Abstract
Our book intends to focus on the specific link between compromise and democracy. If political compromises have played a significant role in our representative democracies, the nature of the relationship between compromise and democracy, generally, has raised tricky theoretical questions and generated ambiguous evaluations. Existing studies have tackled the ambivalent relationship between compromise and democracy from different angles.
We thank Laetitia Ramelet for her diligent proofreading and her insightful suggestions across this volume.
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- 1.
As mentioned by Mudde (2004: 544), “Populism presents a Manichean outlook, in which there are only friends and foes. Opponents are not just people with different priorities and values, they are evil !”
- 2.
“Honourable ” in the sense that it is “possible for both parties to save face vis-à-vis the outside world” (van Parijs 2012: 472).
- 3.
Wendt suggests the following example: “imagine that a corrupt and brutal dictator wants financial support and international recognition, and offers his help in stabilizing the region and protecting some minority. Not achieving a compromise bears great risks: The dictator might feel free to behave in unpredictable ways that in the end might lead to instability and even war” (Wendt 2019: 2871).
- 4.
“Stable form of government […] does not function through the rigid implementation of political programs” (Manin 1997: 211).
- 5.
This evaluative ambivalence is expressed eloquently in Lowell’s phrase: “Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof” (1902).
- 6.
The core elements of compromise, mentioned by Wendt, are in line with May’s definition: “When making a compromise, two or more parties agree to an arrangement they regard as suboptimal, but as better than having no agreement at all. They establish a second-best arrangement because they disagree about what the best arrangement would be” (2019: 2856).
- 7.
“According to the standard definition, compromise involves disagreement between two or more people who need to make a collective decision, in which all parties settle for less than they believe they are entitled to” (Bellamy 2012: 448).
- 8.
- 9.
Rintala describes compromise, in its positive meaning, as an “adjustment to the views of the other with the aim of common action” (1969: 327).
- 10.
“To be able to say what constitutes a good compromise, we must first know what a compromise consists of. I shall here adopt a broad and value-neutral definition which is in line with the common usage of the French noun compromis and the English noun ‘compromise’: a compromise is an agreement that involves mutual concessions ” (Van Parijs 2012: 467, emphasis in the original).
- 11.
That is unanimity.
- 12.
As mentioned by Cook: “On Habermas’s view […] public deliberation does not aim at compromises, it merely accepts them in situations in which agreement is not forthcoming; its aim is to produce results that are objectively rational” (2000: 952).
- 13.
According to Weinstock, integrative compromises occur “when parties integrate aspects of the others’ position into the final settlement. They accede in other words to aspects of the other’s position that had not been part of their initial position” (Weinstock 2013: 540). In opposition to integrative compromise, substitutive compromise occurs “when parties agree to something in order to arrive at a compromise that was not part of either’s initial position” (Weinstock 2013: 540).
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Baume, S., Novak, S. (2020). Introduction. In: Baume, S., Novak, S. (eds) Compromises in Democracy. Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40802-2_1
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