Counter-Democracy

Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
The society of distrust
The three dimensions of counter-democracy
The myth of the passive citizen
Depoliticization or the unpolitical?
Reinterpreting the history of democracy
Part 1 Overseeing democracy
1 Vigilance, denunciation, evaluation
Vigilance
Denunciation
Evaluation
2 The overseers
The vigilant citizen
The new activism
The Internet as a political form
Functional surveillance by authorities
Internal audit and evaluation bureaus
3 The thread of history
Three stages
Democratic dualism: a long history
The impossibility of institutionalization
4 Legitimacy conflicts
The pen and the podium
Three types of legitimacy
New routes to legitimacy
Part 2 The sovereignty of prevention
5 From the right of resistance to complex sovereignty
Medieval theories of resistance and consent
The Reformation
The Enlightenment, the negative power, and the tribunes of the people
The French revolutionary experience
Fichte and the idea of a modern ephorate
A significant oversight
6 Self-critical democracies
The class struggle as negative politics
The metamorphoses of the opposition
The rebel, the resister, and the dissident
The decline of the critical dimension in democracies
7 Negative politics
The age of “deselection”
Prevention and veto
Weak democracy
Part 3 The people as judge
8 Historical references
The Greek example
English impeachment
The recall procedure in the United States
9 Almost legislators
The democratic jury
The production of competing norms
Shadow legislators
10 The preference for judgment
The judicialization of politics
The imperative of justification
An obligatory decision
The active spectator
Theatricality
Space for the exemplary
Voting and judging
Part 4 Unpolitical democracy
11 The sense of powerlessness and symbols of depoliticization
The age of the unpolitical
The horizon of transparency
Two forms of depoliticization
12 The populist temptation
A pathology of electoral-representative democracy
Populism and counter-democracy
13 Lessons of unpolitical economy
A word returns
The economic function of surveillance
The market, or the triumph of the veto
“Unpolitical” economy
14 Conclusion: the modern mixed regime
New paths of electoral-representative democracy
Consolidating counter-democracy
Repoliticizing democracy
The mixed modern regime
The scholar and the citizen
Index