Nadia Urbinati

"Hans Kelsen is widely recognized as one of the most important legal theorists of the 20th century. Surprisingly, however, his political writings are not nearly as widely known as his legal theory, especially in the English-speaking world. This book fills the void between what is and isn't known about Hans Kelsen's political philosophy, and the ways that philosophy has and will continue to shape political debates inherent to democracy in the future. For the first time in English, this classic book - with an introduction by political theorist Nadia Urbinati - provides an overview of Kelsen's career and his contributions to 20th century political thought." --

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.--

"Ten years after the publication of Feltrinelli 'Annale' La democrazia di fronte allo Stato, edited by Alessandro Pizzorno (2010), far-reaching events have led us to go back to the risks and challenges modern democracies are facing. This new volume of the 'Annali', Thinking Democracy Now: Between Innovation and Regression, studies the transformations affecting contemporary democracies from the perspective of their conflicting potentials. The chapters in the book develop around the following paradox: today democracy enjoys such an undisputed hegemony that even regimes threatening it do so in its very name and with the promise of expanding rather than demoting it. Reconstructed in the aftermath of the Second World War and mass dictatorships, constitutional democracy is a complex political system with no predetermined goal other than its own reproduction in social and national conditions that vary, rendering the political game permanently open to uneven and risky results. This volume explores several of these challenging conditions, both in the social and political spheres, through several countries and continents. With contributions from prominent scholars, it proposes a rich critical analysis of the most recent transformations of democratic processes, their regressive trends as well as opportunities for innovation, set against a global geopolitical landscape"--Back cover.

Nella nuova Italia gli interpreti e i difensori delle civili libertà (l'espressione è di Romagnosi) furono pochi e poco considerati. Tra essi, gli amici e i seguaci radicali e federalisti di Carlo Cattaneo, ma anche un moderato come Pasquale Villari, il maestro di Gaetano Salvemini. Tutti ebbero in comune la condivisione del pensiero filosofico e politico di John Stuart Mill e il proposito di favorirne la diffusione nella cultura del loro tempo. Mill fu uno degli autori più tradotti nell'Italia dell'Ottocento. Se la sua filosofia ebbe pochissima fortuna, il suo liberalismo attraversò invece tutta la classe politica ed intellettuale italiana: fu come un crocevia di strade diverse per provenienza e destinazione. Ciò vale per Francesco Ferrara e per Vilfredo Pareto, per Marco Minghetti e per Luigi Luzzatti, per i liberisti della Società Adamo Smíth e per i vincolisti del Giornale degli economisti. Il confronto con Mill permette di individuare i caratteri della filosofia civile del liberalismo post-unitario, le sue aspirazioni di buon governo e di giustizia, la sua fiducia nella cultura della modernità. La ricostruzione dei dibattiti e delle polemiche che si susseguirono tra gli anni sessanta e settanta sul decentramento, sulla rappresentanza proporzionale, sul suffragio femminile, sui rapporti fra stato e società civile, sul metodo dell'economia politica, sul socialismo e sull'utilitarismo i temi essenziali del liberalismo milliano aiuta a cogliere il significato storico del complesso rapporto tra liberalismo e positivismo in Italia. Ne viene fuori, come mette in rilievo Norberto Bobbio nella prefazione al volume, il carattere tortuoso e difficile del liberalismo italiano; la sua difficoltà a divenire una base effettiva di riferimento del nuovo stato, dei suoi ceti dirigenti, delle sue elite intellettuali.

The year 2006 marked the two hundredth anniversary of John Stuart Mill's birth. Though his philosophical reputation has varied greatly, it is now clear that Mill ranks among the most influential modern political thinkers. Despite his enduring influence, the breadth and complexity of Mill's political thought is often underappreciated. While his writings remain a touchstone for debates over liberty and liberalism, many other important dimensions of his political philosophy have until recently been ignored. This book aims to correct such neglect, by illustrating the breadth and depth of Mill's political writings, by drawing together a collection of essays whose authors explore underappreciated elements of Mill's political philosophy. The book shows how Mill's thinking remains pertinent to our own political life in three broad areas - democratic institutions and culture, liberalism, and international politics - and offers a critical reassessment of Mill's political philosophy in light of recent political developments and transformations.

In this study of populist politics, Nadia Urbinati argues that populism is best understood as a new form of representative government, based on an unmediated relationship between a leader and those in society whom the leader defines as the "true" people. Leaders of oppositional populist movements gain popularity by taking advantage of a discontent with rule by political elites. Party elites are cast as a homogenous political class who favor their own interests at the expense of ordinary people. Populist leaders who attain office thus face the following puzzle: they must exercise political power without themselves appearing to become part of the political elite. To solve this puzzle, Urbinati argues, populist rulers claim to represent the people by a process of embodiment or incarnation. This form of "direct representation" allows the populist leader both to bypass intermediary bodies, such as political parties, and to avoid any claims of accountability or responsibility. The populist dependence on the will of the leader, along with its willingness to exclude minorities from consideration, renders populist forms of democracy inherently unstable and opens a path to authoritarianism.--