Since WWII, the U.S. official doctrine is that it is the legitimate guardian of freedom in the world. To Sheldon Wolin, this signs the ideological drift from an open “constitutional imaginary” to a dictatorial “power imaginary.”
| This post is part of a reading series on Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon S. Wolin. To quickly access all chapters, please click here. Disclaimer: This chapter summary is personal work and an invitation to read the book itself for a detailed view of all the author’s ideas. |
According to Sheldon Wolin, a citizenry sees itself through two distinct but complementary ways: a constitutional imaginary and a power imaginary. This chapter examines how the latter has justified a state of permanent global war in U.S. policies.
“The constitutional imaginary prescribes the means by which power is legitimated, accountable, and constrained (e.g., popular elections, legal authorization). It emphasizes stability and limits. A constitution partakes of the imaginary because it is wholly dependent on what public officials, politicians in power, and, lastly, citizens conceive it to be, such that there is a reasonable continuity between the original formulations and the present interpretations.” By contrast, “The power imaginary seeks constantly to expand present capabilities. Hobbes, the theorist par excellence of the power imaginary and a favorite among neocons, had envisioned a dynamic rooted in human nature and driven by a ‘restless’ quest for ‘power after power’ that ‘ceaseth only in death.’1 But, according to Hobbes, unlike the individual whose power drives cease with death, a society can avoid collective mortality by rationalizing the quest for power and giving it a political form.”