Time is undoubtedly among the most fundamental categories of society. Since society is occurring and constantly evolving and not merely existing in a state of equilibrium, the temporal dimension is crucial for both the constitution and analysis of sociopolitical realities. Accordingly, the relationship between time and human consciousness, social practices, and communicative acts is a recurring topic in social theory (Reference AbbottAbbott 2001; Reference AdamAdam 1990; Reference GokmenogluGokmenoglu 2022; Reference NassehiNassehi 2008; Reference NowotnyNowotny 1992; Reference Zerubavel, Reinecke, Suddaby, Langley and TsoukasZerubavel 2020). Here, the reflections have gradually moved from the essentialist question of what time is to the constructivist interest in time and its performative qualities (Reference NassehiNassehi 2008: 24–30). They share the assumption that time cannot, as in Newtonian physics, be presupposed as a given fact of an objective reality located “outside” or “beyond” the social world. Instead, it must be analyzed in terms of how people on one side and institutions or systems on the other perform it. As such, time itself becomes a matter of social theorizing.
While time is, therefore, a prominent concept in social theory—there is, for instance, an entire journal, Time & Society, dedicated to the relationship between time and social life—in political theory in general and democratic theory in particular, we encounter a different situation. Time and temporality have haunted philosophy for centuries (Reference PowerPower 2021), and yet, they are not among the guiding concepts of political and democratic theorizing. Often, time is taken for granted and used, in a Newtonian sense, as an allegedly self-evident term to refer to a quantity: “invariant, infinitely divisible into space-like units, measurable in length and expressible as number” (Reference AdamAdam 1990: 50). At a closer look, however, in both more recent and classical strands of political and democratic thought, time leaves its traces in many more, and at times subtle, ways. This Special Issue identifies the mostly implicit centrality of time and temporality in democratic theory. We aim to move toward an in-depth discussion of how time plays a role in democratic thinking. We thus present fragments of a project of tracing time in democratic theory.
One of these fragments is, for instance, represented by Hannah Arendt's democratic theory. In her political anthropology and her concept of natality, Reference ArendtArendt (1998) identifies the political capacity of human beings with their ability to “begin anew,” that is, to depart from the (seemingly) constant “flow of time” by bringing something new into existence, ultimately changing the “course of time” in unforeseeable ways. Moreover, in her reflections on “forgiving” and “promising” as ways of dealing with the weight of the past, and of acting upon an inherently uncontrollable future, respectively, time is pivotal (Reference ArendtArendt 1998: 236–247). Arendt's thought, therefore, is a temporalized one; and yet, a political theory of time that would explicitly pick up on these (and other) temporal notions is only gradually emerging (Reference BarbehönBarbehön 2023; Reference DiehlDiehl 2019; Reference LazarLazar 2019; Reference LittleLittle 2022; Reference WhiteWhite 2024).
In the field of radical democratic theory, the situation is similar. Temporalized terms and perspectives do appear regularly, as is the case, for instance, with Jacques Rancière's (2007) thought, which can be understood as a post-Marxist reformulation of Arendt's political phenomenology. For Rancière, “politics,” as compared to “the police,” is a “momentous event” that interrupts the existing order of the sensible and its allocation of times and spaces. Consequently, democracy, according to Rancière, is not an enduring condition that exists in and moves through time but, quite to the contrary, a disruptive moment that has to emerge time and again to challenge where and when politics could appear. Thus, the moment of a democratizing rupture also produces a specific democratic temporality. Just like the constructivist turn in temporal social theory, Rancière's democratic theory is not so much interested in questions of what democracy is. Rather, he discusses questions of how and under which conditions democratic moments occur that push politics toward more democratic futures. Hence, he asks when democracy happens. Democracy, in this account, is thought of within a temporal imaginary. And yet, democratic theorists are, with a few notable exceptions (Reference CohenCohen 2018; Reference SawardSaward 2017; Reference ScheuermanScheuerman 2004), somewhat reluctant to start from the concept of time to engage in democratic theorizing. When looking at companions to political philosophy and democratic theory (Reference Adler-Bartels, Altenburger, Frick, Schottdorf and SteinAdler-Bartels et al. 2023; Reference Gaus and D'AgostinoGaus and D'Agostino 2017), we do not, at least at first sight, come across the term time.
