Democratic Revolutions, Power and the City: Weber and Political Modernity

Thesis Eleven 97 (1):81-98 (2009)
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Abstract

This article develops three interconnected arguments concerning the image of modernity as a revolutionary epoch and the way in which this image has been understood and theorized. These three lines of conceptualization, which can only be sketched in less rather than greater detail here, concern the constellation or figuration of modernity, its democratic dimension, and in reference to each, the work of Max Weber, especially The City. More specifically, the article argues that modern democracy is revolutionary when viewed as an open and self-instituting articulation of political power. Its modern revolutionary impulse begins in the Italian Renaissance city-states, the German `free' cities, and the Swiss federation where urban autonomy was matched by the creation of elected forms of rulership and the development of federated circulations of power

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John Rundell
University of Melbourne

Citations of this work

City and Democracy in Max Weber.Diana Gianola - 2020 - Topoi 40 (2):435-449.
Big city blues.Trevor Hogan & Julian Potter - 2014 - Thesis Eleven 121 (1):3-8.

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References found in this work

The Communist Manifesto.Karl Marx - unknown - Yale University Press.
A contemporary critique of historical materialism.Anthony Giddens - 1981 - Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
A Theory of Modernity.Agnes Heller - 1999 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.

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