From the Publisher
"A historian and foremost theorist of democracy, Pierre Rosanvallon has produced another very insightful book, this time on the great variety of sources of democratic legitimation, and their evolving importance in contemporary society. This work casts fresh light on today's liberal democracies, and opens new potential avenues for their renewal. For those concerned about where our politics are heading, this book provides a penetrating historical analysis to make sense of it all, and perhaps also some new reasons to hope."—Charles Taylor, author of Multiculturalism and A Secular Age"It is a cause for celebration when one of our most eminent theorists of democracy chooses to illuminate deep and stressful issues with rigor and originality. Probing tensions inherent in the distinction between majorities who decide and a more abstract people said to be sovereign, Pierre Rosanvallon identifies the inescapable contradictions inherent in different bases and forms of legitimacy, brilliantly showing why and how modern democracy is charged, fluid, and unsettled."—Ira Katznelson, coauthor of Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns"This is a major work that deserves to have a large impact on current political theory, and its investigation of historical episodes of democratic legitimation make it of obvious interest to U.S. and European historians as well."—Samuel Moyn, Columbia University"This is an important and unique work in the theory and history of democratic legitimacy. It is contextually situated but offers general propositions about the conditions, meaning, and institutional forms for democratic legitimacy in the twenty-first century."—Jean L. Cohen, Columbia University
