Steven Bilakovics

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, forthcoming Jan 2012)

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

Chapter 1: "More Than Kings Yet Less Than Men": Tocqueville on the New Extremes of Democratic Society

Conclusion: Democratic Silences
(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?

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Current Research

"Is Crisis Good For Democracy?"

Yale University Course Syllabi

Exploring the American Dream

Reconsidering the Constitution: American Founding Debates

University of Pittsburgh Course Syllabi

Democratic Theory

History of Political Thought: Nature, Society, Politics

Yale University Teaching Evaluations

Exploring the American Dream

Teaching Statement