Jurisprudence in the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

Abstract

The article concerns real and potential reactions of jurisprudential discourses to the phenomenon of the crisis of liberal democracy. The author argues that liberal democracy has been a hegemonic structure – meaning that not only has it been dominant in the factual sense in the broadly understood Western legal and political culture but it has also effectively suppressed any competing discourses. Today, the hegemony of demoliberalism is being questioned. The new state of affairs causes a range of complications that jurisprudential discourses have to deal with. The author considers three possible scenarios of the reaction of these discourses to the said crisis. The first of them means a shift towards democratic authoritarianism. The second is about remaining in a collective hypocrisy, waiting for a change in the current intellectual climate. The third involves accepting the political nature of jurisprudence and making the concept of agonistic democracy a reality.