is Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies at Columbia University. She specializes in modern and contemporary political thought, with an emphasis on democratic and anti-democratic traditions. Urbinati is author of Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (University of Chicago Press, 2006), Democrazia in diretta: Le nuove sfide alla rappresentanza (Feltrinelli, 2013) and Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People (Harvard University Press, 2014).
A marginal presence through 70 years of post-war Italian democracy, anti-partyism is now part of the political mainstream. The dilemma now facing the Five Star Movement is how to realize its ambition of creating direct, digital democracy without a formal party organization.
If the patrolling of borders unites European peoples more solidly than European “universal values”, what hope for the European Union? Nadia Urbinati argues that issues raised by the coming European elections go to the very heart of the pact that defined the post-war democratic rebirth.
Iceland’s crowd-sourced constitution and the impact of Beppe Grillo’s blog on Italian politics reveal how “Internet democracy” has opened a new phase of democratic innovation. The relationship between citizens and politicians may never be the same again.
