Academic Appointments
Yale
University, Postdoctoral Fellow, 2009-present
University
of Pittsburgh, Visiting Lecturer, 2008-2009
Harvard
University, Seminar Instructor, 2006-2008
Education
University
of Texas at Austin, PhD, 2008
University
of Chicago, MA, 1998
University
of California San Diego, BA, 1997
Book
Democracy Without Politics
(Harvard
University Press)
In Western democracies today, politics and politicians are held in contempt by the majority of citizens. Steven Bilakovics argues that this disdain of politics follows neither from the discontents of our liberal political system nor from the preoccupations of a consumer society. Rather, extending Tocqueville’s analysis of the modern democratic way of life, he traces the sources of political cynicism to democracy itself.
Democratic society’s defining openness—its promise of transcendent freedom and unlimited power—renders the everyday politics of argument and persuasion absurd by comparison. Persuasion is devalued relative to the norms of free-market competition and patriotic community, assertions of self-interest and self-expression take the place of arguing together, and political life is diminished by the absence of mediating talk. Bilakovics identifies this trend across the political landscape—in the clashing authenticities of the "culture war," the perennial pursuit of the political outsider to set things right again, the call for a postpartisan politics, rising demands on government alongside falling expectations of what government can do, and in a political rhetoric that is at once petty and hyperbolic. To reform democratic politics and ameliorate its pathologies, Bilakovics calls on us to overcome our anti-political prejudice and rethink robust democracy as the citizen's practice of persuading and being persuaded in turn.
Introduction: Democracy as Self-Subverting
(additional
chapters available upon request)
Research Statement
Every government harbors within
itself a natural flaw that seems
inextricably intertwined with the very principle of its existence
-
Tocqueville
My project offers an
explanation of the remarkable divergence between the status of
democratic principles and the status of democratic political practices
- of the paradoxical simultaneity of the enormous faith we place in the
ideal of democracy and our near-total loss of faith in the actual
political practice of democracy. On one hand we hear that democracy is
triumphant, the recipient of near-universal acclaim and the sole
remaining source of political legitimacy. This triumph is hardly
surprising once we recognize that democracy is linked to most
everything good in the world: peace, prosperity, human rights, freedom,
equality, justice, deliberative reason, even ethical self-development.
On the other hand our attitudes and beliefs regarding everyday
democratic politics are characterized by a deeply ingrained - almost
reflexive - cynicism. Three decades of the General Social Survey, for
instance, attests to an utter loss of confidence and trust in the
elected representatives and political institutions of liberal
democracy. The same is true of our view of ourselves as participants in
democratic politics; the only thing we have less confidence in than our
politicians is ourselves as citizens. It seems an almost a priori
contempt for all things political - an anti-political prejudice - has
taken hold. Indeed, beyond the concept of corruption, politics is
increasingly experienced as quite literally a theater of the absurd: a
play full of trite, repetitive, clichéd, nonsensical jargon that
obstructs authentic expression and meaningful communication. Today, we
are reduced to “playing politics” in the electoral “silly season.”
We are left with the contradictory sense that democracy (or maybe
better, democratization) is as inevitable as the political practice of
democracy is impossible. We expect ever more from, but ever less of,
democracy. A gap between principle and practice hardly requires
explanation, but how can we account for this opposite movement - this
simultaneous waxing of democratic ideals and waning of democratic
political practices? How is it that democracy has taken on the
characteristics of a utopia?
Current Research
"Is Crisis Good For Democracy?"
Yale University Course Syllabi
Reconsidering the Constitution: American Founding
Debates
University of Pittsburgh
Course Syllabi
History
of Political Thought: Nature, Society, Politics
Yale University Teaching
Evaluations
Teaching Statement
Contact Information:
steven.bilakovics@yale.edu
617-276-6245
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March 2012: Book Review by Harvey C. Mansfield - "Democracy without Politics?" published in Defining Ideas
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August 2011: Dissertation "Constituting Freedom and the Democratic Way of Life" receives Jack Miller Center Chairman's Award for Best Dissertation in American Political Thought
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