What is anti-pluralism? : Outlines, varieties, and application contexts of a (re)emerged concept
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In recent years, the issue of possible early warning signs for democratic regression has become increasingly relevant. In this regard, the focus is often on how democracy-threatening actors can be identified as early as possible. Within this debate, one term has recently emerged again, as various contributions suggest that anti-pluralist actors are in the driver’s seat of democratic backsliding. However, anti-pluralism in this literature usually remains completely undefined, or at least undertheorized. This study intends to contribute to clarifying the theoretical dimension of these issues by specifying anti-pluralism as a concept and discussing its relationships to competing concepts for identifying actors threatening democracy. The conceptual analysis shows that anti-pluralism is best understood as the negation of the benefits of societal diversity and thereby also the functional and normative necessity, purpose, and merit of pluralism as a structure principle. Furthermore, it can be shown that anti-pluralism is a feature of various other isms that are commonly used as indicators to identify actors threatening democracy. I conclude that while anti-pluralism is not necessary for actors to threaten democracy, it is sufficient to identify potentially threatening actors and has advantages over competing markers such as populism and extremism.
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Zeitschrift für vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, 19, VS Verl. für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00622-x