JVF Conference Papers
Democracy institutionalizes what is at stake in the famous slogan of Clausewitz inverted by Michel Foucault: “Politics is the continuation of war by other means.”2 The struggles for power regularly performed in the elections of democratic systems recognize conflicts, offering them a symbolic outlet, but they never resolve these conflicts. Yet another parallel with Foucault’s slogan arises because if one agrees that politics is a continuation of war, then politics ceases to exist, for there is no longer a war (conflict). The end of conflict entails the end of politics.
