Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

Hegemony, equivalence and difference
When a hegemonic project attempts to articulate more and more symbols and
demands, it quickly comes up against the following problem: many of these elements
stand in antagonistic relations against each other. Right-wing hegemonic forces
in the United States, for example, are constantly faced with the challenge of
redefining neo-conservatism and religious fundamentalism such that they can be
integrated into a common worldview. A hegemonic discourse must strive to
neutralize these antagonisms—with or without the conscious consent of the social
agents in question—by effectively representing them as a bloc that stands opposed
to a common enemy. It achieves this unification-effect by representing its
articulated elements as equivalent signifiers in a chain that stands antagonistically
opposed to another chain of signifiers, such as the opposition between “the people”
and “the establishment.” Each of the articulated elements retains some degree of
specificity, but in this moment, the sense that all of them stand together in solidarity
against the enemy bloc comes to the fore.
As we have seen, this type of constitutive representation is called the logic of
equivalence. The effects of the logic of equivalence are limited, however, by the
contrary effects produced by representations that are structured according to the
logic of difference. The two logics limit each other such that neither one completely
defines the social; the effects of a differential representation is suppressed insofar
as it is displaced by an equivalential representation, and vice versa (Laclau and
Mouffe 1985:127–34). Much of hegemonic political strategizing consists in the
management of political representation—the deployment of the logic of difference
and the logic of equivalence—according to the prevailing tactical conditions.
Each of the articulated elements takes on a fundamental ambiguity: it
simultaneously connotes both its position as a differential element and the general
principle of the opposition between its hegemonic bloc and the enemy bloc (Laclau
1996h:41).
The hegemonic bloc must appear to provide a surface of inscription for the
satisfaction of every legitimate demand. Of course, part of this appearance is
achieved through concealed acts of exclusion. A center-right democratic
discourse, for example, might construct itself as a universal surface of inscription
by articulating multicultural symbols. Given its actual political orientation,
however, it will probably embrace a conservative type of multiculturalism. The
center-right movement will wage a concealed war against radical anti-racist,
anti-sexist and anti-heterosexist forces, and, when it presents its multicultural
face to the public, it will showcase only its carefully hand-picked conservative
minority allies. In short, the appearance won by a hegemonic discourse as a
space in which all the demands of all the people can be heard is supported by
aggressive “behind-the-scenes” exclusionary campaigns to manage the boundaries

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between legitimate and illegitimate demands; and between “genuine citizens”
and “surplus populations.”
The tension between the logics of difference and equivalence is not necessarily
fatal for political discourses. Norval contends, for example, that this tension
constituted an undecidability that became central to the effectiveness of the
apartheid regime (1996:139, 169–73). As we saw in Chapter 3, Dole’s 1996
Republican Presidential campaign was also marked by a fundamental undecidability
with respect to representational management. In one moment, Dole emphasized
a logic of equivalence strategy: he depicted himself as the leader of an all-out fight
against liberal extremists to return the United States to its former “glory.” He
attempted to appeal to both the religious right and the neo-conservatives,
embracing anti-Hollywood, homophobic, school prayer and anti-choice demands
while suddenly converting to supply-side economic policies. At the same time,
however, Dole took note of the declining popularity of House Speaker Gingrich’s
extremist Contract with America and the damage that had been done to the
Republicans by its religious fundamentalist leaders during their 1992 Convention.
Consequently, he deployed a logic of difference strategy as well: he attempted to
create an imaginary national space in which the Republicans presided over a
moderate, inclusionary and multiculturally diverse social order. Dole launched
various symbolic efforts to construct the Republicans as a broad-based coalition.
He made secret deals with the Christian Coalition to stop Buchanan’s demagogic
campaign. He worked for months, with limited success, to include language in the
party’s extremist platform that recognized the legitimacy of pro-choice Republicans.
Republican officials ran a tightly scripted Convention that featured numerous
women and people of color as speakers. Having achieved a voting record that won
the approval of the Christian Coalition, Dole mostly avoided controversial issues
such as welfare, abortion and homosexuality during his campaign. His campaign
solicited, returned and then welcomed contributions from Republican
homosexuals. He only emphasized his opposition to affirmative action and his
demands for stricter immigration controls at the very end of his campaign, when
it had become clear that he was not going to win, and his leadership was needed
to encourage the “party faithful” to turn out to vote for the other Republican
candidates.
Dole attempted to manage these contradictory representations by deploying
them in different theaters of operation: the logic of equivalence “total war” images
were concentrated in those sites in which Dole was speaking to the “party faithful,”
while the logic of difference images were emphasized wherever the nominee was
speaking to the electorate as a whole. In any event, Dole and his supporters never
succeeded in their bid to master the terrain of hegemonic politics. They did not
bring the neo-conservatives and religious right into a thoroughly articulated
relation, and they failed to construct Dole as a compelling leader with credible
solutions.
Finally, it was Clinton, not Dole, who seemed to set the political agenda for
the election campaign. The symbolic meaning of Clinton’s leadership was produced

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by a modified hegemonic representational strategy. On the one hand, his leadership
seemed to operate as a surface of inscription for popular identifications thanks to
his largely symbolic policy proposals on juvenile smoking, gun control, youth
curfews and school uniforms. The structure of Clinton’s public discourse—his
frequent therapeutic claims that he “feels the pain” of Americans, his use of phrases
such as “I hear you,” or “I identify with your suffering”—enhances this aspect of
his discourse.
8
On the other hand, however, the electorate’s expectations with
respect to what his leadership can accomplish were sharply reduced. On welfare
reform, for example, Clinton has masterfully portrayed himself as a weak President
who was forced by a Republican-led Congress to do something that he would not
have otherwise done. Clinton had actually embraced a neo-conservative position
on welfare well before the 1992 election. Because he emerged from the pre-election
session with the image of an embattled President and a reluctant compromiser, it
was the Republican Congress rather than Clinton himself who had to bear the
political costs of “Contract with America,” when he himself supported an only
slightly more moderate version of their agenda (Smith 1997a). In this case, a
single political discourse, namely neo-conservatism, effectively operates as the
hegemonic horizon of intelligibility for both the Clinton Democrats and the
mainstream Republicans. Hegemonic struggles do not always correspond neatly
to partisan boundaries; in some situations, political leaders such as Clinton merely
deploy small-scale tactical maneuvers within an already hegemonized space.

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CONCLUSION
Multicultural difference and the political
As we have noted at various points, Laclau tends to embrace an increasingly formal
conception of hegemony in his recent work. This tendency is problematic because
it suppresses a historically specific analysis of the success and failure of rival political
discourses. In this final chapter, I will offer some concluding remarks on Laclau
and Mouffe’s hegemony theory and the implications of their work for understanding
historical contextualization and multicultural difference.