EDITORIAL

This issue opens with an article by Mattias Kettner, which is a continuation of the debate on Forst’s concept of noumenal power, from the previous issue, 11(1), of this Journal. Kettner opens by acknowledging that power has been neglected in critical theory and that Forst’s intervention is an important attempt to rectify this situation. Since Apel and Habermas, critical theory has focussed upon a discourse-theoretical framework, which entails examining the normative presuppositions of discourse as foundations for democratic norms. Forst’s concept of noumenal power ties the concept of power to justification through reason. Forst defines power as follows: ‘…the phenomenon of power is noumenal in nature: to have and to exercise power means to be able – in different degrees – to influence, use, determine, occupy, or even seal off the space of reasons for others’ (Forst 2017, p. 42).

In critique, Kettner argues that this conceptualization of power presupposes an over-rationalistic view of human agency. For Forst political power, in both its normatively desirable and dominating aspects, hinges around justification. This presupposes social actors who exercise and respond to power for reasons. In essence, the issue that concerns Kettner is a conceptual slide from justification, to reason giving and from that to reason in-itself. In practice it may well be the case that justifications are random or emotional. Hence, the premise of justification does not warrant the conclusion of reason. Forst will reply to this, and previous criticisms, in the next issue 11(3).

The nature of justification and its relationship to reason lie at the core of liberal democratic theory. In this tradition it is taken as given that all members of the polis are of equal moral worth. Therefore, human liberties and rights of political participation are distributed equally. However, as argued by Allyn Fives, children are systematically excluded from these liberal democratic liberties and rights. The classic liberal justification of paternalism is premised upon the assumption that children are not fully competent in their reason. Therefore, children require others to direct them, for their own good. As long as this interference in their lives tracks their interests, this does not entail conflict with liberal normative principles of liberty. In contrast, Fives argues that liberals should face the fact that paternalism entails compromising the liberties of children. Even when paternalism results in desirable outcomes for children, we should acknowledge that this desirable outcome takes place at the expense of liberty. Liberals should confront that to the extent to which children are capable of liberty, when that liberty is compromised, even in their longer-term interests, interference in the rights of the child has taken place. If we move away from a binary, black and white, view of rights, we can provide conceptual space to theorize conflicts of rights and examine the justifications of the compromise of rights. This constitutes a more coherent and honest mode of justification than pretending the interference with rights does not occur in the first place.

Paternalism is, of course, a form of authority. In his article Pertti Alasuutari analyses the social construction of authority, which he argues is an epistemic phenomenon. Resonant with Forst’s characterisation of noumenal power, authority resources don’t just exist out there, nor are they simple possessions. Rather, those who have authority have epistemic capital gained from the knowledge that others have of them. This knowledge constitutes a social fact that renders those in authority powerful. In many instances authority need not be linked to a person: it may be a book or sacred object that responding social actors confer epistemic capital upon. Authority refers to the actors, principles or material things that people know and take into account when deciding to act. Reminiscent of Kettner’s concern over an over-rationalistic concept of human agency, Alasuutari argues that this influence includes the petty and ignoble reasons for action, including fear of coercion.

Epistemic capital is conferred upon people with effect that often fundamentally undermines the democratic process. As frequently observed in the days of the early power debates, a reputation for power is a phenomenon that is a de facto source of power, with the potential to undermine democratic practice. Steven Masvaure explores the workings of local government in the City of Harare, Zimbabwe. The result is a description of politics that is far from the ideals of pluralistic democracy that Dahl observed in New Haven (Dahl 1961). The city government of Harare is, in principle, controlled by the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change), where they have an elected majority. Thus, democratic institutions exist. However, Zimbabwe itself is governed by the ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front), who effectively have exercised a monopoly of state power since independence. The ZANU-PF view themselves as sole source of policy within Zimbabwe, so any initiative which the MDC instigate at the local government level is perceived as a threat to the ZANU-PF monopoly of authority. When MDC councillors engage in independent political initiatives, they learn that their action is perceived as outside the conditions of possibility. In other words, MDC councillors experience two-dimensional bias. Often this is overt: councillors come to understand that being at variance with central government means that you will either be fired or suspended. Acquiring the epistemic knowledge of a competent city councillor entails learning to carry out the wishes of ZANU-PF. This learning of the rules of the game constitutes a form of epistemic knowledge that takes authority capital away from the MDC and confers it upon central government. Once that lesson is learned, in line with the third dimension of power, most MDC do not even try to implement policies at variance with the known objectives of ZANU-PF. So, two-dimensional structural bias feeds back to create a third dimension epistemic knowledge of authority, which suppresses visible conflict.

