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Representative Democracy

Principles and Genealogy

By: Nadia Urbinati

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Paperback | 1 October 2008 | Edition Number 1

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344 Pages

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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 that political representation deserves to be regarded as a fully legitimate mode of democratic decision making—and not just a pragmatic second choice when direct democracy is not possible.
As Urbinati shows, the idea that representation is incompatible with democracy stems from our modern concept of sovereignty, which identifies politics with a decision maker’s direct physical presence and the immediate act of the will. She goes on to contend that a democratic theory of representation can and should go beyond these identifications. Political representation, she demonstrates, is ultimately grounded in a continuum of influence and power created by political judgment, as well as the way presence through ideas and speech links society with representative institutions. Deftly integrating the ideas of such thinkers as Rousseau, Kant, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Paine, and the Marquis de Condorcet with her own, Urbinati constructs a thought-provoking alternative vision of democracy.

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Non-Fiction Politics & Government Political Structure & Processes Political Structures & Democracy Political Science & Theory Philosophy Social & Political Philosophy Miscellaneous Items

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Representation and Democracy	p. 17
Representation in Democratic Theory and History	p. 18
Three Theories of Representation	p. 20
Continuity, Rupture, and People's Negative Power	p. 25
Discord and the Ballot, or Presence through Speech and Ideas	p. 30
Partisanship as an Active Manifestation of the General	p. 35
Proportional Fairness and the Dual Nature of Equality	p. 40
Advocacy	p. 44
Representativity	p. 49
Rethinking Popular Sovereignty	p. 52
Rousseau's Unrepresentable Sovereign	p. 60
Either Delegates or Representatives	p. 62
Sovereign Unity: Symbiotic or Symbolic?	p. 66
Two Models of Unification	p. 69
The Sovereignty of the Will	p. 72
A Privatistic Model of Delegation	p. 75
The Travel Agent and a Minimalist Participation	p. 76
Imagination, Speech, and Deception	p. 79
The Deliberative Judgment of the Few	p. 83
Asking the Right Question	p. 85
Paradoxes of Minimalism	p. 88
Reflection and the Rule of Immediacy	p. 90
The Time and Space of Politics and the Paradox of a Punctuated Freedom	p. 94
Will and Judgment: The Kantian Revision	p. 101
Freedom from the Externality of the Presence	p. 102
The Subterranean Work of Informal Sovereignty	p. 106
Individual Atoms in a Participatory Void	p. 111
The Soft Power of Judgment	p. 115
Ideology and the Representing Faculty of Imagination	p. 119
The Fiction of As If	p. 124
Genera of Judgment	p. 126
Political Dependence	p. 130
Common Opinion and the Revolution	p. 135
A Nation of Electors: Sieye's Model of Representative Government	p. 138
All Human Relations Are Representative	p. 140
Interest and Competence as Unifying Factors	p. 141
Exchange versus Barter: Democracy Is Primitivism	p. 144
The Currency of Electoral Consent	p. 146
The Metamorphosis of the Citizen into the Elector	p. 147
Passive and Active Freedom	p. 149
The Symbolic Sovereignty of the Nation	p. 152
The Impolitical Category of Competence	p. 155
Thomas Paine and the Perfecting of Simple Democracy	p. 162
The Sovereign Nation and Federalism's Threat	p. 162
Democratic Republicanism	p. 167
Democracy Surpassing Itself	p. 172
A Republic of Citizens: Condorcet's Indirect Democracy	p. 176
The Longue Dure of the Democratic Project in the Age of Representation	p. 177
Perpetual Innovation versus Immediate Politics	p. 181
The Secularization of Origins: Democracy as a Time-Regime	p. 184
Indirect Despotism	p. 187
The Syllogism of Democratic Constitutionalism	p. 190
Democratic Moderation and the Principle of Collegiality	p. 194
Democratizing Deliberation	p. 197
Multiplying the Times and Places of Deliberation	p. 201
A Cooperative Enterprise	p. 205
Primary Assemblies and the Special Terrain of Politics	p. 207
Sovereignty of Surveillance	p. 213
Breaking and Restoring Trust	p. 216
Conclusion: A Surplus of Politics	p. 223
Notes	p. 229
Bibliography	p. 293
Index	p. 317
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Representative Democracy

Principles and Genealogy

At a Glance

Paperback

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