It's a commonplace that citizens in Western democracies are disaffected with their political leaders and traditional democratic institutions. But in Democratic Legitimacy, Pierre Rosanvallon, one of ...today's leading political thinkers, argues that this crisis of confidence is partly a crisis of understanding. He makes the case that the sources of democratic legitimacy have shifted and multiplied over the past thirty years and that we need to comprehend and make better use of these new sources of legitimacy in order to strengthen our political self-belief and commitment to democracy.
Society's wealthiest members claim an ever-expanding share of income and property--a true counterrevolution, says Pierre Rosanvallon, the end of the age of growing equality launched by the American ...and French revolutions. Just as significant, driving this contemporary inequality has been a loss of faith in the ideal of equality itself.
Democracy past and future Rosanvallon, Pierre; Moyn, Samuel
2006, 2006., 20070817, 2007, 2007-09-18, 20060101
eBook
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.
Since the 1980s, society's wealthiest members have claimed an ever-expanding share of income and property. It has been a true counterrevolution, says Pierre Rosanvallon--the end of the age of growing ...equality launched by the American and French revolutions. And just as significant as the social and economic factors driving this contemporary inequality has been a loss of faith in the ideal of equality itself. An ambitious transatlantic history of the struggles that, for two centuries, put political and economic equality at their heart, The Society of Equals calls for a new philosophy of social relations to reenergize egalitarian politics.For eighteenth-century revolutionaries, equality meant understanding human beings as fundamentally alike and then creating universal political and economic rights. Rosanvallon sees the roots of today's crisis in the period 1830-1900, when industrialized capitalism threatened to quash these aspirations. By the early twentieth century, progressive forces had begun to rectify some imbalances of the Gilded Age, and the modern welfare state gradually emerged from Depression-era reforms. But new economic shocks in the 1970s began a slide toward inequality that has only gained momentum in the decades since.There is no returning to the days of the redistributive welfare state, Rosanvallon says. Rather than resort to outdated notions of social solidarity, we must instead revitalize the idea of equality according to principles of singularity, reciprocity, and communality that more accurately reflect today's realities.
Enseignement Cours – Les années 1968-2018 : une histoire intellectuelle et politique (II) Le cours 2017-2018 a été donné sous la forme de dix conférences ayant pour titre « 1968-2018, une histoire ...intellectuelle et politique ». Il a été reproduit dans les troisième et quatrième parties de l’ouvrage Notre histoire intellectuelle et politique (1968-2018) publié en août 2018 aux éditions du Seuil. Quatre autres cours ont été donnés dans les universités de Nantes, Grenoble, Duke University (États...
Rosanvallon blends history and theory to recount shifts and transformations in standards of democratic legitimacy from the 19th century until today. He identifies a move away from majoritarianism, ...whereby elections grant a democratic system legitimacy, to a more decentered democratic order where legitimacy is a product of social recognition and the people's identification with social norms. By demystifying the underlying fictions and paradoxes that have informed and shaped the majoritarian paradigm of democratic legitimacy, Rosanvallon traces the emergence of a new model that integrates the role of elections within a broader and more complex dualist understanding of democratic legitimacy and explores its far-reaching implications for contemporary democratic theory. Adapted from the source document.
Élève à l’École normale de la rue d’Ulm, François Héran a été reçu en 1975 à l’agrégation de philosophie, mais comme d’autres de sa génération, dont certains sont maintenant ici ses collègues, il a ...fait le choix d’orienter sa vie de chercheur dans la direction des sciences sociales. Ce sera d’abord, pour lui, l’anthropologie. Sa thèse de troisième cycle a ainsi été consacrée à la terre et à la parenté en Andalousie. Après ce travail sur la bourgeoisie agraire de la région de Séville, il se re...
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