Sovereignty Games

Would liberalism by any other name smell as free?

The NYTimes is publishing editorials urging the Democrats to return to John Rawls, but liberalism for most people left of center is passé at best. At worst, its responsible for the world’s many ills. Many political theorists committed to democracy try to theorize around it, or without it. The ascendant liberalism of the latter half of the twentieth century now seems to suffer from an overweening confidence in reason’s ability not only to solve disputes but to make the solutions obvious and unimpeachable. And yet its opposite, illiberalism, still appears to be a grave threat to democracy—at least to the kinds of people writing the NYTimes.

In this essay I briefly review two political theories, Shadi Hamid’s democratic minimalism, and Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism, that are committed to democracy but disavow liberalism. I try to show why there is something unsatisfying about their disavowals. Finally, I sketch out a new framework for thinking about “democracy” as just one subset of possible “sovereignty games” for ordering society, and suggest that several principles commonly thought of as liberal might emerge from game theoretic dynamics as properties of “good” games worth playing.

William Blake — The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea

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A populist strongman¹ elected to government is in one sense the very epitome of democracy, embodying the will of the people who elected him. On the other hand, being called a “populist strongman” usually means that such a person seeks to dismantle institutional checks on his power. He ignores norms established through unofficial precedent that might require him to seek consensus or might prevent him from exercising power unilaterally. He seeks to hold onto power as long as possible, looking for opportunities to bias or outright rig future elections, and perhaps even do away with them all together.

But there are other forms of illiberalism, including forms that are not “reactionary.” Rather than being animated by opposition to liberal principles, they are founded on a different set principles, perhaps much older than liberalism. Like Islam.

Democratic Minimalism

Shadi Hamid

grapples with the question of whether democratic regimes could be stable in regions like the Middle East, where secular liberalism is unpopular and Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt win democratic elections. In his view, American foreign policy has been disastrous in the region, primarily because it often prefers supporting dictators who are amenable to American diplomatic objectives over supporting democratic elections that might result in governments hostile to American influence. The US seems to prioritize at least nominally secular leaders who are willing to tamp down religious “extremism” and bolster markets that are open to American investment and enforce liberal norms around loan repayment and private property.

Shadi instead advocates "democratic minimalism,” which takes as its starting point the proposition that democracy is a more stable form of government than authoritarian dictatorship, because it provides for the peaceful transfer of power between governments.² Liberalism is not a form of government, merely a form of governing. There could be other forms of governing, including forms based in an Islamic way of life. While Islam was born out of violent conquest, it could be compatible with democratic conceptions of government, wherein God’s will is carried out through the people. Islam has often been seen in the West as an obstacle to democratic governance.³ But this needn’t be so. We can still have democracy, so long as meaningful elections continue to be held that allow the people to change their mind about who governs. Democratic minimalism, then, is committed to democracy as the most stable form of government, because it allows for democratic change in response to the vote.

Elections are only meaningful, however, if we guarantee “the right—and ability—to oppose the governing party” by securing “basic protections of freedom of speech, expression, and assembly.” In practice, that “requires establishing checks and balances through autonomous institutions, such as the judiciary, that can monitor and constrain abuses of executive power,” and further ensuring that every adult has the right to vote.⁴ Without these more substantive rights, elections might signify nothing more than “electoral authoritarian” or “competitive authoritarian” regimes. Yet all the talk of substantive rights and autonomous checks on power sounnds quite a bit like requirements for “liberal” institutions. Would sharia law courts be “independent” of the ruler? Shadi argues there is reason to think so, based on the historical opposition of the ulama to ruling caliphs and sultans, though he does not press the argument. What about Islamic opposition to certain kinds of speech? How far does free speech and expression go? Shadi is vague on these matters, but insists that democracy is compatible with even hard-line Islamist groups.

He offers two arguments for believing that we shouldn’t worry too much about whether Islamic democracy can remain democratic. First, “[t]heocracy is only possible when everyone voluntarily agrees with the theocracy but this is very rare.”⁵ There aren’t enough Islamists to vote for theocracy in an open election, and presumably it is unlikely there ever will be. Second, “there is little reason to think that any prospective authoritarianism would be a product of their Islamism rather than a product of more prosaic temptations of power.”⁶ There is nothing about Islam that would ideologically incline its leaders away from democratic legitimacy any more than liberalism would. There is certainly a tension between these two arguments, if not outright contradiction. Are there theocratic strains of Islam or not? (Are there theocratic strains of liberalism? Are fascism and Stalinism outgrowths of liberalism?) Why should we be confident that theocracy is unlikely? Shadi devotes several pages to examining whether the Muslim Brotherhood should be trusted when it says that it is committed to democracy.⁷ After examining what they, and other groups in the Middle East, have tried to accomplish recently, he argues that they have mostly failed when proposing more extreme prohibitions on alcohol or usury.

