Nadia Urbinati

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, election, is a mechanism that is inherently aristocratic, although it can be implemented in a democratic way. I question this powerful argument by questioning its main assumption: the idea that representative government, since its 18th-century inception, has had a linear and univocal history which was essentially undemocratic.I go back to the age of the French Revolution and analyse Condorcet’s plan of constitution in order to prove my case. Condorcet devised institutional mechanisms and procedures that were able to make representative government democratic by overcoming the polarization between representation and participation and making them related forms of political action constituting the continuum of decision-making and opinion formation in modern democratic society

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.

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 partisan character of democratic politics. This paper proposes three main criticisms of the actual trend toward unpolitical views of democracy: the first points to the strategic use of deliberation as an antidote against democratic procedures themselves ; the second to the negative conception of democracy that the unpolitical aspiration makes visible; and the third to the dissolution of political judgment within a model of judgment that is tailored around justice.

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 democracy rather than liberalism. The problem in relation to which Sismondi reflected on the institutions of political liberty, the republican constitution and the role of individual liberty was the unstoppable growth of equality, political and social. In his work, republicanism was intended as an answer against the emergent democratic transformation of society, with a role of moderating equality, dividing and bridling popular sovereignty and containing the immoderate propensities of democracy. The modern threat to liberty did not originate from the power of the few or of the one, but from that of the many. It originated in the majoritarian principle on which democracy relies necessarily. This principle, the republican Sismondi argued, contains the seed of the suppression of minorities, that is to say of individual liberty

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