Carl Schmitt Multifaceted Rejection of Political Compromises

Carl Schmitt’s constant denunciation of political compromises has received little attention. This omission is damaging in two ways. On the one hand, it misses a central aspect of Schmitt’s political thought. On the other hand, it deprives us of a valuable source for those interested in discourses challenging the legitimacy of compromise in democracy. In this paper, I systematize Schmitt’s multifaceted grievances to compromises, especially as expressed during the 1920s and early 1930s. If the Weimar Constitution is fertile soil for observing and contesting compromises, the Third Reich constituted, for Schmitt, a paradigm reversal on this subject, as it managed to rid itself of pluralism and compromises. Schmitt has been portrayed as an authoritarian populist: the systematic reconstruction of his critique of compromise allows for a finer elaboration of the points of convergence and divergence between his own democratic theory and populist views of democracy.