Abstract

In this interview, Nadia Urbinati elaborates on her lecture at the conference ”Power and Representation’, and on her recently published book Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People. More specifically, she discusses the challenges of contemporary democracy in relation to her previous work on democratic representation and on a variety of authors, such as Joseph Schumpeter, Max Weber, Albert Hirschmann, and Bernard Manin. Drawing on her previous research on the importance of will and opinion, in her new book, Urbinati develops an account of three different ”disfigurements’ technocracy, populism, and plebiscitarianism - that can distort a well-functioning democracy. She traces each of these disfigurements back to ideas and practices that already existed in ancient Athens and Rome, but she claims that they have become even more urgent in the recent decades, forming the main challenges to democracy today. Against this background, she argues in favour of a normative endorsement of democratic proceduralism.