CHANTAL MOUFFEin common a shared adhesion to the ethico-political principles of democracy. But our
disagreement concerning their meaning and implementation is not one that can be re-
solved through rational agreement, hence the antagonistic element in the relation. To
come to accept the position of the adversary is to undergo a radical change in political
identity. To be sure, compromises are possible; they are part of the process of politics.
But they should be seen as temporary respites in an ongoing confrontation.
Hence the importance of distinguishing between two types of political relations: one
of antagonism between enemies, and one of agonism between adversaries. We could say
that the aim of democratic politics is to transform an ‘‘antagonism’’ into an ‘‘agonism.’’^3
Contrary to the liberal model of ‘‘deliberative democracy,’’ which excludes all divisive
issues from the public sphere in order to allow for free and unconstrained deliberation
on all matters of common concern, the model of ‘‘agonistic pluralism’’ that I am advocat-
ing asserts that the prime task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions or to
relegate them to the private sphere in order to establish a rational consensus in the public
sphere. It is, rather, to attempt to mobilize those passions toward democratic designs. It
is necessary to understand that, far from jeopardizing democracy, agonistic confrontation
is in fact its very condition of possibility. To be sure, pluralist democracy demands con-
sensus on a set of common ethico-political principles. But it also calls for the expression
of dissent and the institutions through which conflicts can be manifested. This is why its
survival depends upon the possibility of forming collective political identities around
clearly differentiated positions and choice among real alternatives. When the agonistic
dynamics of pluralism are hindered because of a lack of democratic identities to identify
with, the ground is laid for various forms of politics articulated around essentialist identi-
ties and for the multiplication of confrontations over non-negotiable moral values.
Separation Between Church and State
Now that I have presented the main ideas of the ‘‘agonistic pluralism’’ that I am advocat-
ing,^4 I want to examine some of its implications for the relation between church and state.
As we have seen, the agonistic model denies that the liberal state is or should be
neutral. The separation between church and state cannot, therefore, be justified with the
argument that the state should be neutral toward all religions. According to such a view,
the separation between church and state is a defining feature of liberal democracy, since
that is what makes possible a regime of toleration, where the state tolerates a multiplicity
of religious groups and forces these groups to tolerate one another. But the justification
for this regime of toleration does not pretend to be made by appealing to supposedly
neutral arguments. Toleration is justified on the ground that it is required by the values
constitutive of the liberal democratic regime and the form of human coexistence that they
inform. It is because the ethico-political principles of the liberal state are the assertion of
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