Nadia Urbinati

• Columbia University

Cambridge Core - Political Philosophy - Republicanism and the Future of Democracy - edited by Yiftah Elazar

This is the first edited volume to provide a comprehensive introduction and a critical exploration of the constructivist turn in political representation. Divided into three thematic parts, the 13 newly commissioned essays presented here develop constructivist turn as a central concept advancing the insight that there can be no democratic politics...

On September 3, 2015, the Political Epistemology/Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics section of the American Political Science Association sponsored a roundtable on epistemic democracy as part of the APSA’s annual meetings. Chairing the roundtable was Daniel Viehoff, Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield. The other participants were Jack Kni...

This article addresses a question that sits at the heart of democracy studies today: What do we mean when we speak about a “crisis of democracy”? The article opens with introductory clarifications on the meanings of the concept of crisis—namely its root in medicine, and on three contemporary perspectives of democracy—trilateral, deliberative, and c...

This article explores arguments for inequality as they were developed in antiquity and modernity. In the former case, philosophers wanted to disclaim the value of democracy; in the latter they wanted to oppose arguments of social justice.

Response to Elizabeth Beaumont’s review of Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People - Volume 13 Issue 2 - Nadia Urbinati

The Civic Constitution: Civic Visions and Struggles in the Path toward Constitutional Democracy. By Beaumont Elizabeth. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. 386p. $49.95 - Volume 13 Issue 2 - Nadia Urbinati

This is the answer to the comments on my book by Jan Biba, Edward Jeffrey Green, and John P. McCormick

This chapter looks at the progress of the theory of individualism through history. It specifically explains where and when the term individualism was coined; why it was given a negative meaning, and by whom; and why a political, not a moral, nature was attributed to it. It also looks at an idea highlighted by Alexis de Tocqueville, who came up with...

This chapter argues that individualism does not disrupt social communication but facilitates it, precisely through its rootedness in equality and in the politics of rights, and that individualism, rather than obliterating politics, introduces a new form of political culture. It addresses the dissent and sovereignty of judgment. It shows that the fe...

This book explores a profound shift in the ideology of individualism, from the ethical nineteenth-century standard, in which each person cooperates with others as equals for the betterment of their lives and the community, to the contemporary “I don't give a damn” maxim. Identifying this “tyranny of the moderns” as the most radical risk that modern...

Albert O. Hirschman (1915–2012) is recognized as one of the most well-rounded and interdisciplinary social scientists of the postwar era. After fleeing Germany as a young opponent of the Nazi regime, he moved across countries, languages, and disciplinary boundaries. He was a pioneer of development economics and other social sciences, to which he co...

This is a response to the critical comments to my book (Democrazia sfigurata, UBE, 2014), which pivot essentially on the first and second chapters, namely the procedural definition of democratic diarchy and the ensuing criticism of the epistemic turn in recent literature on democratic deliberation.

In Debate with Kari Palonen is a collection of 48 essays written by scholars from a great variety of research fields. All essays discuss the scientific contributions of the Finnish political scientist Kari Palonen, from his views on political thought to the understanding of conceptual change and the study of politics as an activity. The essays crit...

The main traits of Albert O. Hirschman's intellectual style, in particular the creative function of "doubting" and "problematism", which inspired what he himself defined as a "propensity to selfsubversion". It traces these traits back to the cultural milieu of his family and in particular to his encounter with Eugenio Colorni, and shows how they we...

Hongrie, Islande, Italie : dans chacun de ces trois pays, la democratie a subi de profondes transformations ces derniers temps, dans des sens differents (vers l’autoritarisme ou la participation). Ces experimentations democratiques, souvent associees a l’utilisation des nouvelles technologies, font emerger une forme de « democratie representative e...

This essay reclaims a political proceduralist vision of democracy as the best normative defense of democracy in contemporary politics. We distinguish this vision from three main approaches that are representative in the current academic debate: the epistemic conception of democracy as a process of truth seeking; the populist defense of democracy as...

I will propose a synthesis of my book manuscript in which I explore some metamorphoses of representative democracy as they develop in the domain of opinion. Representative democracy is a diarchic system composed of two pillars, the "will" and "opinion"; in today's constitutional democracies the challenges come not so much from the former pillar (th...

This article shows through Sismonde de Sismondi’s work how peculiarly modern issues like the revolution, equal political rights (universal suffrage) and an industrial and commercial society contributed to renewing the identity of republicanism. That renewal took place in Europe, after the French Revolution, and in a direct confrontation with democr...

