ABSTRACTDrawing upon archival material, this article offers an overview and discussion of the manner in which the topic of representative democracy was addressed during conferences of the Mont Pèlerin Society in the period between 1947 and 1998. I contend that the most common critique of democracy amongst MPS members was that democratic politics has the tendency to lead to interventions in the economy, thus distorting or even destroying the market mechanism. Yet most members were simultaneously convinced that democracy is a (...) necessary condition of individual liberty, which meant that democracy, rather than being either a mere nuisance or an irredeemable obstacle that must be rejected wholesale, posed a genuine problem for them. Whilst at MPS conferences a myriad of solutions to the problem of democracy was explored, one such solution was suggested most often and theorized most thoroughly, namely the imposition of constitutional limits on popular power; a proposal that often amounted to an attempt radically to circumscribe citizens’ influence on the legislature. I conclude by reflecting upon the implications of these findings for the scholarly study of neoliberal thought on democracy. (shrink)

As offshoots of and reactions to neoliberalism continue to dominate our political imaginary, the scholarly critique of neoliberal thought remains urgent and timely. This article engages with two re...

‘Non-Fascist Living’: Identity, Subjectivity, Resistance This article explores a recent form of academic and artistic resistance to contemporary modalities of fascism. This form of resistance is premised upon the argument that fascism lodges itself in the deepest recesses of the self, manifesting as fascist desires and beliefs. As such, traces of fascism are present in everyone, including people who do not otherwise hold fascistic ideas. This position goes on to argue that any critic of fascism must accordingly identify and eradicate (...) such traces inside her own subjectivity, by means of an ethics of ‘non-fascist living’. Critically examining the philosophical presuppositions of this position, the article asks what implicit conception of the subject and its relation to resistance is at work here. It brings this position into conversation with Michel Foucault, upon whose work it draws but whose understanding of resistance, it is argued, it reconceptualises. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this form of resistance for critical philosophical practice. (shrink)

This article engages with the limits of Ernesto Laclau's theory of populism, focusing on the logic of popular identification. The central argument is that the Laclauian framework is incapable of accounting for recent forms of populism that articulate a decolonial mode of identification. More specifically, the article shows that for Laclau, leadership and exclusion are necessary components of popular identification, in which the identity of ‘the people' depends on the prior symbolic articulation of both an enemy and a leader. Although (...) this theory of populism is well-positioned to explain how populist leadership functioned in several mid-century Latin American varieties of populism, it founders when faced with more recent forms of populist identification. Careful analysis of contemporary Ecuadorian and Bolivian populisms shows that these implicitly reject the Laclauian model of identification, articulating instead a decolonial model that advocates the plurality of identities and mobilises rich national histories of anti-colonial resistance. (shrink)