Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy.
By Nadia Urbinati. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 326p.
$45.00.
Nadia Urbinati begins her new book, Representative Democracy:
Principles and Genealogy, with the observation that
while we call certain contemporary western governments “democratic,”
any historical glance at their political institutions will as
readily show that they were “designed to contain rather than
encourage democracy” (p. 1). She takes as one “main point of
reference” (p. 9) for her argument, Bernard Manin's claim in
The Principles of Representative Government
(1997) that the practice of contemporary democracy is still
constrained by the fact that “there has been no significant change
in the institutions regulating the selection of representatives and
the influence of the popular will on their decisions in office” (p.
229, n. 2). For many, this view of unchanged institutions simply
reflects either the more defensive observation that modern
governments continue to need Schumpeterian neutralizing restrictions
on participation or, conversely, the critical claim that modern
democracy continues to fall short of an ideal (or perhaps idealized)
Athenian standard of direct self-rule. On both of these views,
Urbinati notes, representative democracy is seen as an
oxymoron (p. 4). However, she quite forcefully
disagrees, and what is more, she believes both the times and
contemporary democratic theorizing are on her side.