Democracy has become a magic word, a title of respectability that no state can now be without. This is because it defines the only political regime that can be presented as the organisation of a disinterested power, in which the governors can always claim that they are 'serving the people'. Despite this, even democracy cannot escape the 'iron law' of oligarchies of power forming despite the ideal of self-government by the people. This is where the complexity of democracy resides: in the inherent risk of being a regime of deceit and dissimulation. Hence, in more realistic terms, democracy is reduced to a continual labour of destruction of the oligarchies, in the precise awareness that every time an oligarchy is destroyed, another springs up in its place, composed of those who have destroyed the previous one.
University of Turin, Italy
Book Title
La difficile democrazia
Authors
Gustavo Zagrebelsky
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
42
Publication Year
2010
Copyright Information
© 2010 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-8453-986-1
ISBN Print
978-88-8453-989-2
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-8453-986-1
eISBN (epub)
978-88-6453-219-6
eISBN (xml)
978-88-9273-697-9
Series Title
Lectio Magistralis
Series ISSN
2612-7725
Series E-ISSN
2704-5935