The Democratic Paradox
Chantal Mouffe
 The eponymous paradox of democracy that this collection of essays deals with is the internal conflict within modern democracy that is created by the union of two separate strands of political thought: the tradition of Classical Liberalism and the tradition of Democratic Theory, forming the institution of Liberal Democracy. Mouffe sees Radical Democracy as a means for continuing to sustain the balance between the values of liberalism and democracy. This balance is accomplished through the agonistic practice of valuing and sustaining dissent in the democratic process as a more important goal than consensus. This point is where Radical Democratic theory diverges from both Habermas and Rawls, as it contradicts Habermas's quest for rational consensus and Rawls's project for political liberalism. Mouffe describes the importance of the radical democratic alternative in a 2009 interview, saying that "The aim of a pluralist democracy is to provide the institutions that will allow them to take an agonistic form, in which opponents will treat each other not as enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries who will fight for the victory of their position while recognising the right of their opponents to fight for theirs. An agonistic democracy requires the availability of a choice between real alternatives."