Konfliktus és demokrácia: Érvek a konfliktusok politikai jelentősége és korlátozásuk szükségessége mellet
Conflicts and Democracy: Considerations on Political Conflicts and the need of their Delimitation

Summary/Abstract: According to our common experience of political life, the relationship between politics and conflicts seems to be obvious. However, it is also common to think about delimiting the intensity of conflicts in a democratic context. This kind of complexity of the relation of democracy and conflicts can be cexplained from two theoretical perspectives. First, in order to protect democratic order, conflicts may lose their relevance in comparison to the value of consent or compromise.econd, even if we accept the importance of conflicts, we also should take into account the limits of their intensity. These theoretical problems arise in the context of contemporary politics which nature is eminently public and in which every announcement is open to discussion. This is what discourse as a theoretical horizon means. The core concept for theorizing the conflictual character of politics in a discursive manner is political debate. The article explores three kinds of debate and communicative conflicts: John Stuart Mill, as a classical nineteenth century liberal, sheds light on the importance of debate in issues of collective truth-seeking and emotional devotion to our personal values. Márton Szabó, a leading theorist of political discourse in Hungary, also treats debate as a core concept of political discourse studies, and theorizes debate not only as a series of singular acts in the realm of politics, but as a mode of existence of politics itself. Contrary to other contemporary ideas of communication and politics, discourse is therefore inherently conflictual in its character. Similarly, but more embedded in contemporary debates over democracy, Chantal Mouffe, one of the eminent theorists of agonism, interprets conflicts in the context of democratic order, and emphasises the democratic conditions for constructing democratic identities. Her ideas on agonistic democracy can fathom the relation of valuable conflicts and their limits in a democratic regime.

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