Open AccessTHE POLITICAL VERSUS THE STATE? THE RELEVANCE OF CARL SCHMITT’S CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL
Author(s) -
Tihomir Cipek
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
teorija in praksa
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.191
H-Index - 8
ISSN - 0040-3598
DOI - 10.51936/tip.58.2.268-283
Subject(s) - politics , democracy , state (computer science) , political culture , populism , political philosophy , liberal democracy , political science , ideology , political economy , law , sociology , mathematics , algorithm
. The aim of the article is to examine the relationship between the state, democracy and the CarlSchimitt’s concept of the political. That is going to bedone by reconstructing the concepts of Schmitt’s political theory and finding out whether they can be usedto explain the ideology of the new right-wing populismand illiberal democracy. As it turns out, the Schmitt’sreduction of the political to the friend/enemy antagonism makes the core of the illiberal democracies’ rulingnarrative. The Schimtt’s understanding of the political doesn’t defend the state as a political space but bycancelling of the liberal elements of democracy ruinsthe state institutions. The analysis shows that Schmitt’snotion of the political cannot be used to build effectivedemocratic state institutions. Namely, in his definitionof the political, politics actually exists only on the outwards, towards some other nation, some other politicalunity, but not within the state itself.Keywords: state, the political, Carl Schmitt, illiberaldemocracy