La democracia deliberativa frente al agonismo pluralista de Chantal Mouffe

I seek to defend deliberative democracy by subjecting to criticism one of its contenders, Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism. First, I reconstruct the vision that deliberative democracy and populism have about the relationship between the political and truth. Second, I connect the vision each have to the distinction between deliberation and negotiation. Third, I demonstrate that Mouffe, by denying the existence of any relevant relationship between the political and truth, wounds up defending a kind of politics in which negotiation becomes the properly “political” kind of action. I make the argument that this leads to a commodified vision of politics. Lastly, I argue that politics so conceived is highly disfunctional.