Representative democracy : principles and genealogy /

Urbinati (Columbia) has made her mark in democratic and modern political theory over the last decade with such books as Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (2002), among others. Her latest monograph is a careful examination of what the author calls "the normative core" of representative democracy. Most studies of democracy and democratic theory have tended to uphold the Athenian model as the sine qua non of participatory democracy, dismissing the modern, representative variety as an instrumental, even aberrant, compromise. Urbinati confronts these approaches by claiming that representative democracy encourages political participation by encouraging political discussion and judgment. As such, this book is a welcome departure from the literature usually found on this subject. Less than welcome is her writing style, which is needlessly opaque and jargon laden. Moreover, considerable knowledge of political and democratic theory is assumed on the part of the reader. Nevertheless, this is an important piece of scholarship that will leave its mark in the literature. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and faculty. D. M. Judd William Paterson University