The Athens Strategy: Institutionalizing Anger and Democracy

The text analyzes the 'Athens Strategy' as a model for transforming destructive political anger into an ordered institutional procedure. Drawing on Aeschylus' mythology and Chantal Mouffe's theory of agonism, the author argues that the goal of democracy is not to achieve full consensus, but to transform an existential enemy into a political adversary. A key element of systemic stability is the concept of 'loser's consent'—the agreement of the defeated on the legitimacy of the process despite dissatisfaction with the result. The article warns against apocalyptic politics, which treats every election as a fight for the survival of civilization, thereby destroying the foundations of pluralism and making the peaceful coexistence of groups with fundamentally different worldviews impossible.