A strand of democratic theory holding that political conflict is ineliminable and should be channelled between adversaries who respect shared rules, rather than aimed at rational consensus.
In more detail
Chantal Mouffe's agonistic pluralism, set out in The Democratic Paradox (2000), distinguishes adversaries from enemies and criticises deliberative theories for presuming that consensus is attainable without exclusion. Defenders of deliberation reply that their models also allow for disagreement.