Conceptualising the Political Imaginary: An Introduction to the Special Issue

The political is changing its shape. Ideologies are no longer stable, but instead build hybrid combinations. Populism is getting popular. In addition, there are new forms of political experiences, online and offline movements, and a new kind of political consciousness, which does not necessarily follow the logic of political institutions and is sometimes anti-political or post-truth. These phenomena are signs of a deep transformation of the political imaginary. Yet, the imaginary is a collective structure that organizes the imagination and the symbolism of the political. Against this background, it becomes evident that traditional concepts of political science and sociology have difficulty explaining how the political is constituted, since these disciplines have not, by and large, addressed the question of how the political is imagined. In general, these disciplines have focused on political institutions and actors, and sometimes scholars take the political culture into account, but they are mainly still using the traditional framework of the civic culture (Almond and Verba 1963). The understanding of how political principles are shared or how institutions are legitimized is still incomplete. It is the intention of this issue to reopen this question and to contribute to further work on the political imaginary.