O presente artigo visa analisar as principais transformações e tendências das democracias contemporâneas. As mudanças realizadas assumiram formas semelhantes na maioria das democracias existentes. Os fenômenos mais recorrentes advindos delas foram o declínio dos partidos organizacionais e programáticos, especialmente no caso europeu e, como consequ...

The paper advances an analytical rendering of populism and argues that the components that make itarecognizable phenomenon are simplification and polarization of political divisions in the view of achievingadeeper unification of the masses against the existing elites and under an organic narrative that most of the timealeader embodies. Populism is...

This article aims to analyze the main transformations and trends of contemporary democracies. The accomplished changes have taken similar forms in the majority of existing democracies. The most recurrent phenomena arising from them were the decline of organizational and programmatic parties, especially in thecase of Europe, and as a consequence, th...

John Stuart Mill developed his theory of individuality and the public role of critical knowledge from his lifelong study of the Platonic dialogues and in particular the figure of Socrates, which he elected as both a model for moral life and a precursor of modern moral philosophy. It is no exaggeration to say that Mill contributed to the renaissance...

Freedom as non-domination has acquired a leading status in political science. As a consequence of its success, neo-roman republicanism also has achieved great prominence as the political tradition that delivered it. Yet despite the fact that liberty in the Roman mode was forged not only in direct confrontation with monarchy but against democracy as...

Quotas, parité, and proportional representation have been the main strategies for redressing injustice in political representation, as well as for amending women’s under-representation. These strategies are an explicit recognition that representation is both a democratic value and a form of participation. The search for strategies of redress is und...

The ancient Greek historian Thucydides has had an enormous impact on modern historiography, political theory, international relations and strategic studies, but this influence has never been properly studied. This book brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the different facets of Thucydides' modern reception and in...

Nicolas de Condorcet (1743–1794), the innovating founder of mathematical thinking in politics, was the last great philosophe of the French Enlightenment and a central figure in the early years of the French Revolution. His political writings give a compelling vision of human progress across world history and express the hopes of that time in the fu...

This article examines Giuseppe Mazzini's contribution to republicanism envisaged as an ideology and a political program whose aim was the formation of a political party capable of competing in the electoral process of a representative and constitutional government. The central theme is the role of republican ideology before and after Unification. T...

Sismonde de Sismondi was perhaps the most prominent promoter of a republican theory of liberty and the government after the collapse of eighteenth-century republicanism with the Terror. In revisiting Sismondi's ideas this article shows how the French Revolution and the advent of capitalism changed the nature of republicanism without obliterating it...

In this paper I propose a critical reading of Rousseau's critique of representative politics on new grounds; that is to say, not in the name of more participatory democracy versus representative democracy, but in the name of representation as part of democratic politics rather than an expedient. Rousseau's political view suggests us a healthy mistr...

The theoretical interpretations of liberalism in its relations to multiculturalism occupy a central role in contemporary political theory. Yet, although arguments of rights and equal respect have provided for reasonable justifications of cultural diversity, daily papers and political columns give us an image of democratic societies that is often in...

The democracy of the moderns The term ‘representative democracy’ conveys the complexity, richness and uniqueness of the political order of the moderns, an original synthesis of two distinct and in certain respects alternative political traditions. ‘Democracy’, a Greek word with no Latin equivalent, stands for direct rule (‘getting things done’) by...

What can contemporary representative democracies learn from Roman and Florentine models of popular government? Is a representative and constitutional democracy able to amend its chronic elitism by devising institutions that give ordinary citizens as "groups" the power to judge and punish "suspect elites" by taking away from them the privilege of be...

The chapter shows how the dialogue with ancient moral philosophy prompted John Stuart Mill's reflection on modernity. To cultivate the "quality of life"-a Millian expression that echoes Aristotle's care for the good life-the moderns ought to be equally attentive to virtues as they are to norms. Ancient moral philosophy, he thought, embodied an idea...

The idea that the values and norms of democracy can also be applied to global politics is increasingly debated in academe. The six authors participating in this symposium are all advocates of global democracy, but there are significant differences in the way they envision its implementation. Some of the contributors discuss if and how substantial c...

This paper analyzes critically the appeal the unpolitical is enjoying among contemporary political philosophers who are democracy's friends. Unlike a radical critique of democracy, what I propose to call “criticism from within,” takes the form of dissatisfaction with the erosion of an independent mind and impartial judgment per effect of the partis...

ASecularAge - TaylorCharles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2007). - Volume 49 Issue 3 - Nadia Urbinati

"This anthology gathers Giuseppe Mazzini's most important essays on democracy, nation building, and international relations, including some that have never before been translated into English. These neglected writings remind us why Mazzini was one of the most influential political thinkers of the nineteenth century--and why there is still great ben...

