Democracy disfigured: opinion, truth, and the people

TLDR

Urbinati argues that hyper‑partisanship and media monopolies distort democracy, identifying unpolitical, populist, and plebiscitarian forms that erode the essential boundary between public opinion and governmental action. She concludes that unpolitical, populist, and plebiscitarian trends delegitimize, polarize, and aestheticize public opinion, turning it into a competing form of action, and that technocrats, demagogues, and media actors pose the greatest threats by masquerading as allies.

Abstract

In Democracy Disfigured, Nadia Urbinati diagnoses ills that beset body politic in an age of hyper-partisanship and media monopolies and offers a spirited defense of messy compromises and contentious outcomes that define democracy.Urbinati identifies three types of democratic disfiguration: unpolitical, populist, and plebiscitarian. Each undermines a crucial division that a well-functioning democracy must preserve: wall separating free forum of public opinion from governmental institutions that enact will of people. Unpolitical democracy delegitimizes political opinion in favor of expertise. Populist democracy radically polarizes public forum in which opinion is debated. And plebiscitary democracy overvalues aesthetic and nonrational aspects of opinion. For Urbinati, democracy entails a permanent struggle to make visible issues that citizens deem central to their lives. Opinion is thus a form of action as important as mechanisms that organize votes and mobilize decisions.Urbinati focuses less on overt enemies of democracy than on those who pose as its friends: technocrats wedded to procedure, demagogues who make glib appeals to the people, and media operatives who, given their preference, would turn governance into a spectator sport and citizens into fans of opposing teams.