Multipolarity or cosmopolitanism? A critique of Mouffe from a hegemony-theoretical perspective

In a series of publications Chantal Mouffe (2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2008, 2009, 2013) has criticized cosmopolitanism for its lack of conceptualization of power, conflict and struggle, in short of politics. Even though this critique is largely well placed, the conclusions drawn from the analysis by Mouffe are flawed. As she puts it, if a cosmopolitan democracy “was ever realized, it could only signify the world hegemony of a dominant power that would have been able to impose its conception of the world on the entire planet and which, identifying its interests with those of humanity, would treat any disagreement as an illegitimate challenge to its ‘rational’ leadership”. Mouffe, On the Political pp. 106–7. I argue that Mouffe paradoxically seems to be using a traditional 'realist' conceptualization of hegemony, signifying simply domination. Against this I argue that a post-structuralist understanding of hegemony – as developed by herself and Laclau in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, (Laclau and Mouffe,1985), precisely allows us to see the distance between universal values, such as freedom and equality for all, and their actual interpretation and use. The fact that the West are using democracy and human rights as legitimating devises for non-democratic goals, should not make us abandon the realization of these values on the global scale as the political goal.