Consensus and Democratic Legitimacy: Political Marketing versus Political Philosophy

This article aims to reconsider the link between consensus and democratic legitimation,assuming that the growing pervasiveness of political marketing urges political philosophy and sociology to consider to what extent our questions on democratic legitimation arecompelling and appropriate. The knotty point is highlighted by comparing the basic as-sumptions of two contemporary theories of idealized consensus (Habermas and Rawls)and deliberative democracy theories with the idea of consensus deducible from some in-fluential studies about propaganda techniques and political marketing. In conclusion, Iwill argue that a more realistic approach to the issues of “consensus” and “legitimacy”can help us to grasp important aspects of our problem. Political theory needs a “realistic turn” – inspired by Max Weber among others – to investigate the historically and actually legitimizing processes, taking into account that political market-ing gives rise to a type of legitimacy which was not envisaged in classical models, such as Weber’s theory of power: legitimation through professional communication and me-dia management, that is political power generated by communication power.