Against this background, this Special Issue puts time at the center of reflections on democracy. Its primary rationale is to unearth the mostly implicit and metaphorical ways in which time appears in democratic thinking to explicitly approach it as a political concept crucial to democratic theory. This rationale is driven by the aforementioned premise within social theory that time is not simply a (Newtonian) boundary condition, but instead intrinsically linked to the emergence of sociopolitical realities. Consequently, to account for time as a political concept could substantially enrich the field of democratic theory, as it highlights that democratic politics not only occurs in time, but establishes complex and ambiguous relationships with and through time.
In his 1996 essay “When was the ‘the Postcolonial’?,” Reference HallStuart Hall (2021) argues that “the colonial” does not end with the formal abolition of colonialism. Instead, he shows, in a hauntological fashion, how the past keeps shaping both the present and the possible futures of the colonized and colonizing countries—countries, in which democratic theory has too often overlooked or even romanticized democracies’ entanglements with power (Reference HabermasHabermas 1996; for a critical account see Reference KernerKerner 2021; Reference Mignolo, Segato and WalshMignolo et al. 2024). In contrast, Hall interrogates the intersection of temporality, society, democratic politics, and power. Inspired by Hall's question, and in lieu of the far more commonly asked question of what democracy is, we ask “when is democracy?” to explore the complex, ambiguous, and contradictory relations between democracy, power, and time.Footnote 1 In this sense, we argue for a democratic theory that accounts for the complex performativity of temporalized and temporalizing ways of thinking. Asking “when is democracy?” brings to the foreground of political theory how understandings of time and temporal concepts in democratic societies have political impact: for how they deal with the pasts, the presents, and the futures, how they remember and mourn, how they anticipate and hope, and how, thus, power is both stabilized and challenged in, with, and through time.
In what follows, we will, firstly, raise the status of time in democratic theory by discussing pertinent contributions that have approached the temporality of democracy. Secondly, we will show that, in addition to this research, there is also an omnipresent latency of time in democratic thinking, that is, that implicit temporal connotations could be found in quite a few conceptualizations of democracy. Against the background of these explicit and implicit roles of the temporal, we will, thirdly, argue that the “temporal turn” in the social sciences, humanities, and cultural studies (Reference Bastian, Baraitser, Flexer, Hom and SalisburyBastian et al. 2020; Reference Houdek and PhillipsHoudek and Phillips 2020) also has specific analytical and normative value for democratic theory. To raise these potentials, we will elaborate on three dimensions in which time and democratic theory could be interlocked, and we will locate the contributions to the Special Issue in regard to these dimensions. Finally, we will summarize the main insights of our attempt to temporalize democratic theory and to establish time as a key concept of democratic theorizing.
The Time of Democratic Theory
“Time is,” Fernando Esposito and Tobias Becker (2023: 3) have recently noted, “so deeply interwoven with all aspects of politics that its centrality to the political is frequently overlooked.” As explained earlier, we agree with this general assessment, and we will discuss further instances of the deep interwovenness of time and (democratic) politics separately further in this article. Here, however, we want to start with the argument that time's political centrality is “frequently overlooked,” which, in turn, implies that it is not entirely absent in political studies. We believe this is also true for democratic theory.
A prominent example is the debate on the temporal constitution of democracy that captures the temporal architecture and time horizons of democratic rule (Reference GoodinGoodin 1998; Reference Schäfer, Merkel and GoetzSchäfer and Merkel 2024). Here, democracy is, at the most general level, understood as “government pro tempore” (Reference LinzLinz 1998: 19), and the analytical focus lies on how democratic systems guarantee the temporal limitation of power, for example, by way of establishing periods, cycles, deadlines, and rhythms. Of particular concern in this perspective is the assumption that democracy is structurally shortsighted. According to the “myopia thesis,” democratic rule pertains to a presentism that hinders long-term orientations (Reference MacKenzieMacKenzie 2021). Against this backdrop, Reference ThompsonDennis F. Thompson (2005, Reference Thompson2010) has argued for a conception of democratic trusteeship to reflect on how democratic representation could consider the distribution of popular sovereignty through time and incorporate future generations.