The trustee/delegate problem purportedly expresses how closely a representative's votes in the legislature should correspond to their constituents' preferences. In this article, I argue that the usual formulation of this debate collapses three distinctions— aims, source of judgment , and responsiveness —and thus obscures the underlying complexity o...

Democratic theorists have paid increasing attention to problems of political representation over the past two decades. Interest is driven by (a) a political landscape within which electoral representation now competes with new and informal kinds of representation; (b) interest in the fairness of electoral representation, particularly for minorities...

This chapter argues that Giuseppe Mazzini's thought belongs to the tradition of cosmopolitanism insofar as he deems the self-determination of autonomous and democratic nations the precondition for a peaceful international order. Countering the nationalistic interpretation of his thought, and Giovanni Gentile's reading in particular, it maintains th...

It is usually held that representative government is not strictly democratic, since it does not allow the people themselves to directly make decisions. But here, taking as her guide Thomas Paine’s subversive view that “Athens, by representation, would have surpassed her own democracy,” Nadia Urbinati challenges this accepted wisdom, arguing t...

“But (however it be with pain in general) the abolition of the infliction of pain by the mere will of a human being, the abolition, in short, of despotism, seems to be, in a peculiar degree, the occupation of this age; and it would be difficult to show that any age had undertaken a worthier. Though we cannot extirpate all pain, we can, if we are su...

While John Stuart Mill's writing remains a touchstone for debates over liberty and liberalism, many other dimensions of his political philosophy are often ignored. Yet Mill's relevance has only grown since the end of the Cold War, with the resurgence of nationalism, the emergence of new forms of imperial power, and a renewed interest in state-build...

While John Stuart Mill's writing remains a touchstone for debates over liberty and liberalism, many other dimensions of his political philosophy are often ignored. Yet Mill's relevance has only grown since the end of the Cold War, with the resurgence of nationalism, the emergence of new forms of imperial power, and a renewed interest in state-build...

A autora, seguindo passos já dados por Bernard Manin e outros, mas introduzindo suas próprias inquietações, faz uma reflexão sobre a natureza da representação democrática, mostrando sua originalidade como forma de governo representativo. Seu esforço teórico, nesse sentido, é apontar as diferenças desse modelo em relação à "democracia eleitoral", po...

The author, following the steps of Bernard Manin and others, but presenting her own insights, discusses the nature of democratic representation, standing for its originality as a type of representative government. Her main theoretical point is to single out the distinctive features of that type from both the "electoral democracy" as well as the "di...

"We are like travelers navigating an unknown terrain with the help of old maps, drawn at a different time and in response to different needs," Seyla Benhabib writes in her new book, The Rights of Others. Transnational migrations and global interdependence are the unknown terrain, state sovereignty and patrolled frontiers the old maps. Contemporary...

Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism. By Anthony W. Marx. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 288p. $26.00. This is a bold and challenging study of European nationalism based on the following thesis: Nationalism was a phenomenon of state building that predated the eighteenth-century starting point favored by most scholars and who...

The basic theoretical premise of this article is that representation does not necessarily imply a break with democratic principles. Its goal is to challenge the traditional liberal-elitist approach to representative government according to which this system is a mixed regime that is not identifiable with democracy since its main institution, electi...

In this article I study the theoretical impact of Cold War ideology on Italian democracy through the dialogue between Norberto Bobbio and the leaders of the Italian Communist Party in the mid-1950s, in particular the philosopher Galvano della Volpe and the General Secretary Palmiro Togliatti. I claim that Bobbio's choice of dialogue with the 'enemi...

If I had to talk about this book to my students, I would begin by describing its cover. The image of the upside down Capitol with the cupola hanging over the key word of the title ( Cunning ) invites the reader to peruse this fascinating and melancholic book as a species of inverted Hegelianism. This is a book about regret. It regrets what seems ou...

Sans remettre en question la valeur normative de la participation directe, l'A. defend la pertinence de la representation au regard de la dimension deliberative de la politique democratique. En reference au projet de J. S. Mill qui consiste a concilier gouvernement, representation proportionnelle et debat d'assemblee, l'A. developpe l'idee de delib...

Rejetant l'interpretation de la theorie de l'hegemonie d'A. Gramsci dans le sens d'une strategie leniniste d'homogeneite culturelle et d'harmonie communautaire, l'A. montre que l'enjeu de la position de Gramsci reside dans une inflexion de la politique d'emancipation de l'Italie du XIX e siecle, d'une part, et dans la visee de la modernite par-dela...