Taking Modernity to Extremes: On the Roots of Anti-Politics
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| Author | Lorenzo Zambernardi,Matteo Truffelli |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929919887345 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929919887345
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(1) 96 –110
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929919887345
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Taking Modernity to
Extremes: On the Roots
of Anti-Politics
Matteo Truffelli1 and Lorenzo Zambernardi2
Abstract
The term anti-politics has been used in recent years as never before. However, the concept is
used to describe political phenomena and actors that appear at first sight to be mutually exclusive.
Starting from the difficulties in defining anti-politics, the main goal of the article is to elucidate its
intellectual roots, showing that it is a kind of shadow of modern politics, mirroring its many forms.
From an examination of Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy, it will be shown that anti-politics
was born at a moment when politics was no longer seen as a natural condition of social life, but
an artificial construct that can be dismantled and reassembled. By no means coincidentally, the
main manifestations of anti-politics are nothing but the radical and destructive reinterpretation of
what Max Weber identifies as the three “inner justifications” of political authority (i.e. tradition,
charisma, competence). Although Weber lays down those principles as underpinning political
authority in ancient and modern times, the contention of this article is that they can only be used
to deny the legitimacy of politics once this comes to be seen as an artifice that can be taken to
pieces and put together again: in short, in the modern era.
Keywords
anti-politics, modernity, populism, technocracy, tradition, Weber
Accepted: 18 October 2019
In recent years, anti-politics has enjoyed growing attention by political scientists and
theorists (Boswell and Corbett, 2015; Clarke et al., 2018; Fawcett et al., 2017; Flinders,
2012; Hay, 2007; Lilla, 2017). But attention to the concept has had the effect of making it
broader and less precise. Allegedly, anti-politics may range from insults hurled at
“Washington DC” to a subtle neoliberal argument as to the futility of politics in a world
dominated by market law (Wood, 2016) or systematic recourse to rhetoric lamenting that
“politicians are all the same” (i.e. mendacious, incompetent, corrupt; Stoker, 2017:
270–272), that all the woes of a country are due to artificial divisions generated by party
faction (Caramani, 2017: 60, 64), and that politics is an unwieldy obstacle to be replaced
1University of Parma, Parma, Italy
2University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Corresponding author:
Lorenzo Zambernardi, University of Bologna, 40125 Bologna, Italy.
Email: lorenzo.zambernardi3@unibo.it
887345PSW0010.1177/1478929919887345Political Studies ReviewTruffelli and Zambernardi
research-article2019
Article
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