Politics Lens 2: Choice and Contingency

Colin Hay’s (2007) work has been perhaps the most influential in this strand of the depoliticisation literature and is noteworthy in providing a – broad – definition of politics as ‘the capacity for agency and deliberation in situations of genuine collective and social choice’ (Hay, 2007: 77). It has been adopted (e.g. Beveridge and Naumann, 2014) or adapted (e.g. Jenkins, 2011; Kuzemko, 2014) by other researchers. Hay defines depoliticisation and politicisation as the movements of issues between an arena of fate and necessity (the non-political), where nothing can be done (depoliticisation), to one of deliberation and contingency (the political), where action and change are possible (politicisation) (Hay, 2007: 81). This politics lens 2 unlocks the political from the confines of the state (politics lens 1). By conceiving of the political in terms of governmental, public and private spheres, it expands exponentially the possibilities of the political in spatial, temporal and activity terms. Hence, the range for empirical enquiry into (de)politicisation is far broader than in politics lens 1.

Table 1.Three Lenses on Politics in the Depoliticisation Literature.

However, it might be argued that there are problems with Hay’s understanding of politics and depoliticisation in terms of issues, which become political, in different forms, depending on the capacity to span private, public and political realms. For instance, there is little sense of how these issues are constituted. Depoliticisation and politicisation are ultimately seen almost in policy-cycle terms, as the capacity of individuals or groups to force their issue onto the policymaking agenda. Wittingly or unwittingly, this reifies the formal institutional processes of representative politics, as well the general claims to democratic legitimacy on which it is based – the representation of issues in the political process is the ultimate determinant of their ‘politicalness’. In addition, the view of the ‘political’ as being about capacity for agency may be seen as both too general (as choice and agency can occur anywhere across the spectrum of social activity) and too actorfocused (as choice must be determined by participants in social contexts). By implication, it might be argued that Hay’s broad inclusive lens on politics has encouraged a tendency in the literature to define depoliticisation by default, and very generally, as the ‘absence of politics’ (Burnham, 2014: 1). A broad a priori definition of politics may be useful for inductive explorative research on (de)politicisation. However, it can lead to conceptual and normative ambiguity (hence, Burnham’s appeal for a narrow definition), that is, how do we identify the spatial and temporal effects of (de)politicisation on politics and whether they are (un)desirable without first clearly delineating the content and contexts of the political itself?

In short, while politics lens 2 offers a strong critique of contemporary politics, there is sometimes only a general notion that politics should function in a different way – that is, be more open or public, provide more choice and be more politicised. However, for such a critique to hold, it surely needs to articulate more precisely what politics is and how this influences our understanding of (de)politicisation. This brings the discussion to the third, more theory-based and normative strand of the literature on depoliticisation.

Politics Lens 3: Politics as the Apparatus of Order and Consensus-Building versus ‘Political’ Moments of Antagonism

Post-foundationalist political theorists have drawn a theoretical distinction between the ‘political’ as a radical and rarely occurring state of conflict, where democracy unfolds, and ‘politics’ as the institutionalised everyday practices of contemporary political systems (Mouffe, 2005: 8–10), or what Jacques Rancière calls the police order (see Marchardt, 2007). One purpose of this distinction is to deny representative political systems the very essence of their claims – to provide for the political and ensure democracy. Another is to highlight the temporality of the political: the fleeting moments of ‘politicalness’ and, by contrast, the routinised, everyday, omnipresent and on-going politics of the system. The term ‘post-political/-politics’ is used to emphasise the deep-rootedness of depoliticisation, the apparent elimination of political choice and contestation, and hence democratic potential. Resonating with, while critiquing the end of ideology discussions from the 1990s (Dean, 2009: 20), some of this work (especially Mouffe, Žižek and Swyngedouw) rests on a further temporal assumption that politics has entered a new era of diminished political and democratic possibilities. The understanding is that the post-Cold War period has witnessed a neoliberal settlement centred on the norms and interests of the global market, which has foreclosed proper political debate (Žižek, 2008). Political apathy and (economic) elite control are seen as commensurate to the rise in populism and urban protest (Swyngedouw, 2014).

A strength of this political theory literature lies in seeing the political as the reassertion of fundamental differences. For example, Chantal Mouffe (2005) draws on – and reinterprets within a leftist perspective – Carl Schmitt’s (2007) notion of the political as resting on friend/enemy distinctions. Hence, politicisation is the random and rare return of antagonistic worldviews which destabilise the existing order. This focuses the researcher’s gaze beyond spatially bounded notions of politics and onto politicisation wherever it occurs, while underscoring the limits to and desirability of consensus. It shows that a key component of depoliticisation is the absolute disavowal of the legitimacy of some actors’ worldviews; the denial of their claims to the ‘political’, the rejection of their concerns as not being of general interest (e.g. Rancière, 1998, 2001).

However, while politicisation is simple to define and locate (if rarely seen) in this view of politics/political, problems emerge in relation to depoliticisation. On the one hand, depolticisation might be the suppression of political moments as they emerge. This would be easy enough to observe in spatial, temporal and activity terms. However, when the assumption is that politics per se is the means through which the political remains marginalised and repressed, then the entire apparatuses and practices of contemporary (post-)politics are ultimately depoliticising. Making politics synonymous with depoliticisation represents a serious challenge to empirical research on depoliticisation (and perhaps explains why there is little empirically-grounded work in this field). As the reach of contemporary representative democracies is great, depoliticisation is thus inherent to most social activity. Consequently, depoliticisation can potentially occur in any space in which political order is apparent, in any timeframe (short-term or long-term) and take any form of activity (discourse or institutional practice). Ultimately, depoliticisation might be everywhere but not necessarily on view given its embeddedness in the current political order.

