Carl Schmitt against Mass Democracy: Reinterpreting The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy

Abstract

Carl Schmitt’s work on The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy has been subject to a new scholarly interest within the context of the debates on populism. Most accounts emphasized the anti-liberal elements in his thought that are discernible in those parts of the book that elaborate on the opposition between liberalism and democracy. This paper argues that such emphasis tends to oversee the analysis developed by Schmitt with regard to the decline of the nineteenth century parliamentarism in the same book. Suggesting that Schmitt nostalgically idealizes nineteenth century parliamentarism as an instance of bourgeois domination and blames mass democracy for its deterioration, this paper puts forth a different portrayal of Schmitt who is an anti-democrat and committed to preserving bourgeois social/political order. This paper finalizes by suggesting that a rigorous analysis of Schmitt’s anti-democratic politics would offer us a new lens to interrogate the polemical side of his anti-liberalism. This would in turn disclose the shortcomings of portraying Schmitt as a principled anti-liberal.