Democracy Disfigured

Opinion, Truth, and the People
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-0-674-72513-3
Verlag: Harvard University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 618 g

In Democracy Disfigured, Nadia Urbinati diagnoses the ills that beset the body politic in an age of hyper-partisanship and media monopolies and offers a spirited defense of the messy compromises and contentious outcomes that define democracy. Urbinati identifies three types of democratic disfiguration: the unpolitical, the populist, and the plebiscitarian. Each undermines a crucial division that a well-functioning democracy must preserve: the wall separating the free forum of public opinion from the governmental institutions that enact the will of the people. Unpolitical democracy delegitimizes political opinion in favor of expertise. Populist democracy radically polarizes the public forum in which opinion is debated. And plebiscitary democracy overvalues the aesthetic and nonrational aspects of opinion. For Urbinati, democracy entails a permanent struggle to make visible the issues that citizens deem central to their lives. Opinion is thus a form of action as important as the mechanisms that organize votes and mobilize decisions. Urbinati focuses less on the overt enemies of democracy than on those who pose as its friends: technocrats wedded to procedure, demagogues who make glib appeals to “the people,” and media operatives who, given their preference, would turn governance into a spectator sport and citizens into fans of opposing teams.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Urbinati, Nadia

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Demokratie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Urbinati, Nadia
Nadia Urbinati is the Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. She is the author of several books, including <i>Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People</i> (Harvard); <i>The Tyranny of the Moderns</i> <i>Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy</i> and <i>Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government</i>, which won the David and Elaine Spitz Prize for the best book in democratic theory.