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21 Cardozo L. Rev. 1525 (1999-2000)
Carl Schmitt and the Three Moments of Democracy

handle is hein.journals/cdozo21 and id is 1539 raw text is: CARL SCHMITT AND THE THREE MOMENTS OF DEMOCRACY Andreas Kalyvas* A constitution is an organization of offices in a city, by which the method of their distribution is fixed, the sovereign authority is determined, and the nature of the end to be pursued by the association and all its members is prescribed.' Apart from a few isolated exceptions, Carl Schmitt's relationship to democratic theory has not been carefully investigated.2 Never considered a very attractive or promising topic, it has remained neglected and marginalized within the constantly expanding Schmitt scholarship. This negligence is partly due to the fact that in those few cases that Schmitt's relevance has captured the attention of scholars it has been primarily from a critical and dismissive standpoint. But the lack of scholarship addressing Schmitt's relation to democracy is also a result of some attributes of Schmitt's theory that have precluded this line of investigation. Let me very briefly explain. Schmitt's critics have often described his stance toward democracy as either antagonistic and hostile or as manipulative and hypocritical. In the first case, Schmitt is represented as an intransigent enemy of modern democracy, who feared that the entry of the propertyless masses into the political arena not only would subvert an already weakened state authority and social order, but would also threaten the instituted privileges, values, entrenched interests, and power of * Andreas Kalyvas is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science, Columbia University. His doctoral thesis is entitled The Politics of the Extraordinary. 1 ARISTOTLE, THE POLITICS OF ARISTOTLE 153 (Ernest Barker trans., 1995). 2 Chantal Mouffe represents an exception to this rule. She has devoted several articles to illuminating the relationship between Schmitt and democratic theory. Notwithstanding her achievements, Mouffe's intentions remain quite ambiguous. It is not clear whether she seeks to show the importance of Schmitt for contemporary democratic politics, or to provide a more agonistic and self-conscious version of liberalism. CHANTAL MOUFFE, THE RETURN OF THE POLITICAL 129-30 (1993); Chantal Mouffe, Carl Schmitt and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy, 10 CANADIAN J.L. & JURISPRUDENCE 21 (1997); Chantal Mouffe, Penser la d~mocratie moderne avec, et contre, Carl Schmitt, 42 REVUE FRANCAISE DE SCIENCE POLITIQUE 83 (1992). 1525

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