Is Democracy a Lost Cause? explores the current debate on democracy. It starts by discussing the meaning of 'democracy' and how the understanding of this important political concept has either broadened or contracted, depending on changing political circumstances. Mastropaolo then poses the question of what it means for democracy to be the 'government of the people'. He deals with the way in which democratic government has been affected by changes in the fabric of society, by the evolution of democratic theory itself, and by the transformations affecting the state and political parties....

This book gathers together fifteen classic essays by leading scholar Richard Bellamy, tracing the history of Italian political thought from Beccaria to Bobbio. Written over the past 25 years, they constitute the first account in English of the modern Italian political tradition. The author pays special attention to the different ways Italian theorists have linked politics and ethics, and their various conceptions of the state and of democracy. The resulting variations on Machiavellian themes gave rise to distinctively Italian understandings of Liberalism, Marxism, Fascism and Socialism, which...