Where Is Politics Generated? Althusius, Arendt, and the Role of Mediating Structures in Non-Sovereign Politics

Modern political thought typically understands politics as an order of rule centered on supreme authority, usually sovereignty. However, this sovereign model compresses the rich mediating relationships and plural actions within politics. Taking “where is politics generated” as its core question, this article conducts a comparative study of the political theories of Johannes Althusius and Hannah Arendt from the perspective of mediating structures. The article first elaborates the basic structure of the sovereign model and identifies its underlying social imaginary: political order is understood as a ruling structure established by a unified adjudication center, while mediating communities and plural relationships are regarded as objects to be incorporated into it. On this basis, the article analyzes how Althusius and Arendt, respectively, proposed two non-sovereign forms of politics against different historical conditions of mediating structures. Althusius, writing in a still-corporate world where mediating structures remained abundant, understood politics as a symbiotic order produced through hierarchically constructed communities. Arendt, confronting the modern disintegration of those structures and the decline of the public sphere, redefined politics as the action of plural actors in public space and the generation of power. The former answers how political community is constructed outside the sovereign center; the latter answers how politics can be reactivated within an already institutionalized community.