Central to agonistic theory (and its different versions) is the assumption that differences and disagreements are constitutive of politics, and strife plays a vital, nourishing, role. Elicited by plural interpretations of the socio-political imaginary, strife challenges hegemonic ways of being and, according to agonistic theorists, ensures that democratic politics remains dynamic and alert at instances of closure. On one level, then, strife is central to the agonistic vocabulary because it instantiates the agon or contest necessary to ‘undo’ the given and the hegemonic. On another level,  it is central because it attests to the pluralism constitutive of democratic life. Neither dispensable then, nor a problem to be solved, strife means politics for agonistic theorists, and points to the idea that a vibrant democracy might not simply call for the creation of an institutional haven, but for the cultivation of such ethos of contestation. Can agonistic theory with its emphasis on dissensus and suspicion of institutional politics contribute to international relations theorising? And the reverse: can international relations theorising with its twin focus on institution building and harmonious being-together give agonistic theory flesh and bones?

With critical approaches increasingly being integrated into international relations thinking, it comes as little surprise that agonistic theory is rising into prominence – to influence, challenge and expose hegemonic readings of the ‘international’. The irony is inescapable, perhaps even inevitable. While agonistic writings[i] resist the primacy of institutionalisation, international relations theorising does not just invite, but also promotes the very institutionalisation which agonistic theorists are sceptical about – especially if we consider that, ironically, it is in peace-building studies that agonistic theory appears to be most influential. Then, there is the issue of conflict. Although it would appear in the first instance that the focus which agonistic theorists place on the constitutivity of conflict chimes well with the pluriverse of international relations, with the post-conflict and conflict-prone zones that international policy makers are keen to grasp and address, on closer inspection we notice an interesting difference.

While agonistic theorists emphasise dissent, critique and contestation, with the aim of securing political openness (an emphasis which attests to the radical credentials of agonistic theory), peace-building theorising inasmuch as international policy making acknowledges dissent and contestation with the aim of securing reconciliation or ‘harmony of selves’. To be sure, openness and reconciliation/harmony of selves are not mutually exclusive objectives, but they are different – one hints to an eventual end state (reconciliation/harmony of selves), the other to incompletion, to the constant interplay between fixity and rupture (openness). By thus diminishing the difference between the two, between openness and reconciliation, we diminish and perhaps even underplay the radical import of agonistic theory. This radical import does not simply consist in the assumption that we need to politicise (pacify) premodern types of conflict, but that we need to conflictualise politics, to subject liberal democratic politics to interrogation and critique. Indeed, liberal democracy is, ironically, the key site for agonistic politics – ironically, because it is precisely the western focus on liberal democracy that critical theorisations of the international confront through recourse to agonism.

This is not only because democracy means critique in the agonistic vocabulary, but also because critique (ideally) thrives in liberal democracy. Although, it could certainly be objected that by moving away from the one-dimensional focus on state institutions, agonistic theory does hold open the possibility for local variations of liberal democracy – especially if we accentuate the attention given to the ethos or attitude of contesting the given and hegemonic – the critical acceptance of liberal democracy is unmissable. For it is not institutions (state, inter- or non-governmental) which instil citizens with the ethos of critique, as state builders would like us to believe, but citizens who exercise this ethos of critique. Does this mean then that agonism, has little to contribute to international relations theory?

The answer to this question depends not on the version of agonism we adopt, Connolly’s[ii] ethico-political version or Mouffe’s[iii] institutionally friendly conception of the agon, but rather on the type of politics we endorse. For what agonistic theory teaches us above all is that politics, and international politics for that matter, is not out there set, fixed and closed, calling for institutional blueprints that would give solutions to ‘real’ problems. But it is collectively constructed, contingent, and incomplete. To return therefore to the second question we set at the beginning, whether international relations theorising can give flesh and bones to agonistic theory, it could be argued that by seeking to institutionally translate agonism, as peace-building theorising does, we miss not only the point of agonism, but also of politics. For uncertainty is both the lure and risk of agonistic politics.

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Paulina Tambakaki is a Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. She writes about citizenship, agonism and deliberative democracy.

Further Reading on E-International Relations

• The ‘Erasure of Nationalism’ and International Relations
• Adorno on Late Modernity and Unfreedom: Reflections in a Global Era
• Re-Worlding China: Notorious Tianxia, Critical Relationality
• Constant Crisis and Political Byzantinism
• Whatever Happened to the Frankfurt School in International Relations?
• Civilizational Perspectives in International Relations and Contemporary China-India Relations