The Democratic Discourses of the Social Movements in the Context of Political Crisis in Spain: Common Elements, Potential Junctions and Persistent Gaps

The political crisis that the southern European countries are suffering is challenging the legitimacy of the liberal democracy. Following Rosanvallon and Della Porta, this paper considers that the study of the democratic systems should not be limited to the analysis of the institutional arena. Therefore it is crucial to evaluate the democratic discourses that have emerged from the civil society. The study firstly focus on the analysis of the discourse of political actors that take part in the wave of social mobilization that is spreading in Spain since 2011. Three proposals that challenge the liberal democracy would be analyzed: the participative (Pateman, Barber, Arendt), the deliberative (Arato, Cohen, Habermas) and the agonistic (Mouffe). The goal is to build a theoretical dialogue between the critics and the proposals of these models to conclude both the elements in common as well as those which are difficult to integrate in a common perspective.