In recent works, Chantal Mouffe presents, at the same time, two theoretical movements. In the one side, she criticizes deliberative theories, above all Rawls and Habermas accounts. In the other side, she presents the agonistic model of democracy. The Mouffe's critic to the deliberationists starts from the principle that these researchers aim to eliminate power relations from politics, changing them by a rational principle for decision making. For Mouffe, power elimination is impossible, once power ground the very ontological dimension of the political. In this paper, it argues, however, that the Mouffe's alternative to the deliberative models is unsatisfied, once her agonistic purpose is only an action principle and not necessarily a political theoretical model structured. The aim of this paper is to discuss Mouffe's theoretical purpose, presenting mainly its limitations in relation to its development.
Agonism; Discourse Theory; Radical Democracy; Deliberative Democracy; Chantal Mouffe