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Democratic Disaffection: on the Pathologies of Postwar Democracy

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Democratic Disaffection: on the Pathologies of Postwar Democracy DEMOCRATIC DISAFFECTION: ON THE PATHOLOGIES OF POSTWAR DEMOCRACY A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Kyong Min Son August 2012 © 2012 Kyong Min Son DEMOCRATIC DISAFFECTION: ON THE PATHOLOGIES OF POSTWAR DEMOCRACY Kyong Min Son, Ph. D. Cornell University 2012 This dissertation interrogates the phenomenon of disaffection in post-World War II democracies and, in doing so, offers a theory of the affective dimension of democratic politics. Although many countries have formally democratized after World War II, they suffer from political apathy, withdrawal, and disillusionment—in short, disaffection. Why have democratic institutions failed to inspire popular support necessary to sustain democratic forms of life? A dominant strand of democratic theory represented by Rawls and Habermas is not well-equipped to address this vital question, insofar as it fails to consider how affect works with reason, not as a subsidiary but an equally constitutive force, in establishing and realizing norms of democratic politics. This is theoretically blinding since a unique frame of democracy that became dominant in the postwar era (which I call “instrumental democracy”) has systemic tendencies to produce democratic disaffection. Instrumental democracy reduces democracy to an instrument that merely legitimizes, rather than contests or renegotiates, political goals predetermined by elites and technocrats. I trace the origins of instrumental democracy to the Cold War when anti-totalitarianism, market capitalism, and a highly insulted technocracy concomitantly emerged to the effect of dissolving the collective, public dimension of democracy. I scrutinize the logics of instrumental democracy by analyzing behavioralism and rational choice theory as symptomatic articulations of Cold War imperatives, and investigate its evolution in the late twentieth century by examining democratization in Chile and South Korea. Bringing my empirical analysis into theoretical focus, I reinterpret Hannah Arendt’s political theory through the prism of her creative, if underdeveloped, appropriation of two supposedly incompatible themes: Heidegger’s concern with affect and Marx’s critique of alienation. Thus interpreted, Arendt’s theory helps us recognize that people’s affective disposition toward democracy is closely connected to the structure and distribution of power. By engaging in a mutually constitutive dialogue between theory and history, I aim to identify and challenge one of the most formidable yet underappreciated trends of our time that threatens to impoverish our understanding and practice of democracy. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH A native of Seoul, South Korea, Kyong Min Son holds a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. Kyong Min graduated summa cum laude from Seoul National University in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He also earned a master’s degree in political science from Seoul National University in 2005 with a thesis on deliberative democracy. In 2010, he received a master’s degree in Government from Cornell University. In the fall of 2012, Kyong Min will join the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware as an Assistant Professor. v To Namkyeong vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would not have been able to write this dissertation without the incredible help and support of many people whom I cannot thank enough. My gratitude to them goes far beyond what I can put in words here. I was truly privileged to have a brilliant, devoted, and generous group of scholars as my dissertation committee: Susan Buck-Morss, Isaac Kramnick, Jason Frank, and Richard Bensel. Their intellectual influence will be obvious in subsequent pages, but they also affected me in many other, perhaps more profound, ways. All of them are wonderful role models and inspired me to think about what it means to be a responsible scholar, a committed teacher, and a good person. Susan inspired and encouraged me to undertake a project that combines political theory and history—a project that I always wanted to do but did not know how. Without her insightful guidance, extraordinary intelligence, and enthusiastic support, I would not have been able to tackle such a daunting challenge. Also, I am extremely grateful to her for patiently letting me find my own approach to this methodological challenge even when it was taking too much time. Isaac has guided me over the past few years by his erudition, wisdom, and kindness. An amazing and truly caring teacher and mentor, he has always been available and eager to talk to me and help me with my concerns. My graduate studies would have been much less happy without his care and support. It was an honor and a great pleasure to assist him with teaching and watch him work wonders in and out of the classroom. Jason has been a tremendous intellectual inspiration and a superb advisor. His deep and broad knowledge, inexhaustible intellectual curiosity, and sympathetic yet