In another variant of this perspective, the temporal constitution of democracy is interrogated in relation to the notions of speed and desynchronization. We understand this variant as time-diagnostic, meaning that it starts from an observational position where temporal vocabulary is used to, most often, detect some crisis or, less pejoratively, fundamental societal change. Conceptually, it is very much informed by the seminal work of sociologist Reference RosaHartmut Rosa (2013), who has developed an account of modernity as an ever-increasing acceleration that is said to challenge the rationality of “slow” democratic principles and their time requirements. Research in this tradition consequently investigates whether democratic procedures and institutions are “fast enough” to get along with the speed of late-modern society (Reference FawcettFawcett 2018; Reference HopeHope 2009; Reference SawardSaward 2017; Reference ScheuermanScheuerman 2004; Reference Strabheim and UlbrichtStrabheim and Ulbricht 2015; Reference TorresTorres 2022; for a critical account see Reference BarbehönBarbehön 2020; Reference GlezosGlezos 2011).
These strands of research provide important insights into the temporality of democracy. They highlight the specific time requirements and temporal orientations of democratic rule, for example, the time it takes to deliberate and arrive at legitimate and effective decisions where everyone concerned is heard and listened to. They also scrutinize how these requirements are challenged or undermined by an accelerating technological and economic sphere and long-term concerns such as climate change. As crucial as this research is for understanding democracies’ temporalities and time constraints, we find a time-theoretical problem with it, as it identifies time with clock and calendar time. Reference RosaRosa (2013: 65), as one of the leading voices within the debate on speed and desynchronization, defines acceleration by way of “Newtonian physics” as “an increase in quantity per unit of time” (italics in the original). In democratic theory, and beyond the specific concern with acceleration, this basic and most often hegemonic temporal conceptualization also comes to the fore, for instance, in the work of Elizabeth F. Cohen. In her book on the relationship between time, citizenship, and democratic justice, she starts from the idea of “scientifically measured durational time” to capture how time takes on “political value within every liberal democracy” (Reference CohenCohen 2018: 3). Reference CohenCohen (2018: 31) discerns three ways political boundaries are being established temporally: “fixed single boundaries that refer to a single point in time, countdown boundaries such as statutes of limitation, and recurring boundaries such as a decennial census.” Her focus lies on the political effects of these durational boundaries. At the same time, the notion of time itself is being reduced and reified to something “scientifically measurable,” located within the sphere of physics.
In contrast to this naturalist and objectivist understanding of time, we find contributions that emphasize the complex performativity of time and the manifold ways that time takes shape within the political. Nomi Claire Reference LazarLazar (2019: 3), for instance, has investigated how “[t]ime talk and temporal framing . . . serve the project of legitimation.” In her account, time is not objectified with the help of Newtonian physics. Instead, it is understood as a social artifact that comes into existence through (narrative) time technologies, like the calendar or the clock, and temporal imaginaries, like “progress,” “cycles,” or “origin” (Reference LazarLazar 2019: 21). Lazar's perspective hints at the fact that “durational time,” or any other form that time could take within the sociopolitical world, is the contingent product of a symbolization that construes, and not only represents, time: “Even were time something pure and essential, a thing in itself,” Lazar maintains (2019: 16), “we could not experience it as such, since we perceive time only through marks and measures.” Similarly, Reference WhiteJonathan White (2024: 12) has recently reflected on “how, in contexts past and present, outlooks on the world-to-come have shaped how democracy is practised, justified, restrained or discarded.” With the notion of “the future,” White does not refer to what is (likely) to come but to “a political idea” that could take different forms, for instance by being construed as open or closed, near or far, rational or impulsive, public or secret. In his analysis, White gathers historical and current examples of how democracies have approached “the future” regarding these (and other) dichotomies. He derives from that the claim that democracy can only function properly “in the long run,” that is, that it sits uneasily with a discourse of “last chances” and the expectation of an end (Reference WhiteWhite 2024: 215).
What unites these latter contributions is that they refer to time not merely as a tool for measuring the duration, pace, synchronicity, or temporal orientation of democratic processes, but to interrogate the performativity of time within democratic practices. Both Lazar and White are committed to a, broadly speaking, post-Newtonian perspective on time, and they hint at a form of democratic thinking in which time emerges as both a subject and an object of political theorization. To go further down this route, we will now return to Esposito's and Becker's quote at the beginning of this section, namely that time is “deeply interwoven with all aspects of politics.” By going below the surface, we can see that in reflections on democracy, time also features more subtly.
The Omnipresent Latency of Time in Democratic Theory
The research discussed thus far is one of the more obvious ways of addressing the time of democracy. It can be complemented by looking at common (and competing) interpretations of democracy that, at least at first sight, do not explicitly deal with the notion of time. By doing so, temporal imaginaries, tensions, and antinomies come to the fore that indicate that time is not only a specific dimension to capture how democratic politics does or should work (in an “accelerated” world), but that time is, more fundamentally, deeply interwoven with how we try to make sense of the very notion of democracy. This can be exemplified, for instance, by looking at understandings that build on ideas of stability and continuity (e.g., Reference HabermasHabermas 1996), or openness and uncertainty (e.g., Reference WolinWolin 2016; Reference ZoloZolo 1992).
