Law, Democracy and the Crisis of Foundation: Deconstructive and Constructive Perspectives [Hardcover]

Introduction?Giuditta Bissiato, editor 1.?Democracy without Foundation?Antonino Scalone?2.?The People is Nowhere Here: Political Representation without Foundation?Giuditta Bissiato?3.?Ironic Law? A New Foundation from Schmittian Romanticism?Francesca Monateri?4.?Public Choice and Post-Foundationalism: Constitutions, Democracy and Economic Rationality?Giacomo Brioni?5.?A Behavioral Response to the Crisis of Foundation and Democratic Representation?Jacopo Marchetti?Afterword?Giacomo Brioni

This book addresses the crisis of the juridical-political foundation within contemporary democracies.

This book addresses the crisis of the juridical-political foundation within contemporary democracies.

Although modernity is the age of foundation, it is marked by what Carl Schmitt referred to as a peculiar dialectic of presence and absence  and this is true even for those theories that seem to be the greatest supporters of the necessity of some kind of foundation, such as the Hobbesian commonwealth. This instability of foundation is inherent in the concept of political representation, which brings into being an idea  such as that of nation, people or popular will  which cannot, however, actually correspond to any empirical reality. Is it possible, then, to identify an absolute, certain and stable foundation capable of generating and guaranteeing the persistence of a legal and political structure? Or does this very question bind us to the history of an impossibility: a foundational absence, or void, whose presence is only now being strongly felt? Engaging both historical and contemporary perspectives, this book addresses the problem of foundation through both deconstructive and constructive perspectives  which respectively aim to challenge the very idea of foundation, or to ovls