Whether one is persuaded by Shadi’s arguments or not, he does attempt to think about a democratic state without liberalism. Yet despite his attempt to pare down substantive, “liberal” rights to the bare minimum, there remains considerable ambivalence about what qualifies as “liberalism” in the first place. Is it economic liberalism? Social liberalism? Political liberalism? For Shadi, “liberalism” is an unpopular signifier in the Middle East connoting Western atheism, decadent morals, and colonialist domination. It’s a poisoned term. But it remains unclear to what extent many of liberalism’s component parts are essential to a working “democratic minimalism.”

Agonism vs. Antagonism

Chantal Mouffe has written several books elaborating an agonistic theory of democratic politics that takes its bearings from modern liberal democracy but seeks to differentiate itself from the liberal theories of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. While critiquing liberal democracy’s affiliation with “Anglo-Saxon capitalism,” Mouffe reproaches Marx for speculating about the withering away of the state and the end of politics in a communism-to-come. From the other side, her theory of agonism is a response to Carl Schmitt’s critique that liberal democracy is too pluralistic and heterogeneous to be a viable governing regime.

Agonistic pluralism distinguishes between agonism and antagonism. Conflict is an ineradicable element of society.⁸ Society only comes into being with the simultaneous construction of a “we/they.” Even when a governing regime appears to be orderly and peaceful, there will be those who do not feel represented by the reigning hegemony. The proper goal of democracy is to give those unrepresented elements a way to contest the hegemony through agreed-upon agonistic channels without resorting to antagonistic violent conflict. By holding elections, for example, a new order can be voted in, re-articulating the various elements of society—previously unrepresented elements find their place in a new hegemonic order, while previously represented elements obtain a new position, or find themselves entirely unrepresented and outside. Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction becomes a distinction between “adversaries,” who seek different political orders, but nonetheless recognize the other’s legitimacy to contest them on a shared conflictual terrain where political agonism plays itself out.

Mouffe criticizes Rawls and Habermas for being too rationalist. Both thinkers view liberalism’s commitment to rational discourse as essential to the justification of democracy as the best form of government. For Rawls, liberalism articulates a rationalist vision of justice that would, or should, be accepted by all reasonable people. For Habermas, communicative reason provides a rational way of reaching public agreements that are, or should be, valid for everyone. Their versions of liberalism seek to establish a rational consensus that brooks no disagreement. To disagree with public reason is to be unreasonable, and hence to be excluded from democratic decision making. This universalist form of liberalism therefore presents itself as neutral, as something to which all should agree as foundational principles of any epistemology.

For Mouffe, the idea of universal consensus is a fantasy. Not only do Rawls and Habermas fail to account for human passions, they fail to understand the “radical negativity” inherent to social ontology. All consensus reached for the purpose of governing must recognize that it is temporary. There is no consensus without dissent. For that reason, it is dangerous to pretend that political decision-making is ever “neutral,” or that it proceeds according to universally recognizable rules, and is therefore out of our hands. Instead, every truly political decision is, strictly speaking, “undecidable”—no particular decision is necessary; every decision is contingent. The only ethical response is to take responsibility as a political actor and accept the consequences.

Liberalism’s Shortcomings

Both Shadi and Mouffe value democracy as a form of government that allows for political contestation by public citizens. Both view it as more stable than the alternatives.⁹ Both also criticize liberalism as an impediment to democracy, at least in some cases. Liberalism broadly construed, however, is not to be identified with a particular theorist, nor with a particular basket of rights, which are in any case, always open to different interpretations. It is not merely a “political” system, either. Liberalism is often conceptually paired with economics, and, as I discussed in a previous post, has split into a variety of sub-types, like the “neoliberalism” at which Mouffe takes aim.

Liberalism, a Faltering Religion

It is a problem that various maximalist elaborations of liberalism are so vulnerable to critique, yet “democracy” seems completely unworkable without some liberal elements. The paradox of democracy derives from the more general problem of representation—the appearance of some thing in place of an other. How are many (millions of) different persons to be translated into a single representative? One answer to that question is to reject representation altogether in favor of anarchy. Another answer, the Hobbesian one, is to say that the many are simply subjected to the will of the unitary sovereign. The individual gives up any claim to politics in return for protection and an end to the war of all-against-all. A third answer might be “liberalism,” conceived as a family of similar answers about how to reconcile demotic representation and the individual. But because “liberalism” is such a contested term, fraught with ambiguity and invoking a host of associated concepts whether the speaker intends to or not, it might be a good idea to jettison it whenever possible.