As to the latter, democracy has been conceived as a political form that not simply thrives on a stable present in the sense of a fixed ground and secure infrastructures but may also be strengthened in moments of insecurity and uncertainty (Reference ZoloZolo 1992)—a thought well established within different strands of poststructuralism, queer-feminist perspectives, postcolonial studies, and deconstruction. Democracy, in this account, is said to flourish on indeterminacy and to be dependent on imaginations of open futures to enable democratic self-rule in meaningful ways (Reference SübSüb 2020). According to this perspective, democracy does not settle into the longue durée of social order but disrupts normality by allowing new, sometimes odd and queer, beginnings (Reference LoreyLorey 2022; Reference MarchartMarchart 2006). In these variants of democratic theory, ranging from political phenomenology and radical democratic theories to Black Feminism, democracy is understood as a fleeting moment or fugitive praxis through which political subjectivities emerge (Reference ArendtArendt 1998; Reference EmejuluEmejulu 2022; Reference WolinWolin 2016). The temporality of these understandings is quite apparent, although “time” may not feature explicitly within the respective conceptual repertoire.
The same could be said with regard to understandings of democracy that highlight the importance of stability and continuity. In these approaches, democracy is conceived as a temporally lasting condition for the appearance of political subjectivities deemed free and equal. In light of the modern openness of the future, democracy has been interpreted as a mode of reducing the range of future possibilities and managing expectations through deliberation and the rule of law (Reference HabermasHabermas 1996). In a world where contingency needs to be dealt with politically, democracy has been linked to the production of reliable expectations (Reference LuhmannLuhmann 1969). Democracy, imagined as stable, secure, and balanced, seeks to “tame” the unpredictability of the “unruly” masses, transforming them into an orderly polity (Reference Crozier, Huntington and WatanukiCrozier et al. 1975: 161–168)—a thought already elaborated in Plato's ancient democratic theory. To outline democracy as a system of rules that centers continuity and stability, this variant of democratic theory often relates the histories of democracy to constitutions, traditions, and remembrance that are undergirded by a hegemonic “narrative regime” (Reference Gebhardt and GilGebhardt 2024). It unfolds a specific, seemingly linear, progress timeline: from ancient Greece to the Founding Fathers, from settler colonialism to bourgeois capitalism and the triumph of liberal democracy. This “standard narrative” (Reference Isakhan, Stockwell, Isakhan and StockwellIsakhan and Stockwell 2011: 1), moreover, shares a closeness to reflections on democratic “periods” or “episodes,” and to temporal categories like “ages,” “eras,” “stages,” or “waves” as they can be found in (empirical) democracy studies. Again, the temporal underpinnings of these conceptions are apparent.
While the perspectives that stress either stability and continuity or openness and uncertainty oppose one another, we also find both interpretations within approaches. For instance, in Reference RancièreRancière's (2007) radical democratic account, democracy, that is, the momentous event that interrupts the existing order of the sensible, only emerges if there actually is a “police” that establishes and tries to maintain stability and continuity. This argument hints at the intuition that different temporalities constitute a dialectical relationship, and that democracy might have to do with maneuvering these inherent temporal tensions and contradictions. After all, openness and uncertainty derive meaning from being different from stability and continuity, and vice versa.
Beside stability and continuity, openness and uncertainty, within the conceptual repertoire of political and democratic theory, several more concepts carry more or less obvious temporal connotations: Terms like “to come” (Reference DerridaDerrida 2005), “becoming” (Reference AsenbaumAsenbaum 2023; Reference Deleuze and GuattariDeleuze and Guattari 1987; Reference ConnollyConnolly 2011), “imaginary” (Reference CastoriadisCastoriadis 1998; Reference OlufemiOlufemi 2021), “horizon” (Reference MarchartMarchart 2024), “prefiguration” (Reference SörensenSörensen 2022; Reference van de Sandevan de Sande 2022), “fugitivity” (Reference WolinWolin 2016), “utopia” (Reference Davis, Spivak and DhawanDavis et al. 2019; Reference MuñozMuñoz 2009), “presentism” (Reference HartogHartog 2015; Reference LoreyLorey 2022), or “Jetztzeit” (Reference BenjaminBenjamin 2010) describe political temporalities, temporal phenomena in politics, or the temporality of politics itself. Often, these concepts undergird a critical stance on the teleology and idealism of a linear time that has shaped politics from modernist and often masculinist understandings of progress, growth, and goal-attainment. Additionally, we find a range of topics in democratic theory that are of a temporal character. A case in point is the concern with emergency politics, as can be found in Bonnie Reference HonigHonig (2011). While Honig does not foreground “time” as an analytical lens, the complex temporality of “emergency” oozes throughout her book. Honig's Emergency Politics is thus an instance of how time is both “deeply interwoven” and “overlooked” (Reference Esposito and BeckerEsposito and Becker 2023: 3) in democratic theory.
