Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/315618 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Citation: 
[Journal:] Theory and Society [ISSN:] 1573-7853 [Volume:] 53 [Issue:] 5 [Publisher:] Springer Netherlands [Place:] Dordrecht [Year:] 2024 [Pages:] 1119-1149
Publisher: 
Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht
Abstract: 
While democratic societies experience intense conflicts about topics such as migration and climate action, there is no sound theory of democratic conflict. Agonistic theories emphasize the importance of conflict for democracy, but disregard conflict dynamics. Conflict sociology has focused on international or violent conflicts and neglects democratic conflicts. This article shows how this lacuna can be overcome. First, it develops an innovative, empirically informed processual approach to democratic conflicts. To this end, it draws on a broad range of scholarship from sociology and social psychology, and integrates relevant insights into a processual framework for analyzing democratic conflicts that explores mechanisms of escalation, de-escalation, and reconciliation. Second, the article illustrates how this approach can ground a more elaborated democratic theory of conflict that concretizes how and when conflicts are beneficial to democracy, and explores the practices and institutions that democracies employ to cope with different conflict dynamics.
Subjects: 
Conflict
Dynamics
Escalation
Reconciliation
Democratic theory
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
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Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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