The distinction between politics (as practice of institutions) and the political (as the interruption of the practice of the former) has recently received greater attention in political theory. Whereas, on one side, five types of this distinction can be made, on the other, a problem persists: the question whether this distinction means to make a hierarchical differentiation between “mere politics” and the “real event” of the political. To this extent, it might help to see the political difference through the lens of Waldenfels’ distinction between (contingent) order and the extra-ordinary. The main idea is that the excess of the extraordinary is only to be found in politics and not outside of it. By means of this interpretation it could be argued that the gap between politics and the political could be reduced without being completely bridged.