In addition to the aforementioned contributions which explicitly approach the temporality of democracy (and which, as we have argued, often resort to a Newtonian understanding of time), time is, thus, also an omnipresent but often latent aspect of democratic thinking. Notions of time and temporality, therefore, often exist within democratic theory as an absent presence that needs to be unpacked to help us better understand and scrutinize the temporal dimension of both the politics of democracy and democratic politics. This would contribute to democratic theory in at least three ways. Firstly, it would allow us to carve out how time is involved in establishing and maintaining structures of inequality and oppression, for example, when certain forms of temporality are valorized at the expense of others (as exemplified by Simone de Beauvoir's distinction between “transcendence” and “immanence”). Secondly, making time explicit in democratic theory would allow us to interrogate how time features in emancipatory struggles, for example, when social movements engage in practices of remembrance and prefiguration. Thirdly, it would sensitize us to how democratic theorists themselves are involved in construing time, for example, when they reflect on “founding moments,” “developmental paths,” or “eras.” While these and similar concerns are not entirely new to democratic theory, there is not yet a distinct strand of temporalized democratic theory that reaches the time-theoretical depths to be found in social theory.
Moving Toward an In-Depth Discussion of Time in Democratic Theory
Referring to a temporal turn in the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies, we enrich this emerging field with a (renewed) “invitation” (Reference Schedler and SantisoSchedler and Santiso 1998) to address the constitutive relationship between time and democracy.Footnote 2 With its focus on democratic theory, the Special Issue brings together a specialized community concerned with time-theoretical reflections and a broader range of democratic theorists interested in the temporal rationalities of democratic rule and the meaning-making powers of temporalized notions of democracy. With this, we hope to deepen the critical analysis of democratic temporalities while contributing to time-oriented democratic theorizations that move toward an in-depth discussion of time in democratic theory.
Due to the complexity of both “time” and “democracy,” we are not claiming that the articles in this Special Issue develop the democratic theory of time as a coherent and totalizing conceptualization. Instead, the Special Issue assembles a plurality of perspectives to reveal what different theoretical traditions have to offer for “temporalizing” democratic theory, that is, giving the notions of both time and democracy thorough conceptual attention. While the contributions are committed to different understandings of time, they agree that time is neither naturally given nor objectively measured by the clock and the calendar but rather co-evolves with sociopolitical practices. As such, time is not simply a boundary condition of democratic politics but itself has a “social life” (Reference Bastian, Baraitser, Flexer, Hom and SalisburyBastian et al. 2020) that needs careful theoretical analysis. The articles reflect different ways of thinking about democracy and temporality and thus trace temporal concepts and temporalizing notions in democratic theory. Despite their differences, they share an attempt to connect time-theoretical considerations, such as feminist chronopolitics, untimeliness, or teleology, with the means of democratic theory to develop critical perspectives on the temporalities of democratic rule. In that way, they are not “only” time-diagnostic—a form of societal observation that deploys temporal vocabularies such as “crisis,” “acceleration,” or “progress” without accounting for how these temporal experiences come into existence.
Focusing on analyzing democracy through time-theoretical scrutiny, instead of using temporal notions as mere diagnostics, the contributions to this Special Issue unfold their analyses in different ways. Taken together, these differences hint at three dimensions that, in our view, could serve as building blocks for temporalizing democratic theory. Firstly, a temporalized democratic theory would address time's role in different strands of democratic theorizing and reflect on the temporal assumptions (implicitly) underpinning their conceptualizations. This also includes a critical perspective on euro-, andro-, or phallogocentric notions of time, such as linearity and progress, as it can be developed particularly with the help of non-Western and queer theorizations (Reference Blanco-FernándezBlanco-Fernández 2024; Reference EdelmanEdelman 2004; Reference KeelingKeeling 2019; Reference McCallum and TuhkanenMcCallum and Tuhkanen 2011; Reference MuñozMuñoz 2009).
