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La gestión del antagonismo: entre la deliberación y la protesta agonística

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Overview

Mario Zubiaga (professor of political science at the University of the Basque Country) introduces a class framed by the idea of “managing antagonism” between deliberation and agonistic/protest-based politics within processes of democratic deepening, democratization, and democratic radicalization. This also draws on community development approaches inspired by participatory work, including a long-standing research group at the university.

1) Limits of participatory and deliberative instruments

Zubiaga argues that participatory tools have structural limits because “politics” is defined by a permanent tension between two dimensions:

  • Associative dimension: living/acting together, binding decisions, the polis
  • Conflictive/dissociative dimension: polemos—irreducible antagonism and conflict

Building on Mark Warren, he highlights that the political emerges where binding decisions and power intersect with conflict. Otherwise, conflict can remain non-binding and avoid consequences—meaning politics is “suppressed” rather than fully expressed.

2) “Suppressed politics” and negations/neutralizations of the political

He explains that “politics without visible conflict” can hide either:

  • Hegemony as forced or naturalized consensus
  • Hegemony as oppression that denies voice and the emergence of groups (i.e., political events arising from “parts without a part”)

From authors on “negations of the political,” he lists ways politics is denied or neutralized:

  • Archaeopolitics: imagining harmonious communities by externalizing conflict
  • Ultrapolitics: creating harmony by eliminating an internal enemy
  • Post-politics: a well-ordered polis managed by police, assigning places and ensuring internal order
  • Metapolitics: relocating political controversy into non-political domains to colonize it

He stresses that colonization can occur through economics, morality, religion, science, or law. For example, in the pandemic, technical/scientific framings can end up overriding what remains ultimately a political decision.

3) Democratization as a normative project requiring conflict

Zubiaga proposes a procedural/material middle-ground concept of democratization, emphasizing deepening toward:

  • Equal, general, autonomous citizenship
  • Protected consultation (government formation and performance increasingly depend on citizens)
  • Protection against arbitrariness

This process depends on:

  • Civil society/social movements (as drivers)
  • State/institutional capacity (to stabilize and institutionalize gains)

Crucially, he links democratization to conflict and protest:

  • Protest is not merely “noise”; it is part of how rights and freedoms expand, including freedoms that were not imaginable in advance.
  • Participatory democratic instruments designed to avoid or pacify conflict may unintentionally deactivate the engines of democratization.

4) Social movements: three logics (power, identity/alter power, influence)

Zubiaga defines social movements as conflictual interaction processes between groups lacking formal representation and institutional actors/power, where decision power and political content are at stake.

Movements operate through three overlapping logics:

  1. Power / counter-power: challenging the institution’s legitimacy; conflicts of legitimacy drive democratization.
  2. Identity / alter (autonomous civil society): building alternative values/spaces; conflict may arise if institutions refuse to recognize these worlds.
  3. Influence: positioning as a pressure/interest group aiming to integrate proposals without denying others’ legitimacy.

Movements can shift among logics depending on circumstances—sometimes moving from counter-power toward influence if counter-power cannot overcome institutions.

5) Antagonism management models: aggregate, deliberative, warlike, and agonistic

He categorizes political conflict-management modes:

  • Aggregate / competitive democracy Market-like competition among oligarchic party actors; citizens as passive “consumers” choosing among products.

  • Deliberative models Interlocution aiming at rational consensus.

  • Warlike / dissociative models Friend–enemy logic; citizens become instruments (“weapons”), risking extreme “activation” or passivity.

  • Agonistic / protest agonistics An adversary relationship without annihilation; struggle for hegemony and redefinition of normality; self-limited protest.

He argues real political systems often occupy intermediate spaces between these poles.

6) Three participatory positions: being part / taking part / giving part

Zubiaga maps participation into three different dynamics:

  • Being part: community development and autonomy (identity/alter power)
  • Taking part: counter-power logic—when the group lacks a legitimate “part” in the institutional order and struggles to obtain it
  • Giving part: institutional participatory democracy—where institutions provide channels, but participants are not the only legitimate “part”

He warns that identity-based autonomy can become isolated “islands” if it loses political reach. However, he also insists that even in well-designed participatory systems, conflict cannot be eliminated—attempts to remove conflict risk colonizing the political by the social.

7) Why movements resist “regulated” participation

Zubiaga argues social movements often distrust institutional participatory formats because regulation can weaken core mechanisms of contention:

  1. Brokerage: connecting disconnected/demobilized spaces
  2. Polarization: separating institutional vs. social fields to enable change
  3. Innovation / eventfulness: practices that create uncertainty for the system and open space for change

Institutional deliberative settings push toward predictability and consensus, which can depolarize, isolate actors, and reduce negotiation—thereby undercutting conflict-driven democratization.

8) Conclusion: agonistic practice as democratic engine

He concludes that agonistic praxis is democratic—“speaking as if fighting and fighting as if speaking”—and that democratization requires:

  • the emergence of suppressed politics
  • the expansion of rights and freedoms
  • recognition that conflict/protest is a central engine of political change, even if other democratic practices may also contribute.

Presenters / Contributors

  • Mario Zubiaga (main presenter)

Original video