Thinking democracy now

Ten years after the publication of Feltrinelli “Annale” La democrazia di fronte allo stato, edited by Alessandro Pizzorno (2010), far-reaching events have led us to go back to the risks and challenges modern democracies are facing. This new volume of the “Annali”, Thinking Democracy Now: Between Innovation and Regression, studies the transformations affecting contemporary democracies from the perspective of their conflicting potentials. The chapters in the book develop around the following paradox: today democracy enjoys such an undisputed hegemony that even regimes threatening it do so in its very name and with the promise of expanding rather than demoting it. Reconstructed in the aftermath of the Second World War and mass dictatorships, constitutional democracy is a complex political system with no predetermined goal other than its own reproduction in social and national conditions that vary, rendering the political game permanently open to uneven and risky results. This volume explores several of these challenging conditions, both in the social and political spheres, through several countries and continents. With contributions from prominent scholars, it proposes a rich critical analysis of the most recent transformations of democratic processes, their regressive trends as well as opportunities for innovation, set against a global geopolitical landscape.