It is commonly assumed that the rise of modern democracies put an
end to the spectacular and ceremonial aspects of political rule
that were so characteristic of monarchies and other earlier
regimes. The medieval idea that the king had two bodies - a mortal
physical body and an eternal political body - strikes us today as
alien and remote from our understanding of politics: with the
transition from monarchy to modern representative democracy, the
idea of the body politic was abandoned. Or was it?
In this remarkable and highly original book Philip Manow shows
that the body politic, though so often pronounced dead, remains
alive in modern democracies. It is just one of the many ideas that
we have inherited from our predecessors and that continue to shape
our modern forms of political life. Why did the semi-circle become
the main seating plan for modern parliaments? Why do we think that
parliament should mirror the diversity of society? Why does the
president's motorcade always have more than one identical-looking
Cadillac? Why do we pay so much attention to the physical features
and appearance - the body - of our political leaders today? In
answering these and other questions Manow sheds fresh light on the
pre-modern origins of our modern political institutions and
practices and shows convincingly that all political power -
including democracy - requires and produces its own political
mythology.
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