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The Spirit of Democracy
How does one revitalize democracy in times of crisis? Democracy is today challenged by populism and elitism, as well as by the resurgence of new forms of authoritarianism. The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal shows that while we have good reasons to worry about the corruption of democratic practices and ideals, these worries are often attributable to questionable assumptions about what democracy is. Drawing on Montesquieu's classical work on the spirit of laws, the book sets out to reconceive the ways in which we understand and conceptualise modern democracy: from sovereignty to spirit. According to Montesquieu, different political forms are animated and sustained by ...
The Spirit of Democracy
This book develops a new theoretical framework for studying the corruption, disintegration, and renewal of democracy: what it is, how it begins, and where in society it plays out. Näsström argues that modern democracy is a sui generis political form animated and sustained by a spirit of emancipation.
Reclaiming Representation
Representation is integral to the functioning and legitimacy of modern government. Yet political theorists have often been reluctant to engage directly with questions of representation, and empirical political scientists have closed down such questions by making representation synonymous with congruence. Conceptually unproblematic and normatively inert for some, representation has been deemed impossible to pin down analytically and to defend normatively by others. But this is changing. Political theorists are now turning to political representation as a subject worthy of theoretical investigation in its own right. In their effort to rework the theory of political representation, they are als...
Political Representation
Contemporary political philosophy disregards history as irrelevant to the nature of politics and to what constitutes a political problem. The author argues that this view reduces politics and political philosophy to a vapid academic game that is insensitive to both the essence and practice of politics. He proposes that an indissoluble link between history and politics lies in the notion of representation.
Beyond the People
Beyond the People develops a provocative, interdisciplinary, and meta-theoretical critique of the idea of popular sovereignty. It asks simple but far-reaching questions: Can 'imagined' communities, or 'invented' peoples, ever be theorized without, at the same time, being re-imagined and re-invented anew? Can polemical concepts, such as popular sovereignty or constituent power, be theorized objectively? If, as this book argues, the answer to these questions is no, theorists who approach the figure of a sovereign people must acknowledge that their activity is inseparable from the practice of constituent imagination. Though widely accepted as important, even vital, for the development of politi...
Transnational Actors in Global Governance
The nature of global governance is changing, as are the standards by which we judge its legitimacy. We are witnessing a gradual and partial shift from inter-state co-operation to more complex forms of governance, involving participation by transnational actors, such as NGOs, party associations, philanthropic foundations and corporations.
Redescriptions
Redescriptions was recently renamed as the Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory. In volume 12 (2008) aspects of studying the politics of the past are thematized through feminist historians' discussion on war and the role of the worker in communist regimes. One article and two comments on an article published in volume 11 deal with contemporary theories of democracy. One of the included articles discusses the chances of democratization in the EU, and one carries out a fictional analysis of an undemocratic regime. Three articles propose rhetorical redescriptions of key political concepts, namely "objectivity", "decision" and "patriotism".
Me the People
A timely and incisive assessment of what the success of populism means for democracy. Populist movements have recently appeared in nearly every democracy around the world. Yet our grasp of this disruptive political phenomenon remains woefully inadequate. Politicians of all stripes appeal to the interests of the people, and every opposition party campaigns against the current establishment. What, then, distinguishes populism from run-of-the-mill democratic politics? And why should we be concerned by its rise? In Me the People, Nadia Urbinati argues that populism should be regarded as a new form of representative government, one based on a direct relationship between the leader and those the l...
Less Than Nothing
A thousand-page resurrection of Hegel, from the bestselling philosopher and critic who has been hailed as “one of the world’s best-known public intellectuals” (New York Review of Books) For the last two centuries, Western philosophy has developed in the shadow of Hegel, an influence each new thinker struggles to escape. As a consequence, Hegel’s absolute idealism has become the bogeyman of philosophy, obscuring the fact that he is the defining philosopher of the historical transition to modernity, a period with which our own times share startling similarities. Today, as global capitalism comes apart at the seams, we are entering a new period of transition. In Less Than Nothing—the ...
Political Equality in Transnational Democracy
This book is about the status of political equality under global political conditions. If political equality generally is considered a core feature of democracy, it has received little attention among theorists concerned with global governance. Given the enormous emphasis on democracy as legitimizing factor in global politics, this neglect is noteworthy. This book sets out to address what accounts for the neglect, on the one hand, and how it may be remedied, on the other. The overall aim is to revitalize the debate on the status of political equality in transnational democracy.
