In the context of political theory there has been a renewed interest in political realism. This realist turn challenges the moralistic and consensus--based assumptions that dominate the liberal mainstream in the Anglophone academia. However it has not been specifically concerned with democratic theory. In this paper I focus on three major claims embedded in the tradition of political realism and evaluate their possible relevance for a theory of democracy. First, I assess the idea that conflict is a constituent aspect of politics and arises from the incompatibility of views among individuals or collective forms of life. Realists argue that political conflict can arise from rational disagreements but has also an inevitable irrational aspect in which both positive (hope, faith) and negative emotions (fear, distrust) play an important role. Accordingly, political agreement has often a temporary and provisional dimension, as it is based on the compromises of day--to--day politics and structured by complex historical, psychological and sociological contexts. Secondly, I consider the claim that the question of power should be the main concern of any political analysis. The distinction between legitimate and illegitimate forms of power is the main challenge for every realist theory that does not intend to be a simple account of raw power structures. Third, I look at how realism theorizes the relationship between political theory and real politics. Political realists tend to reject the prevalence of ethics on politics and put history at the core of their analysis while also being skeptical of the contributions of social sciences to the study of political regimes. These three realist themes are of great interest for the study of today’s democracies in which phenomena like populism and media politics are spreading. However the risk of a realist democratic theory is that of totally neglecting the normative dimension inevitably included in any theory of democracy. Reconciling the normative and realist dimension becomes then the main challenge of a realist democratic theory.
