Meet the authors: “The spirit of democracy” Event

On June 21st 2021, Sofia Näsström published a book called “The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal”. In this book, Sofia asks “how does on revitalise democracy in times of crisis?” This book shows that while we have good reasons to worry about the corruption of democratic practices and ideals, these worries are often attributable to questionable assumptions about what democracy is. The book develops a new theoretical framework for studying the corruption, disintegration, and renewal of democracy: what it is, how it begins, and where in society it plays out.

In this “Meet the authors” event, we will welcome the author Prof. Sofia Näsström, who is Professor at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, Sweden. She specialises in political theory and has written on topics related to "the people", legitimacy and representation. She is also the author of another popular science book (under translation) Demokrati. En liten bok om en stor sak (Historiska Media 2021). She is currently working on a new book project entitled Democracy and the Social Question.

As discussants, we welcome: 

 

Dr. Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Associate Professor of Global Politics in the Department of Government and the Department of International Relations of the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on global governance, global health policy, and democracy beyond the state.

 

Prof. Nadia Urbinati (Ph.D., European University Institute, Florence, 1989), Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University. Her more recent books are Me The People: How Populism Transforms Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2019); The Tyranny of the Moderns (Yale University Press 2015); Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People (Harvard University Press, 2014). 

 

Prof. Jason Frank, John L. Senior Professor of Government at Cornell University, where he teaches political theory. He has published widely on democratic theory, populism, and the history of popular sovereignty.  His books include Constituent Moments: Enacting the People in Postrevolutionary America (Duke, 2010), Publius and Political Imagination (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), and The Democratic Sublime: On Aesthetics and Popular Assembly (Oxford, 2021).

 

The event will be chaired and moderated by Prof. David Owen, Professor of Social and Political Philosophy within the School of Economic, Social and Political Sciences at the University of Southampton where he has worked since 1995. His recent books include What do we owe to refugees? (Polity, 2020), Prospects for Citizenship, co-authored with Gerry Stoker et al. (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality (Acumen, 2007) and two co-edited volumes Multiculturalism and Political Theory (Cambridge University Press 2007) and Recognition and Power (Cambridge University Press, 2007).