sharp comments greatly helped me improve my project as it went through many vii changes. Even when he was extremely busy, he always made time for me and gave me invaluable advice. Organizing the Political Theory Workshop with him was an absolute pleasure and a great learning experience. Richard has been an enormously insightful and encouraging reader and critic of my work. With a historian’s meticulousness, he constantly challenged me to be clearer in my argument and to check the robustness of my evidence. Perhaps more importantly, he taught me by example the meaning, and the tremendous burden, of taking academic life as a vocation. I am deeply grateful to his limitless generosity and forever humbled by his unbelievable dedication and commitment. I was very fortunate to meet Aziz Rana in the middle stage of my project. He kindly agreed to be an external reviewer of my dissertation even though he was awfully busy at the time. I am so grateful to him for his immensely helpful feedback and incredibly generous encouragement. I received tremendous support from the Department of Government at Cornell. For their feedback and encouragement at various stages of my project, I would like to thank Theodore Lowi, Peter Katzenstein, Sidney Tarrow, Valerie Bunce, Ken Roberts, Diane Rubenstein, Burke Hendrix, and Chris Anderson. I was also fortunate to be surrounded by a wonderful group of fellow graduate students: Michelle Renée-Smith, Leila Ibrahim, Alison McQueen, Jaimie Bleck, Chris Casillas, Simon Gilhooley, Onur Ulas Ince, Pinar Kemerli, Deondra Rose, Maria Sperandei, Sinja Graf, Desmond Jagmahon, Sreedevi Muppirisetty, Nolan Bennett, Vijay Phulwani, Aaron Gavin, Kevin Duong, Michael Gorup, and Judith Piotrkowski. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to our excellent staff, especially Tina Slater, Judy Virgilio, Laurie Coon, Charlene Lee, and Stacy Kesselring, for their help and support. I also benefitted greatly from the broader Cornell community. Part of my research was generously funded by a travel grant by the East Asia Studies Program viii and numerous conference travel grants by the Graduate School. Also, year-long participation in the Society for the Humanities Dissertation Writing Group was a very productive and motivating experience. Many thanks go to the Society for the Humanities for its support and to the members of the writing group—Karen Benezra, Osvaldo de la Torre, and Zac Zimmer—for reading and discussing some of my chapters. I would also like to thank Pablo Pérez Wilson for having helpful conversations on contemporary Chilean politics and culture. In the past few years, I have presented versions of my chapters at professional conferences and had opportunities to discuss my dissertation work with a number of scholars. I would like to extend thanks to participants in the 2010 and 2011 annual meetings of the American Political Science Association and the Cornell Political Theory Workshop. I am especially grateful to Sharon Krause, Marc Stears, Bonnie Honig, and Shannon Mariotti for their encouragement and insightful comments. I would also like to thank Chansuk Suh for inviting me to present my work at the Brown Bag Seminar Series in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University. My parents have been, as always, supportive and trusting of me. I should have said more often how much it really means to me and how grateful I am for everything they have done for me. My brother, who is also pursuing a doctorate degree, is a great friend of mine and an extremely committed and hard-working scholar. I admire him as much as I love him. Finally, I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to Namkyeong. Whenever I grew too quiet overwhelmed by my own thoughts and anxieties, she was always there, with her love, boundless understanding, and magical ability to turn every tiny bit of life into sources of happiness, to lead me back to the world where my uncertainties are far smaller than what we have together. Our son Sojin was born in the later stage of my writing. He pulled me away from my desk, perhaps more often than I could have ix afforded. But he never let me forget the immovable fact that life is always bigger and more urgent than whatever I sought to accomplish in this dissertation. I am very grateful for that. x TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Introduction: The Challenge of Democratic Disaffection 1 PART I: AFFECT IN DEMOCRATIC THEORY TODAY Chapter 1: The Claims of Affect: The Affective Deficit of the Rationalist Paradigm 32 PART II: DISSOLVING THE DEMOS: A GENEALOGY OF POSTWAR DEMOCRACY Chapter 2: The Cold War Origins of Instrumental Democracy 70 Chapter 3: The Logics of Instrumental Democracy: Scientific Theories of Democracy 123 Chapter 4: The Evolution of Instrumental Democracy: Third Wave Democratization and Its Pathologies 162 PART III: THE AFFECTIVE BASIS OF DEMOCRACY Chapter 5: Toward a Theory of Democratic Disaffection: Arendt between Heidegger and Marx 220 Conclusion 275 Works Cited 289 xi INTRODUCTION The Challenge of Democratic Disaffection “The food of feeling is action … Let a person have nothing to do for his country, and he will not care for it.
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