The Politics of Speed: Connolly, Wolin, and the Prospects for Democratic Citizenship in an Accelerated Polity

Is there a speed limit for democracy? Do the system imperatives of late-modern economic polities necessitate a shrinking of democratic oversight and control? Are the accelerated life-experiences of citizens in late modernity fundamentally hostile to the formation of civic identities, deliberative skills, and democratic habits? In this paper I examine recent work in democratic theory on social acceleration in order to address these questions. I argue that liberal theorists such as William Scheuerman focus excessively on institutional adjustments to the democratic polity rather than on ways in which democratic participation can be nurtured in an attempt to surmount the challenges of social acceleration. At the same time, radical pluralists such as William Connolly come close to romanticizing the effects of speed while ignoring its ill consequences for democracy (and for pluralism). I end the paper with an examination of the work of Sheldon Wolin, whose understanding of democracy has led him to formulate the idea of a multiple civic self that is nurtured through slow-time political practices. Wolin's theory of the multiple civic self, I argue, offers us the best way to think about the challenges for democracy represented by social acceleration, especially in conversation with Connolly's emphasis on bicameral citizenship and Bonnie Honig's treatment of the Slow Food movement. Polity (2011) 43, 58-83. doi:10.1057/pol.2010.23; published online 8 November 2010