Beyond the difficulties this represents for empirical research, there are further problems with this blanket view of politics as inherently depoliticising and the assertion that we are experiencing a post-political age of democratic politics. In the end, the binary understanding of real political/politics as police may be seen to negate the grey areas and contingencies of contemporary politics (Marchardt, 2011; compare Jessop, 2014: 1). It reduces the form genuine politics can take – the activities that may be understood as political. The multiplicity of political agency is, a priori, eliminated; ‘real’ political agency is confined to the contestation of institutional politics/police (Darling, 2014: 74– 75). Furthermore, the apparent all-powerfulness of the post-political order diminishes the possibilities for the political to emerge (Beveridge and Koch, 2016). Hence, although the political is seen as not being spatially bounded – at least in its potential appearance if not in its ultimate effects – its limited temporality (its rareness and briefness) markedly shrinks the possibility of politicisation of the political order. However, even according to its own reading of the age, there is a politics to the post-political age – neoliberalism – and the key features of this condition (e.g. formal political consensus on the benefits of the global economy) are contested and best seen as on-going political achievements (Dean, 2009: 23). Thus, it might well be argued that we have never really had a post-political condition (McCarthy, 2013), although we may have long had depoliticisation (Schmitt, 2007).

Moving beyond the Depoliticisation ‘Crisis’

As well as providing contrasting understandings of how (de)politicisation works, the strands of literature discussed provide varying views of the most crucial issue at stake: how do we exit the depoliticisation crisis? This section reflects on what the varying lenses on politics offer in terms of getting out of the depoliticisation ‘crisis’ (assuming we accept the argument that there is one). The differences apparent in the literature turn on the merits of formal representative democracy, ‘anti-political’ sentiment and extra-formal political agency. Again, they reveal different ontologies of the political.

In the – largely UK-based and -focused – literature concerned with modes of depoliticisation in governance (resting on politics lenses 1 and 2), there are very prominent works that engage broadly with depoliticisation and anti-politics within the context of a perceived democratic malaise (Flinders, 2012; Hay, 2007; Stoker, 2006). All of them, in their varying ways, fall back on a reassertion of the merits of representative democracy, and hence a quite narrow, conventional and perhaps even exclusionary understanding of what politics should and can be. The overriding message in these works is that despite its problems, representative democracy can and should be saved. The onus is on the ‘people’ and political institutions to work together better to reinvigorate politics, to overcome antipolitical sentiment. While the many people who have been failed by and protest against representative democracy are sometimes addressed in these works, the arguments for substantial change, for alternative forms of politics, are not really considered.

Beyond these well-known books, the literature on modes of depoliticisation in governance has very little to say about escaping the depoliticisation crisis, even when it provides good empirical and conceptual accounts of how it operates (e.g. Flinders and Wood, 2014). While this is no doubt tied up with the more open and less pre-ordained view of depoliticisation dominant in these strands and the advantages this can have in terms of tracing depoliticisation, the lack of a real vision of change is surely problematic in a debate about political decline and democratic crisis. In other words, the relative lack of attention to political ontology in this strand of the literature, and the commensurate emphasis on empirically ascertaining how politics and (de)politicisation function, leave it with a blunt normative edge.Politics lens 3 sets itself up in opposition to the reformist spirit arguably apparent in politics lenses

1 and 2 and representative democracy per se, denying both a place in the ontology of the – true –political. Instead, outbreaks of radical political contestation and change are the genuine momentary realisations of the political. Political change occurs only outside of and always in opposition to the formal political system (which seeks the depoliticisation of the hegemonic order). Scholars (e.g. Swyngedouw, 2014) employing this perspective have thus devoted much attention to the diverse, usually urban, uprisings from 2008 onwards (e.g. the Arab Spring, anti-austerity movements in Southern Europe, Occupy), the strategies employed to realise new political worlds (by denying the veracity of existing political worlds) and the novel forms of organisation which have emerged (e.g. parallel institutions in Greece and Spain).

Although the narrow ontology of the political, especially the too-easy dismissal of institutionalised politics, is problematic, politics lens 3 speaks to some of the most novel forms of democratic politics that have emerged in recent years. These instances of politicisation are ultimately often bound up with an outright rejection of the current political system. The urban movements in Greece and Spain and elsewhere in 2011 were not merely contesting the post-democratic neoliberal settlement but also the political system, which they saw as integral to it. In some ways, then, politics lens 3 captures more of the depoliticisation crisis because it accounts better for politicisation in the wake of and in opposition to perceived political decline. Furthermore, it interlinks depoliticisation and politicisation; the two correspond dialectically. Political change, moving from depoliticisation, an era of post-politics, is bound up with the politicisation of politics (and hence of representative democracy) itself. Where politics lenses 1 and 2 tend to obfuscate, politics lens 3 frames and floodlights the causes of the depoliticisation crisis (the inadequacies of institutionalised politics) and the path to political change (the articulation of antagonistic worldviews).