ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses right-wing populism as an example of “intolerant” doctrines from the perspective of the limits of toleration as they are delineated in three contemporary theories of democracy: John Rawls’s political liberalism, Jürgen Habermas’s deliberative theory of democracy and Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism. The chapter challenges Mouffe’s argument that her agonistic pluralism, where the limits of toleration are drawn politically rather than rationally or morally, is able to provide a more satisfactory solution to the issue of right-wing populism than Rawls’s and Habermas’s theories. The chapter demonstrates that Mouffe’s suggestion to include right-wing populists in democratic politics as legitimate adversaries is contradictory to the way she delineates the limits of toleration in her theory. It is further suggested that Mouffe’s hegemonic approach to politics gives rise to both normative and political problems from the viewpoint of liberal democracy. The chapter concludes by suggesting that while Rawls’s and Habermas’s theories provide a normative framework for delineating the limits of toleration in contemporary democracies and thus have philosophical and normative significance, also novel democratic interventions, which draw from an understanding of the causes underlying the rise of right-wing populism, are required on the level of political practices.
