Description: Although the modern age is often described as the age of democratic revolutions, the subject of popular foundings has not captured the imagination of contemporary political thought. Most of the time, democratic theory and political science treat as the object of their inquiry normal politics, institutionalized power, and consolidated democracies. The aim of Andreas Kalyvas' study is to show why it is important for democratic theory to rethink the question of its beginnings. Is there a founding unique to democracies? Can a democracy be democratically established? What are the implications of expanding democratic politics in light of the question of whether and how to address democracy's beginnings? Kalyvas addresses these questions and scrutinizes the possibility of democratic beginnings in terms of the category of the extraordinary, as he reconstructs it from the writings of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt and their views on the creation of new political, symbolic, and constitutional orders.
Review Quotes: "Weaving together strands from the writings of Weber, Schmitt, and Arendt in a novel and sophisticated manner, Kalyvas shows how these thinkers can help to illuminate the founding of democracies. Despite their own skepticism about mass democracies, Kalyvas creatively uses their insights about the category of the extraordinary and the politics of founding to develop a highly original theory of democracy with radical intent. His interpretations are fresh and thought provoking. This is an exciting and major theoretical contribution to rethinking of radical democratic politics."
-Richard J. Bernstein, New School for Social Research