El futuro de la democracia

Democracy--so challenged in our current times--is one of those things whose consolidation and improvement leave us unsure exactly what is required of us: indignation in the face of its enemies, or a serene confidence in its resilience? Are its ills attributable to the incompetence of its leaders or to the stupidity of the masses? To what extent can we place our trust in those who claim to defend it? The history of democracy has always been accompanied by such dilemmas--a fact that seems to reveal much about its very nature: that unstable equilibrium in which the principles defining it are articulated and renegotiated. In this book, I do not discuss its turbulent past, but rather its uncertain future. If democracy is a form of government open to the questioning and renegotiation of what was previously taken for granted, then reflection upon it is no less bound to re-examine its own concepts, practices, and predictions.