Can we reframe “democracy” without reference to liberalism? Without having to affirm it or disavow it?

Reframing Democracy without Liberalism

Ultimately, I think a case for democracy can be made by redescribing it as an iterated game. This is conceptually similar to Mouffe’s concept of agonistic politics, but it makes more explicit the conditions under which outcomes can be evaluated. Additionally, it has the advantage, from a political “realist’s” point of view, of making explicit the fact that political games are contingent. People can agree to play a different game, or sufficiently strong actors can overturn the gameboard. Winners in the game, therefore, should not take for granted that everyone still agrees that their game is the best game to play. They must continually make a persuasive case that this particular game is worth playing.

Assume Hobbes’ state of nature as the very foundation upon which any human games are built. Hobbes’ “Fundamentall Law of Nature” is:

That every man, ought to endeavor Peace, as farre as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of Warre.¹⁰

At this level, only force pertains, of which there are two kinds: violence and persuasion. Individuals are limited only by the laws of physics and their arbitrary starting position. Rather than running through Hobbes’ proof of the need for a unitary sovereign, however, we might imagine instead that there are several possibilities for working out an acceptable peace.

At the meta-game level, individuals and groups search through game-space for a set of rules that produces stable outcomes. No particular game must necessarily be played, nor is there any transcendent game, that exceeds the Hobbesian rule-space. there are only better and worse games that appeal to people more or less for reasons of natural advantage, aesthetics, or deeply held prior beliefs. The goal is to find a game that acceptably orders society, ensuring peace. These are games where the winner governs—sovereignty games.

At this point we can offer a few, non-exhaustive observations about different kinds of games:

• Agreement to play a game is a promise of sorts to play by the rules.

• People agree to games because they restrict violence, or provide peace, following Hobbes’ line of reasoning.

• When most people agree to play a game, they can coerce the rest to play, because being excluded from a game means being excluded from peace.

• No game is “neutral,” since each game imposes rules that some prefer and some dislike.

• Games with regular contests, held at predetermined intervals, are more “iterable” or “repeatable” than games where one person or dynasty monopolizes sovereignty for a generation or more.

• Winners of the game must persuade the others to keep playing, either through good(-enough) rule, or through a credible promise that the game will be played again soon, with the possibility of another winning, or through some other form of persuasion (i.e. sacralization), or through violence.

Without committing ourselves to any kind of rational universalism, then, we can still say that there are better and worse games. People will disagree about which games are better, but limiting the metaphysical assumptions simplifies things somewhat. Most people agree that limiting violence is a good thing—if they don’t, violence will surely decide the issue one way or the other soon enough.

Describing the situation this way also clarifies what democracy is for. Is democracy really about the dignity of the individual soul? That might be a useful rhetorical argument in persuading people to adopt democracy as a game, at least so long as they believe in such things. Is it instead just the most stable political regime we have? Well, that would be an empirical question, open to evidence and interpretation. We could, nonetheless, try to advance some arguments about democracy’s superior features as a sovereignty game.

Mouffe’s theory of agonistic politics can be useful here. Turning antagonism into agonism involves providing a legitimate, non-violent outlet for counter-hegemonic forces to contend against the current regime. We might imagine a variety of different games providing such outlets. What is critical for Mouffe, however, is the possibility of a real alternative to hegemony. It must be possible to construct or re-articulate a new hegemony. Mouffe is drawn to liberal democracy despite her criticisms of it, because it is a really existing sovereignty game type that has built in mechanisms for contestation. The best games are those that people want to keep playing.

A good sovereignty game usually must feel fair to its citizens/subjects. Critically, competition cannot feel existential. Losing the game either has to be acceptable on its own terms, or feel only temporary. A repeated game where one side always wins quickly loses it appeal.

There are many reasons why losing might feel like an existential threat. Minimal guaranties of bodily safety might not even be enough. A losing group likely needs freedoms of expression and association, not only so that they can enjoy such freedom as ends in themselves, but also for the practical reason that they are necessary to persuade others to affiliate with them and gain adherents so that they might win the next time. If we want the game to be restricted to non-violent persuasion, the game has to provide opportunities for substantive persuasion. Attempting to push one side out of the public square raises the stakes, potentially making it harder for them to gain support and making the game appear unfair.

Democracy is only a good sovereignty game when it can 1) credibly promise the regular holding of elections into the indefinite future and 2) credibly promise rivals and counter-hegemonic forces that they will be able to fairly compete into that indefinite future. As Mouffe emphasizes, agonistic politics must offer a real alternative not only to the ruling party, but also to the rules of the game. So we can add a third criterion: 3) credibly promise that the rules of the game itself are subject to change. Any ruleset though, would still need to guarantee 1) and 2).

