The struggle for Democracy

the development of French and German political models and their reflexes in the European Union and the world

Abstract

The political reality frequently faces itself with the ideals which the Western tradition established for itself as the target of its efforts in the quest for political development. The different historical and cultural paths of the different Rechtsstaat show the plurality of forms through which we can answer to this call. In that sense, the present work aimed at understanding the political models of the two most influential European Union’s States, France and Germany, in order to, by emphasizing their idiosyncrasies and the traumas that mark their histories, elucidate the political advancements, as well as the particular questions with which each of them struggles. We build our grounds on the basis of Chantal Mouffe’s political philosophy, which seeks to demonstrate the political and strategical error of a political-institutional model based of the seek of consensus (or based in the orthodoxy of a single thought), while also firmly defending the necessity of dissensus and the elevation of all antagonisms (we/them or friends/enemies) to the agonistic level of productive adversarial dispute, which does not exclude the other or tries to absorb it, allowing that the political tensions fructify in new and diverse directions and paths, which shall dispute for the temporary political hegemony. In this way, we seek to emphasize the continuity and vitality of that which is possibly the longest Western struggle, the struggle for the dream of effectuating our Democracy