Theory. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Robert. 2000. On Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Diamond, Larry. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World. Cambridge, UK: Times Books.Google Scholar
Dyrness, Andrea. 2011. Mothers United: An Immigrant Struggle for Socially Just Education. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Euben, J. Peter. 2003. Platonic Noise. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Euben, Roxanne. 2008. “Traveling Theorists and Translating Practices.” In Journeys to the Other Shore, 20–45. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flyvbjerg, Bent. 1998. Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice. Trans. S., Sampson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Flyvbjerg, Bent. 2001. Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again. Trans. S., Sampson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson-Graham, J. K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Gilens, Martin, and Larry, Page. 2014. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics 12 (3): 564–581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grattan, Laura. 2016. Populism's Power: Radical Grassroots Democracy in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harney, Stefano, and Fred, Moten. 2017. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions.Google Scholar
Haro, Lia, and Romand, Coles. Forthcoming. “Reimagining Fugitive Democracy and Transformative Sanctuary with Black Frontline Communities in the Underground Railroad.” Political Theory.Google Scholar
Hedges, Chris, and Sheldon, Wolin. 2014. “Can Capitalism and Democracy Co-Exist?” The Real News Network. October 23. https://therealnews.com/series/hedges-wolin-can-capitalism-and-democracy-coexist.Google Scholar
Kelley, Robin. 2002. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Lebron, Christopher. 2017. The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Frances E., and Nolan, McCarty, eds. 2019. Can America Govern Itself? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel, Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. Cambridge, UK: Crown Publishing.Google Scholar
Malleson, Thomas. 2014. After Occupy: Economic Democracy for the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marchart, Oliver. 2007. Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Martel, James. 2018. The Misinterpellated Subject. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
McIvor, David W. 2016a. Mourning in America: Race and the Politics of Loss. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
McIvor, David W. 2016b. “The Conscience of a Fugitive: Sheldon Wolin and the Prospects for Radical Democracy.” New Political Science 38 (3): 411–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, Robert. 1968. “On Sociological Theories of the Middle Range.” In Social Theory and Social Structure, enlarged ed. Cambridge, UK: The Free Press: 39 – 72.Google Scholar
Moten, Fred. 2017. Black and Blur, vol. 1 of Consent Not to Be a Single Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Moten, Fred. 2018a. Stolen Life, vol. 2 of Consent Not to Be a Single Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Moten, Fred. 2018b. The Universal Machine, vol. 3 of Consent Not to Be a Single Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. 2000. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Mounk, Yascha. 2018. The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ober, Josiah. 2017. Demopolis: Democracy Before Liberalism in Theory and Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polletta, Francesca. 2004. Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert. 2001. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Cambridge, UK: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Roberts, Neil. 2015. Freedom as Marronage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Runciman, David. 2018. How Democracy Ends. Cambridge, UK: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E. P. 1975. The Semisovereign People. Boston: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Snyder, Timothy. 2018. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. Cambridge, UK: Tim Duggan Books.Google Scholar
Stout, Jeffrey. 2010. Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. 2016. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Chicago: Haymarket Books.Google Scholar
Tully, James. 1995. Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vick, Jason. 2015. “Participatory versus Radical Democracy in the 21st Century: Carole Pateman, Jacques Rancière, and Sheldon Wolin.” New Political Science 37 (2): 204–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, Mark R. 2001. Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Stephen K. 2009. “Violence, Weak Ontology, and Late-Modernity.” Political Theory 37 (6): 808–816.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wingenbach, Edward C. 2011. Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy: Post-Foundationalism and Political Liberalism. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Wolin, Sheldon S. 1989. The Presence of the Past. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wolin, Sheldon S. 1993. “Democracy, Difference, and Re-Cognition.” Political Theory 21 (3): 464–483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolin, Sheldon S. 1994a. “Fugitive Democracy.” Constellations 1: 11–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolin, Sheldon S. 1994b. “Norm and Form: The Constitutionalizing of Democracy.” In Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy, ed. J., Peter Euben, John R., Wallach, and Josiah, Ober, 29–58. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wolin, Sheldon S. 2008. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wright, Erik Olin. 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. Cambridge, UK: Verso.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2002. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zakaria, Fareed. 2007. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, rev. ed. Cambridge, UK: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar