Democracy Past and Future is the first English-language collection of
Pierre Rosanvallon's most important essays on the historical origins,
contemporary difficulties, and future prospects of democratic life.
One of Europe's leading political thinkers, Rosanvallon proposes in
these essays new readings of the history, aims, and possibilities of
democratic theory and practice, and provides unique theoretical
understandings of key moments in democracy's trajectory, from the French
Revolution and the struggles for universal suffrage to European
unification and the crises of the present. In so doing, he lays out an
influential new theory of how to write the history of politics.
Rosanvallon's historical and philosophical approach examines the
"pathologies" that have curtailed democracy's potential and challenges
the antitotalitarian liberalism that has dominated recent political
thought. All in all, he adroitly combines historical and theoretical
analysis with an insistence on the need for a new form of democracy.
Above all, he asks what democracy means when the people rule but are
nowhere to be found.
Throughout his career, Rosanvallon has resisted simple categorization.
Rosanvallon was originally known as a primary theorist of the "second
left", which hoped to stake out a non-Marxist progressive alternative to
the irresistible appeal of revolutionary politics. In fact, Rosanvallon
revived the theory of "civil society" even before its usage by East
European dissidents made it globally popular as a non-statist politics
of freedom and pluralism. His ideas have been shaped by a variety of
influences, ranging from his work with an influential French union to
his teachers François Furet and Claude Lefort.
Well known throughout Europe as a historian, political theorist, social
critic, and public intellectual, Pierre Rosanvallon was recently elected
to a professorship at the Collège de France, Paris, a position held at
various times by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, and Pierre
Bourdieu. Democracy Past and Future begins with Rosanvallon's
groundbreaking and synthetic lecture that he delivered upon joining this
institution. Throughout the volume, Rosanvallon illuminates and
invigorates contemporary political and democratic thought.
