Overview

Democracy and Competition sets out to reframe the role of competition in democratic theory. Competition is the defining feature of modern democratic politics. On the dominant account of 'competitive democracy', competition is framed as electoral competition. This framing is shared by both defenders and critics of the dominant model, who then argue whether democracy needs more or less (of this kind of) competition. However, the contributions to this volume highlight the diversity of concepts, sites, and modes of competition within democratic politics. They ask: when, where, and what kind of competition we need in democracies today, what purposes these varied forms of competition serve, and what kinds of competition threaten democracy. This volume aims to set a new research agenda for democratic theorists of all stripes, while also making arguments about competition and institutional design that are relevant to empirical political science, legal scholarship, and studies of communication.

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9781805966630

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Alfred Moore is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of York. He is the author of Critical Elitism: Deliberation, Democracy, and the Politics of Expertise (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and has written widely on the politics of expertise. His work engages a wide range of themes in contemporary democratic theory, including anonymity and deliberation, democratic non-participation, and the concept of trust. In 2020-21 he held a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for the project Rethinking Political Competition, and he is currently researching the role of ideas of competition in democratic theory and practice. Samuel Bagg is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. His research aims to reimagine democratic ideals and practices in light of realistic assumptions about the dynamics of social inequality and political power His first book, The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy (OUP, 2024), offers a comprehensive account of why democracy matters and how to make it better. Other recent work applies this framework to questions of institutional design and organizational structure, as well as the political ethics of identity, discourse, mobilization, and party competition.

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