Democratie als heteronome autonomie
How should we view the relationship between law and politics? And, in the wake of this question, how should we relate legal and political theory? In this special issue, we have chosen to approach such questions through the work of a political theorist: Bonnie Honig. Bonnie Honig, Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, and Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Association, is a key figure in the movement of agonistic political theory. Her book, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics1 is generally regarded as a central text in con­ temporary political theory. Agonism can be described as a theory of politics that takes struggle as the lens through which politics is viewed. Politics is a realm of irreducible conflict, but this is not something to be deplored: not only are conflicts inescapable but they may also have positive generative effects. In Honig’s view, the prime task of agonism is to deconstruct the binaries that are created in the dominant political theories and to show the plurality of meanings that are covered by such binaries.2 Thus, she takes issue with theories that present politics and democracy as (potentially) peaceful deliberation and with theories that reduce politics to the manifes­ tation of brute power. Honig’s theoretical perspective does not aim at pro­ viding answers to the problems set by legal or political theory but at scruti­ nizing the presuppositions that underlie the posing of such problems. An agonistic view of politics also rearranges the relationship between poli­ tics and law. Politics is the broader context of law. Law and politics are not opposites, but interconnected domains, and the questions that arise in law always turn out to have political dimensions. Political decisions cannot be viewed as preceding law: they need to be taken and retaken in the daily