Brexit as Fugitive Democracy

New Political Science

Amidst increasing and seemingly intransigent inequalities, unresponsive institutions, and illegible patterns of social change, political theorists are increasingly faced with questions about the viability of democracy in the contemporary age. One of the most prominent voices within this conversation has been that of Sheldon Wolin. Wolin has famously argued that democracy is a 'fugitive' experience with an inherently temporary character. Critics have pounced on this concept, rejecting it as an admission of defeat or despair that is at odds with the formation of democratic counter-power. In this article, I push back against this view of fugitive democracy. I do so by contextualizing the idea within Wolin's broader democratic theory, and especially his idea of the 'multiple civic self' , in order to give a more coherent form to a conception of citizenship often concealed by the attention given to the supposedly momentary nature of democracy. This all too common misreading of fugitive democracy has significant stakes, because it shapes not only how we approach Wolin's impact as a political theorist, but also how we approach practices of democratic citizenship and how we think about political theory and political science's relationship to those practices.

Political Studies Review

in "Constitutional Democracy and the Challenges of Anti-Liberalism. Lessons from Experience", EDUCatt, 2023

Sheldon Wolin played a significant role in shaping contemporary democratic thought in an anti-liberal way. “[A] journey from liberalism to democracy” is the expression Wolin employs to describe his political and personal path from a liberal to a democratic approach. This biographical suggestion acts as an effective metaphor to navigate through Wolin’s works, moving from his criticism of constitutional liberalism to his reflection on democratic practices in modern times. What this paper would underline is the historical grounding of Wolin’s reflection, following his suggestion that democracy has always been defeated by different forms of anti-democratic ideas and powers. Wolin’s reflection on the Federalist Papers, the Bible of liberal constitutionalism, firmly underlines this defeat, investigating the anti-democratic convictions that moved the American Founding Fathers. Moreover, the Federalist’s case, according to Wolin, is particularly representative of the anti-democratic beliefs shared by the major protagonists of the history of philosophy. However, this theoretical refusal of democracy reveals something important about its “fugitive” nature: its indisposition to theory. Wolin’s rejection of what he defines as an “epic” notion of philosophy turns out to be a rejection of an anti-democratic practice of thought.

Political Quarterly , 2019

Revue internationale de politique comparée, 2017

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Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021

IN THE scholarly analysis of contemporary politics, public opinion is king. As liberal democracies have seen multi-party competition devolve into divisive, one dimensional verdicts on strong man politics and single issue referenda, so has public opinion scholarship never been more prominent or discussed. Brexit in the UK has been a boomtime for this kind of work. University of Manchester professors Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford sit at the sober and most scholarly end of a highly visible and influential field of work, that runs from the technical boffinry of John Curtice on election night, via scholars such as Geoff Evans and Will Jennings echoing the "blue left" by charting the loss of the Labour heartlands, to the anti-liberal op. ed. provocations of Matthew Goodwin, Eric Kaufmann and David Goodhart. All of them seem to share a thirst for the media limelight: sometimes awkwardly combining "data science" with work close to the logic of media commentary and party strategising. Brexitland may stand as the capstone of a literature first launched by Ford's earlier volume with Goodwin, Revolt on the Right (2014): on the rise of UKIP, Nigel Farage, and the ripping apart and realignment of two party dominated British politics. Brexit, it argues, was the end point of a seismic shift in British politics that can be drawn right back through the post-war period. Key to this view has been the emergence of what they see as a deeply rooted "cultural war" patterned essentially on the one raging on the other side of the Atlantic, with one crucial dimension — the variable salience over the decades of "immigration" as the wild card in British politics.

The British referendum of 23 June 2016 and subsequent withdrawal from the European Union is often regarded as heralding a new democratic era for Britain as she is freed from the shackles of undemocratic EU institutions. After briefly analysing the validity of claims regarding the existence of a ‘democratic deficit’ in the EU, this paper examines whether national and popular sovereignty are likely to be reaffirmed by the experience of the referendum and its aftermath. It argues that, on the contrary, national sovereignty risks being further undermined as the UK, under the current conservative government, assumes a hyperglobalist position which prioritises free trade over other democratic freedoms. It also suggests that the referendum did little to revive popular sovereignty. Although the ‘Leave’ vote will be respected, the referendum debate itself was nothing more than a simulacrum of democracy. Far from solving the democratic deficit, the problem has only been exacerbated at a national level following the ‘Remain’ votes in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In the final analysis, this ‘democratic moment’, at least under a conservative government, was entirely illusory.

The Brexit process has shattered the foundations of British politics, with prime ministerial resignations, government defeats, continuous rebellions and floor crossings. This phenomenon seems at odds with the usual decisiveness of Westminster systems. However, the aforementioned departures from the British tradition could be interpreted as compatible with the typical distance of any empirical reality from theoretical models, as exceptions to the rule due to the specificity of the European issue, or as the surfacing of some deeper social, economic and cultural tensions. Data alone are insufficient to confirm any of the alternative interpretations, although they seem to confirm the existence of longterm dynamics more than some short-term exceptionalism. Within this scenario, the article suggests that a series of institutional innovations introduced since the late 1990s have facilitated the political consolidation of those tensions, contributed to the partisan dealignment, and made room for a potential departure from a Westminster model of democracy.