The Conflictual Body Politic: Political Conflict in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Disagreement and conflict have perennially defined political life. Together, they also constitute one of the driving forces of democratic politics. When practiced productively, democratic conflict signals passionate commitment to a cause, the desire for political agency (individual and collective), and a high level of public spiritedness. It also provides a powerful antidote to political apathy and encapsulates a kind of adversarial ethics resting on the agreement on how to disagree, inside and outside representative institutions. However, conflict can also be toxic and profoundly disruptive when it reignites factional divisions, undermining the principle of legitimate opposition and rotation in office at the core of liberal democracy. Focusing on domestic (rather than international) conflict, the course examines constitutive debates on the meaning, scope, and challenges of political conflict in the life of the body politic, past and present. Its goal is to alert students to the varieties of political conflict and to the ways in which democratic theory (historical and contemporary) has differentiated between rival forms of disagreement, in the transition from factions to parties and from consensus to compromise.