Lecture
CPP Colloquium: "Oligarchs, elites, and the majority of ordinary citizens. A realist and empirically-based regrounding of democratic theorizing in times of oligarchic surge"
- Date
- Thursday 27 November 2025
- Time
- Series
- Upcoming Colloquia
- Location
-
P.J. Veth
Nonnensteeg 1-3
2311 VJ Leiden - Room
- 0.06
The Centre of Political Philosophy is pleased to announce a lecture by Janosch Prinz, associate professor Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts an Social Sciences at Maasticht University.
The resurgence of oligarchic power and influence in contemporary democracies increases the urgency of the case for empirically-grounded and realistic democratic theory. Not least because theorizing democracy is now a crucial contribution to its survival. While the movement toward realist and empirically-grounded democratic theory has been significant, even the most serious of such attempts fail to address a key issue: most people make political judgments based on group identity, not interests or ideology. This shortcoming can be remedied by an account of the political agency of ‘ordinary citizens’ or ‘people’, the numerical majority, that addresses the power relations underlying the oligarchic resurgence and accepts the identitarian basis of political judgments, while remaining conducive to defending democracy. To do so, we first reconstruct the challenge posed to democratic theorizing by empirical political science. We then show that even the most serious attempts to make democratic theory more realistic remain partially committed to a folk theory of democracy that is not only empirically inaccurate but also occludes stark power differences within the people. To remedy this problem, we reground democratic theorizing in the recognition of real power differences across three groups within the people: oligarchs, elites, and the majority of ‘ordinary citizens’. Adopting this tripartite distinction allows democratic theorists to be realistic and empirically-based both in terms of how people (can and should) make political decisions and in terms of identifying the agents – political elites – pivotal for countering oligarchic power.
About the Center for Political Philosophy (CPP) Colloquia Series
The CPP is a collaboration between the Institute for Philosophy and the Institute for Political Science at Leiden University. Attendance of the Colloquia is free and there is no need to register. See CPP for more information. For further questions please contact dr. Thomas Fossen t.fossen@phil.leidenuniv.nl.
All are welcome!