We can see how some ostensibly “liberal” principles start to fall out of our analysis, without any appeals to liberal metaphysics concerning individual liberty. Instead of deriving rights from abstract reason or human dignity, we find them emerging from the practical requirements of maintaining a stable sovereignty game. Freedom of expression becomes necessary not because of truth's inevitable victory in the marketplace of ideas, but because suppressing expression makes the game feel rigged. Even something like the separation of powers appears as a natural evolution of game design: referees independent of the players, rules for changing rules, mechanisms to prevent any single victory from ending the game entirely.

We appeal instead to empirical affective states, like a “sense of fairness” and a desire for peace over war. These assumptions are not strictly “universal” or necessary but are, as Aristotle might say, “probable.” Indeed, everything is open to dispute. Violence and rhetoric are the great twinned forces structuring the social field, bound together by contamination—violence is often rhetorical, and persuasion at times coercive. The point is that we might arrive at a family of related rulesets for playing the sovereignty game well. And that family might have more than a passing resemblance to “liberalisms,” despite taking an entirely distinctive argumentative route.¹¹

This reframing helps explain why 'illiberal democracy' so often collapses into authoritarianism. It's not because liberalism and democracy are conceptually inseparable, but because certain liberal-like features tend to emerge as solutions to problems that any democracy, Islamic or secular, passionate or rational, must solve to remain playable. It is not difficult to derive several conclusions that might follow from this framework. I shall limit myself to two further points.

First, several political theorists, most prominently Carl Schmitt, believe that mere proceduralism is insufficient for binding a polity together. There has to be something like a common culture. Mouffe calls it a “shared conflictual terrain,” comprising a common symbolic terrain, adhesion to overlapping ethico-political principles, and the like. Such a shared space is hard to positively define—it is mostly noticed when absent. Nonetheless, many games or sports seem to share something like a culture, where adversaries and rival factions continue to compete within a conflictual terrain while sharing a love for the game itself, which is not reducible to its ruleset, but generally includes things like appreciation of hard work, admiration for skill in the game, and a commitment to fair play and integrity.

Second, games have losers. A game with frequent elections also presents more frequent occasions for disappointment. Sovereignty games that suppress violence inevitably incorporate on a deep structural level the necessity of something like sacrifice. Accepting a loss means sacrificing one’s vision of the future to another’s, at least for a time. The ancient sacrificial logic of do ut des manifests itself in any democratic transition of power: “We yield to the winners now, with the understanding that they might yield to us in the future.”

1. They are almost always men. I aked ChatGPT4o for some examples of women who might fit the bill. It suggested some “first ladies” of strongmen, like Eva Perón or Imelda Marcos, but they didn’t hold power themselves. One interesting pick was Indira Gandhi, the “Iron Lady,” who invoked emergency powers for several years and served four terms as Prime Minister, before being assassinated. Other picks included Marine Le Pen.

2. Shadi also advances a moral/theological argument that “those who live under autocracies—those who have no access to politics or political participation—are being ‘forced to be less, in some sense than God wanted them to be” (Chapter 2, “The Purposes of Democratic Minimalism”).

This argument is tossed out a bit hesitantly and then ignored. The main arguments appear to be premised on the empirical assertion that democracies are more stable than autocracies. One wonders, however, whether the moral argument is really the driving force.

3. Shadi documents the dismissive attitudes of several US government officials towards Muslim leaders in the Middle East, including Obama and John Kerry.

4. Chapter 1, “Illiberal Democracy and Ideological Competition.”

5. Citing Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, Chapter 3, “A State of Diversity.”

6. Chapter 8, “The Authoritarian Impulse.”

7. Chapter 8, “Should the Brotherhood Be Trusted?”

8. For Mouffe, society only exists in relation to a “constitutive outside,” that is not simply different from the inside, but is the precondition for the establishment of a collective identity. The boundary between the two is shifting, and the construction of the inside and the outside is a result of political practice.

9. Mouffe, for example, argues that when democratic confrontation is not possible, collective passions can crystallize around issues that cannot be managed by the democratic process and explode in antagonisms. The Democratic Paradox at 104.

As far as I can tell, Mouffe doesn’t cite Hobbes much, but the threat of civil war seems to lie in the background of much of her theory.

10. Part 1, Chapter XIV.

11. Granted, we began with a few of proto-liberal Hobbesian insights. My point is that arguments against liberalism imputing a particular “essence” to it because of its genealogy, can and should be rendered moot.