When actors find themselves in situations of highly unequal power, whereby counter justifications are pointless, social actors are either forced into acquiescence or they can refuse to accept bias, which means resistance. Mona Lilja and Stellan Vinthagen explore a whole spectrum of resistance, rather than as a singular phenomenon. At one end of the spectrum the most obvious form of resistance is organized resistance. However, this is the strategy of those who already have significant power. Protestors carry placards and hold public demonstrations when they think that their justifications have a chance of being listened to: when there is a reasonable chance of transferring epistemic power from the powerful to the less powerful. Lilja and Vinthagen are particularly interested in the other end of the spectrum, where the concept of dispersed resistance applies. This is resistance without an obvious organisational centre. Following Foucault, they differentiate dispersed resistance against sovereign power, which they term counter-repressive resistance, and resistance to disciplinary and biopower, which they term productive resistance. The former entails subtle modes of resistance to top-down commands, while the latter involves a productive resistance to the reproduction of a specific form of social subject. The former includes work-to-rule, while the latter includes repeating disciplines differently or re-signifying signified bodies.

If resistance is about contesting meaning, it is possible to reinterpret the political inactivity of young people, manifest in the rise of non-voting, as a phenomenon other than political apathy. Pernille Almlund explores the justifications that young people offer for not voting, or returning blank votes, in Danish local democracy. In line with Alasuutari’s hypothesis that authority is epistemic, Almlund argues that there is an epistemic shift between generations, whereby the politics of the older generation, who dominate political parties, simply do not resonate with the tacit practical consciousness and interests of young people. Because the world of democratic politics is traditionally conceived along party lines, younger people focus their political activities in different directions. It is not that they are a-political: rather it is that they are differently political. If democracy is to survive this shift, it has to adapt to these new social constructions of politics. For instance, focus group consultation could become part of the institutionalized political realm of democracy. Within such a context, the institutions of democracy may shift but the underlying justifications, such as consulting the will of the people, still remain as normative ideals. For Almlund non-voting is a form of resistance that has the potential to strengthen democracy, if it is listened to as political action, rather than dismissed as apathy.

Foucault argued that there is power only where there can be resistance, so power and resistance are mutually constitutive. Carlos Palacios takes up the theme of freedom, in the context of the Foucauldian perspective of power as productive. This interest echoes Lilja’s and Vinthagen’s interest in dispersed productive resistance, which Palacios would theorize as a bid for freedom. Similarly, he would take the Danish non-voters (Almlund’s study) as making a bid for freedom because they resist the dominant view of the political, while constructing a different politics. The problem of freedom in Foucauldian theory is that all subjects are partially objects, therefore can never really create new meanings. Bids for freedom are inherently disruptive, or counter conduct. Freedom entails resisting justifications with other justifications that disrupt the easy flow of the social construction of the human subject. However, there is a certain pessimism-cum-nihilism in this theory that Palacios wishes to counter. Drawing inspiration from Arendt’s account of revolutionary action and by developing Foucault’s discussion of the Greek concept of parrhesia, Palacios theorises an account of freedom that goes beyond resistance: to constitute action that is positively productive.

Within Ancient Greek democracy rhetoric was the practice of politics that sought to bind others to power, while parrhesia entailed a kind of truth telling aimed at breaking the bonds of power. Palacios uses this distinction as a conceptual tool to theorize positive constitutive freedom. If power is conduct of conduct, Palacios argues that freedom through parrhesia should be theorized as reflection of reflection.

Following Palacios, with regard to the young non-voters, I would suggest that dominating power (rhetoric) entails excluding them as apathetic, thus implicitly in need of disciplined subject formation, while freedom entails listening and reforming the democratic process, as suggested by Almlund. Thus freedom becomes openness to new epistemic views of authority. With regard to Alasuutari’s characterisation of authority, this suggests that are there more power-as-domination and freedom-enhancing ways of constituting epistemic authority capital. If so, it should be possible to re-constitute dominating institutions, including paternalism (Fives), in a manner that is more freedom-enhancing. This has relevance to Masvaure’s description of power in Zimbabwe, where the normative point was that the democratic election of councillors in Harare did not result in democracy because their epistemic capital was non-democratic, as opposed to freedom-enhancing. Echoing Kettner and Forst, part of democratic practice entails distinguishing the forms of epistemic authority that resonate with different models of justification. Perhaps the key to deepening democracy is to harness dispersed resistance (as theorized by Lilja and Vinthage) into a mode of justification, which entails reflection upon the reflected modes of resistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.