Theorizing the Democratic Crowd: From the Who to the How of Popular AssemblyFrom the Boundaries of the People to their Enactment: A New Terrain for Democratic TheoryPopular Sovereignty, Aesthetics, and EmancipationBeyond the Age of Democratic Revolution

It is difficult to imagine a more topical issue than the one addressed in this book. After the election of Trump in 2016, and the turbulent years leading up to his refusal to admit defeat in the presidential election in 2020, public debates in many democratic countries have come to center on a distinction between “fact” and “faith.” The fact that Trump lost the election stands against faith in his assertion that the election was stolen. How do you reason with faith? Numerous scholars, politicians and public intellectuals have called for fact-checks to protect democracy against the spread of populist delusions and conspiracies. Reading Miguel Vatter’s impressive book Divine Democracy: Political Theology after Schmitt, however, it is clear that pitting fact against faith is to be tone-deaf to the historically fraught relationship between religion and politics. Indeed, the widespread surprise at the revival of faith-based claims in contemporary democracies is but a symptom of our loss. In the words of Claude Lefort, it testifies to “the difficulty democracy has of reading its story.” (Vatter 2020, 1). Divine Democracy sets out to read the story of democracy through the lens of political theology. It is an immensely learned book, filled with nuanced arguments and conversations on the relationship between politics and religion. Together they seek to answer one major question: “can political theology be democratic?” (p.5) The question is warranted. Political theology centers on an analogy between the will of God and the sovereign decision-maker. Ever since Schmitt made that analogy, and asserted that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts,” two suspicions hover over democratic theory: that modern democracy cannot do without theological backup, and that the theological backup in question is non-democratic. The worry is that by uncovering the theological undercurrents of democracy, one buttresses the decisionist power of the sovereign, and/or one gives credence to the violent resurgence of faith in politics. The central message of Divine Democracy is that this worry is exaggerated. Political theology can be democratic. The substitute for God in democracy is not the sovereign decision-maker deciding upon the state of exception. The theological element in democracy “resides in a series of political institutions, practices and conceptions of modern democracy that call into question the primacy of sovereignty”; including conceptions like government, representation, universal human rights and public reason (5). This call for “a political theology without sovereignty” (3) is attractive, not only for its

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The chapter examines the corruption, disintegration, and renewal of democracy in relation to social rights, with particular attention given to the neoliberal choice revolution in social and public services. It shows that reforms undertaken to empower citizens by making them personally responsible for private and public life pave the way for a corruption of democracy that risks ending in democratic disintegration; in a so called “market for monarchy” where individuals are encouraged to compete for status and titles. In order to turn the corruption of democracy into a call for democratic renewal, it is not more “responsibility talk” that is called for, a common response in liberal and republican thought. On the contrary, the task is to release citizens from the burdens engendered by the choice revolution, and render them free to begin anew.

How does one revitalize democracy in times of crisis? Democracy is today challenged by populism and elitism, as well as by the resurgence of new forms of authoritarianism. The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal shows that while we have good reasons to worry about the corruption of democratic practices and ideals, these worries are often attributable to questionable assumptions about what democracy is. Drawing on Montesquieu’s classical work on the spirit of laws, the book sets out to reconceive the ways in which we understand and conceptualize modern democracy: from sovereignty to spirit. According to Montesquieu, different political forms are animated and sustained by different spirits: a republic by virtue, a monarchy by honor, and a despotic form by fear. This book argues that modern democracy is a sui generis political form animated and sustained by a spirit of emancipation. The removal of divine, natural, and historical authorities in political affairs unleashes a fundamental uncertainty about the purpose and direction of society. In a democracy, we respond to that uncertainty by sharing and dividing it equally. It emancipates us from a state of self-incurred tutelage. Based on this argument, the book develops a new theoretical framework for studying the corruption, disintegration, and renewal of democracy: what it is, how it begins, and where in society it plays out.

The rise of authoritarian populism has forced many democracies to consider how best to defend democracy against its inner enemies. In the literature on democratic self-defense, one often distinguishes between three models: a legal (militant), political (procedural) and social (integrational). If much scholarly attention is on the merits and limits of the first two models, the social model has fallen behind. This is surprising given its success in the interwar years in many Scandinavian countries, and the empirical correlation between high levels of social equality and high levels of political tolerance. This article examines the merits and limits of the social model. More specifically, it makes two contributions. First, it introduces 'the social security' approach proposed by early Swedish social democratic thinkers as an alternative to 'the social homogeneity' approach proposed by Hermann Heller. The aim is to show that they provide different solutions to the loser's dilemma: the fact that losers in a democratic election must be ready to support the winners, whose decisions are at odds with their own convictions. Second, the article examines a common objection against the social security approach, namely, that it politicizes democracy, and thereby undermines the distinction between procedure and substance in the defense of democracy.

The chapter explores the meaning of democratic freedom. Building on the work of Hannah Arendt, it demonstrates that the long-standing debate between liberalism and republicanism does not exhaust the meaning of freedom. There is a unique conception of democratic freedom built into the democratic revolution, defined as the capacity to begin anew. The chapter clarifies what is democratic about this conception, and how it differs from positive freedom, conventionally understood. It shows that democratic freedom, defined as the capacity to begin anew offers a much-needed alternative to the many liberal and republican conceptions of freedom that dominate contemporary political theory, including freedom as non-interference, non-domination and self-determination.

What binds a democratic society together?This would seem a well-rehearsed topic in modern political theory, but on closer scrutiny, it may appear less so.If we reformulate the question, it may become clearer why: What binds democratic society together?The emphasis on 'democratic' is the clue here.Much recent discussion on the cohesive force in democracies has been parasitic on other debates, such as that between cosmopolitans and communitarians on justice as the first virtue of society; that between nation state-based and post-national views of contemporary politics; or that about the cultural aspects of democratic citizenship as the glue that makes democracy work.All such views and debates tend to assume a somewhat 'externalist' perspective, so to speak, of the problem of cohesion in democracies.Cosmopolitans and liberal communitarians have argued over the relative importance of values and identity as the basis for the stability of a just society, whose legitimate political arrangements they generally agree must be democratic, so as to reflect the demands of equality and self-government.Disputes over whether the institutions of democracy still require the background conditions provided by the nation-state, with its consolidated networks of party system, solidarity, civil society organizations, and public opinion formation, or whether similar conditions can be reproduced at a more trans-and post-national level, are very similar in scope to those between cosmopolitans and liberal communitarians.Both these disputes concern the social, institutional, ideal or identitarian pre-conditions of democracy, which help it to work with a modicum of stability, in so far as they guarantee the political cohesion of either the demos or the regime itself.Discussions over the quality and competence of citizenship look at democratic culture as an important condition for democratic institutions and procedures to function smoothly and effectively.Debates over the 'civic culture' in the 1960s and more recently on 'social capital' lay emphasis on a mixture of attitudes, practices, participation in associational networks, and consolidated norms of sociability as formative components of democratic citizenship, on which the working of democratic institutions and rules depend.This suggests something more internal, or at least a virtuous circle between the culture and the institutions of democracy.But is democracy itself capable of producing political cohesion, and on what basis?In addressing this more 'internalist' question, this Critical Exchange explores three different perspectives, which follow from the work of three of the participants, who have recently contributed to new developments in the democratic literature.Matteo Bonotti (2017)