ABSTRACT
When political frontiers become blurred, disaffection with political parties sets in and one witnesses the growth of other types of collective identities, around nationalist, religious or ethnic forms of identification. Antagonisms can take many forms and it is illusory to believe that they could ever be eradicated. Liberal theorists are unable to acknowledge not only the primary reality of strife in social life and the impossibility of finding rational, impartial solutions to political issues but also the integrative role that conflict plays in modern democracy. A democratic society requires a debate about possible alternatives and it must provide political forms of collective identification around clearly differentiated democratic positions. What an agonistic approach certainly disavows is the possibility of an act of radical re-foundation that would institute a new social order from scratch. But a number of very important socioeconomic and political transformations, with radical implications, are possible within the context of liberal democratic institutions.
