The dilemma between neutralization and politicization; the political identity of Europe

On the basis of his concept of the political, Carl Schmitt has criticized the liberal ideal of a neutral state for failing to account for the political distinction between friends and enemies – a logic that any political entity is subject to. His criticism consists of two elements: on the one hand the idea of a neutral state is insufficiently political because of its unwillingness to decide on an authoritative and constitutive political identity; on the other hand, due to the inescapability of the political, the liberal state will continuously be confronted its own limits and the resulting dialectic potentially leads to a hyperpolitical form of ‘absolute enmity’. In this dissertation, I argue that Schmitt’s critique of neutrality provides an account of a liberal tension between neutralization and politicization that remains conceptually and practically relevant and offers a theoretical framework for analyzing political developments within the context of Western liberalism.

In the first chapter I explore contemporary liberal theories of state neutrality. The main focus is Peter Balint’s claim that neutrality should be understood as a range concept, meaning that a state can only be neutral within a range of permissible worldviews. As such, a neutral state cannot escape the logic of the friend-enemy distinction. With this chapter I aim to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Schmitt’s theoretical framework.

In the second chapter I discuss the notion of existentiality in Schmitt’s concept of the political explored through a discussion with Max Weber’s disenchantment thesis. It conceptualizes the friend-enemy distinction as a theory of the political community as political existence and argues that Schmitt’s concept of the political can be understood as a reenchantment of the political.

The third chapter analyzes Schmitt’s conceptualization of liberalism. The chapter builds on John McCormick’s paper in which he distinguishes two different conceptualizations of liberalism in Schmitt’s work: one depicts liberalism as a powerless individualist ideology while the other depicts it as a threatening political force that is bent on destroying its enemies. I argue that the two views can be reconciled in Schmitt’s work by envisaging liberalism as a Janus face-like political ideology with both neutralizing as well as politicizing tendencies.

The fourth chapter explores how Schmitt develops his theory of liberal neutrality into the historical category of neutralization. The central argument is that Schmitt presents a ‘concrete history’ that does not attempt to universalize the principle of neutralization but derives it from distinct developments in Western modernity. As such, it provides us with a framework of analysis to analyze contemporary developments in liberal democracies.

The final chapter is a case study of a contemporary example of the politicization of liberal values. It intervenes in the debates about right-wing populism and specifically focuses on the defense of liberal values such as same-sex marriage by political movements that are generally understood to be at odds with liberal values. The chapter argues that this cannot be explained in terms of populism but should be understood as the consequence of a distinct logic of the liberal state that has become known as the Böckenförde dilemma. As such, it illustrates the practical consequences of the dilemma between politicization and neutralization in contemporary politics.