Description
Book SynopsisFaced with government’s ineptitude, people are attracted to strong leaders and bold action. As Pierre Rosanvallon demonstrates, “presidentialism” may reflect the particular concerns of today, but its many precursors show that democracy has always struggled with tension between popular government and concentrated authority.
Trade ReviewFor Americans, Pierre Rosanvallon’s masterful study relating the history of executive empowerment to crises of democratic representation is unexpectedly timely. A major intervention by a leading French political thinker. -- Samuel Moyn, Yale University
[A] brief, brilliant intellectual history…Macron’s scrambling of the French party system confirms Rosanvallon’s diagnosis that the contemporary era is one of ‘malrepresentation’…He demands nothing less than a ‘second democratic revolution.’ The first revolution was driven by the demand for universal suffrage; the second will concern the optimization of governance. -- Jan-Werner Müller * London Review of Books *
Pierre Rosanvallon gives us precise words and a historical context for understanding [democratic] disenchantment… No one can explain better than he does how executive power…finally emerged as the only effective instrument for the transformation of societies. -- Bruno Le Maire * Philosophie Magazine *
