Liberal Democracy in Crisis

1. Introduction

2. Understanding the crisis of liberal democracy and rethinking democratic politics

2.1 Democracy's governability crisis

2.2 The tension between liberalism and democracy: the structural explanation

2.3 The critique of aggregative and deliberative models of democracy 2.4 Abandoning the rationalist view of politics: antagonism and hegemony

2.5 Challenging the neutrality of liberal democracy

2.6 Repoliticisation and radicalisation of democracy: post-2011 protest movements and populism

3. Understanding (Neo)Liberalism: The Relationship between the Liberal State and Free Market Capitalism

3.1 Constructing a political economy analysis after Marx

3.2 Conceptualising liberal governmentality

3.3 The emergence of liberal governmentality: self-limitation, political economy and bio-politics

3.4 The contradictions of the self-regulating market and the double-movement

3.5 The emergence of neoliberal governmentality and the hollowing out of democracy

4. Crisis: Critique, Temporality and Trauma

4.1 A brief analysis of conceptions of crisis

4.2 Crisis and critique

4.3 Crisis as an event and temporality

4.4 Crisis as trauma and the possibility of resistance

5. Politics and Resistance as Power

5.1 The relationship between politics and power: Arendt and Foucault

5.2 How to think power differently

5.3 Thinking the relationship between counter-conduct and conducting power through institutionalisation 5.4 Interplay between politics and resistance as a vicious circle

6. Challenging Neoliberal Governmentality: Social Movements and the New Radical Left

6.1 Neoliberal governmentality after the 2008 financial crisis

6.2 Social movements and populism in times of austerity

6.3 From movement to party: the case of the Slovenian United Left

6.4 The challenges for the new radical left in Europe

7. Conclusion

Alen TopliSek is Teaching Fellow at SOAS, University of London, UK. His research examines the impact of social movements and political ideas on the political and economic governance structures in contemporary democracies. He has published in a variety of academic and popular outlets.