In this sense, and with the lens of provincializing Europe, Nils Riecken's article “Putting Secularism's Teleology in Its Place: Abdallah Laroui on Time and Democracy” critically engages with Jürgen Habermas, as one of the main references of “Western” deliberative democracy, and his conception of the secular. Riecken interprets Habermas’ imperative of translating religion into secular languages as an example of a Euro-American discourse that posits the secular as an epistemological space of successful civilization that the religious and racialized Others of “Western” modernity must duly follow. Riecken reveals the implicit temporal underpinnings of secularism as a foundational imaginary of “modern” democracy. He contrasts this notion with Abdallah Laroui's negative dialectics of democratic practice, history, time, and translation to unearth the temporal tensions inherent in debates on liberal, putatively secular democracy.
The temporal tensions within contemporary strands of democratic thinking are also at the heart of Friederike Beier's article “The Times of Caring Democracy: Feminist Chronopolitics and the Temporalities of Care.” Beier starts from the observation that in accounts of a caring democracy, time has been chiefly theorized regarding duration and speed. To extend this limited understanding of democratic and caring temporalities, they draw on feminist theories of time, which transcend the identification of time with linear clock-time. Thus, it becomes possible to reflect the multiple temporalities of care and integrate them into democratic processes to move toward a gender- and time-just caring democracy through feminist chronopolitics.
Secondly, a temporalized democratic theory should be able to address the temporality of political concepts. This applies not only to concepts that carry explicit temporal connotations, such as natality, becoming, prefiguration, fugitivity, or utopia, as previously mentioned, but also, and probably more importantly, to foundational concepts where time, at first sight, is not all too evident. In the sense of the latter, Nicola Mühlhäuber centers her article “Untimely Becoming: The Queer Time of the Political” around the notion of “the political,” which, until now, has been thoroughly studied in its spatial dimension. Mühlhäuber, contrastingly, focuses on its queer temporality. She compares the influential conceptions of the political by Claude Lefort as well as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari regarding their inherent temporalities. While Lefort provides the possibility to understand constant struggles about society and meaning as being political, Deleuze and Guattari emphasize the political potential of queer times beyond any pregiven identity and subjectivity. Inasmuch as democracy is understood as the realization of the political, as Mühlhäuber suggests, the question about the political's time is ultimately also a question about the meaning of democracy.
Thirdly, our attempt to put time at the heart of democratic theory is linked to theorizing and critically analyzing the temporalities of democratic practices. This entails reflecting on the effects of constructions of time for democratic practices, and also how, in turn, time emerges from these very practices. In “Disrupting the Anthropocene: Temporalities of Mourning and Care in the Postapocalyptic Present,” Rosine Judith Kelz engages with the Anthropocene discourse and adjacent apocalyptic imaginaries. She highlights the need to account for the historical interconnections between, and the politics of, different forms of oppression and environmental destruction to grasp the logic of political activism that centers on irredeemable loss. In this context, politicizations of mourning, Kelz suggests, allow for a broader presentist understanding of democratic politics that focuses on precarity and care relations. Therefore, Kelz argues for undermining dominant temporal labor regimes while creating time and space for experimenting with more sustainable and caring forms of societal organization.
This Special Issue's contributions reflect on the role of time in different strands of democratic theory. They engage in a temporalization of concepts central to democratic theorizing and analyze the complex temporalities of current democratic constellations and practices. Drawing on different approaches of democratic theory and interdisciplinary debates from cultural, gender, postcolonial, environmental, and Islamic studies, the articles showcase the plurality and analytical value of the currently evolving, but not yet fully established, field of time-sensitive democratic theory. In their plurality, they share an interest in the intricate entanglements between democracy, power, and time. They are driven by the premise that time cannot be reduced to an objectively given boundary condition of democratic politics. Instead, time has a political life of its own and, thus, deserves thorough theoretical attention, especially in democratic theory.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all participants of the workshop “When Is Democracy?” at Münster University in 2023 for sharing their thoughts on democracy and temporality with us. We are especially grateful to all contributors to this Special Issue and to the anonymous reviewers for their commitment to this project. Finally, we want to thank Emily Beausoleil and Jean-Paul Gagnon with Democratic Theory for their support along the way.
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