Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
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 Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People (Harvard); The Tyranny of the Moderns; Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy; and Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government, which won the David and Elaine Spitz Prize for the best book in democratic theory.A beautifully wrought reflection on the ‘disfigurement’ of democracy. Deploying the ancient analogy and image of the body—as in ‘body politic’—Urbinati traces the theoretical sources and consequences of three deformations that have been introduced over time: the epistemic, the populist, and the plebiscitarian. All, the author argues, are ‘negative mutations of the procedural character of democracy.’
- Terence Ball, Arizona State University,
Urbinati’s book is sure to unsettle current debates, with its provocative critique of democratic ‘disfigurations’ and the theories that she says misjudge them—either by depoliticizing public opinion, neglecting the danger of its populist manipulation, or reducing it to citizen voyeurism.
- John Medearis, University of California, Riverside,