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.
Drawing on examples from France and the United States,
Rosanvallon notes that there has been a major expansion of
independent commissions, NGOs, regulatory authorities, and
watchdogs in recent decades. At the same time, constitutional
courts have become more willing and able to challenge legislatures.
These institutional developments, which serve the democratic values
of impartiality and reflexivity, have been accompanied by a new
attentiveness to what Rosanvallon calls the value of proximity, as
governing structures have sought to find new spaces for minorities,
the particular, and the local. To improve our democracies, we need
to use these new sources of legitimacy more effectively and we need
to incorporate them into our accounts of democratic government.
An original contribution to the vigorous international debate
about democratic authority and legitimacy, this promises to be one
of Rosanvallon's most important books.
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