It is collective identities which, for Mouffe, are constitutive of the political. She says,‘In the field of collective identities we are always dealing with the creation of a “we” which can exist only by the demarcation of a “they”’ (2005, p. 15).The failure of neo-liberalism, Mouffe claims, to acknowledge and fully comprehend the passions that are generated through collective identities, for example, a person’s religious, national, regional or local affiliations, represents a failure to understand the very nature of the political and the reality of a pluralist world. However, and this is where the importance of the political is highlighted, such ‘we/they’ demarcations can be antagonistic and thus for Mouffe ‘ ... the task of democracy is to transform antagonism into agonism’ (2005, p. 20), i.e. a ‘we/they’ relationship based upon political contestation but framed by agreed democratic procedures.