Democracy as Anti-utopia

Abstract

The aim of the article is to study conceptions of democracy as anti-utopia. We intend to
observe the state of relations established between citizens and the political power to show how these
versions lower the expectations about the promises of good government or political fictions. It is not
an intention of this article the enumeration of the distinct models of contemporary democracies. By
highlighting two of them, we intend to differentiate them from the ideal political fictions and utopian
models. In democracy, the conduction of political power and the ordering of the social order is
characterized by constant interruptions and maladjustments. As a form of resistance to the domination
of political power over citizens or assuming the pertinence of conflicts, the anti-utopian democracies
move themselves away from the ideal of a reconciled and static society. In them, changes, deadlocks
and the overcoming of challenges do not necessarily result in advances or definitive setbacks, which
would correspond to a teleological path towards overcoming clashes or to an accumulation of results
from the past aimed at the transition to the definitive redemption of political faults. We start from the
following question: in what sense can democracy, as a form of social order and structure of political
power, be considered an anti-utopian model? Our hypothesis is that the conceptions studied in the
article advocate for a philosophical-political realism, presenting democracy as a political experience that
demands the permanent creation of liberty.