Democratic Vulnerability: Potentials and Limits of the Method of Immanent Critique in the Context of the Democratic Crisis

Democracies are threatened both internally and externally, and authoritarian rules are gaining ground. Wicked problems like climate change make people question democracy’s ability to solve problems. At the same time, democracies are under constant pressure to make difficult policy choices about migration, welfare, climate, and technology, leaving little time to reflect on their own purposes and functions. While political theorists have begun to elaborate the notion of democratic vulnerability, they have yet to fully realize its potential. In this context of democratic crisis, this paper discusses the possibilities and limits of the method of immanent critique. Following this approach, we ask what it takes for democracies to achieve their purpose(s), and what prevents them from doing so (Benhabib, 1986; Fraser and Jaeggi, 2018; Jaeggi, 2018). Immanent critique reveals not only important hidden aspects of the practices that hinder and sustain democracy, but also hidden aspects of purpose and goals of democracy. To explore the purpose of democracy as well as its preconditions, the paper builds on previous studies of democratic vulnerability that have focused on the exchange of perspectives (Habermas, 1990, 1996). To summarize the central idea, democracies are vulnerable to whether citizens exchange perspectives through which citizens’ vulnerability is recognized. Without the ability to share perspectives with others, which depends on the willingness of others to share perspectives, citizens are unable to reflectively form individual and collective wills, which is central to democracy (Anderson and Honneth, 2005). It is through the exchange of perspectives that citizens engage in interpretations of needs, and such intersubjective interpretations of needs foster and support their private and public autonomy (Fraser, 1989). While citizens are vulnerable to whether other citizens will exchange perspectives with them, and whether democratic practices support this, democracies are also vulnerable to whether such practices are robustly enacted or impeded. This raises the question of which institutional practices undermine perspective taking and which support it? Following the above, the paper shows that a proper conceptualization of democratic vulnerability should remind us of the intersubjective core of democracy: its infrastructure of recognition. The central theoretical concept of recognition here means an attribution of normative status to individuals that supports their status as equal democratic citizens (Forst, 2002; Honneth, 2007). The infrastructure of recognition consists of those core social, legal, and political institutions (and related institutionalized practices and mechanisms) that shape such recognition (Honneth, 2014). Democratic vulnerability is thus not just another term for democratic crises; it encourages us to value, protect, and enable the positive qualities of democratic vulnerability; and to see democracies’ basic infrastructure of recognition as an expression of the fact that citizens are vulnerable when perspective taking does not take place (Habermas, 1996). These insights are relevant for thinking about on the design of democratic representation that can support society-wide reflection on the relationship between democracy and vulnerability. This approach faces a serious challenge given the controversial nature of the intersubjective moral-psychological theories on which it is based. The paper suggests ways to overcome this challenge.