Political theory as democratic underlaboring: The case of property disobedience

Abstract

The article analyzes politically motivated property damage and destruction, or property disobedience, an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary worldwide protest politics. It then explores the possibility that political theory as democratic underlaboring potentially offers a useful of framework for analysis. One possible advantage to democratic underlaboring is that it calls on us to heed how political participants in protest movements, as well as their critics, interpret their acts. Doing so offers a crucial first step toward respectfully but critically analyzing contemporary modes of political protest within more-or-less democratic contexts. One possible disadvantage is methodological: democratic underlaboring presupposes more-or-less democratic political conditions in a global context characterized by the ascent of authoritarian populism. The essay begins starts by describing key features of property disobedience and highlighting its growing significance, before exploring democratic underlaboring as a possible methodological approach. Then, with attention to some resulting research-related puzzles, I discuss possible weaknesses. Specifically, democratic backsliding threatens to undermine crucial building blocks on which democratic underlaboring necessarily relies, in part by blurring the divide between more-or-less democratic