Imagined Democracies Necessary Political Fictions [Paperback]

In our era of mass electronic communications, political realities are produced by believable fictions that echo popular desires.Yaron Ezrahi proposes a revisionist theory of democracy. His theory is based on evidence that publics that lost their faith in extra-human sources of authority during the Enlightenment are now equally skeptical about the role of rational deliberation in politics. This book argues that in our era of mass electronic communications, political realities are produced by believable fictions that echo popular desires. Hence the pressing question facing contemporary democracies is how to privilege the performance of political fictions that promote peace and welfare, rather than violence and poverty, and how to evolve checks and balances between competing imaginaries of freedom and justice.Yaron Ezrahi proposes a revisionist theory of democracy. His theory is based on evidence that publics that lost their faith in extra-human sources of authority during the Enlightenment are now equally skeptical about the role of rational deliberation in politics. This book argues that in our era of mass electronic communications, political realities are produced by believable fictions that echo popular desires. Hence the pressing question facing contemporary democracies is how to privilege the performance of political fictions that promote peace and welfare, rather than violence and poverty, and how to evolve checks and balances between competing imaginaries of freedom and justice.This book proposes a revisionist approach to democratic politics. Yaron Ezrahi focuses on the creative unconscious collective imagination that generates ever-changing visions of legitimate power and authority, which compete for enactment and institutionalization in the political arena. If, in the past, political authority was grounded in fictions such as the divine right of kings, the laws of nature, historical determinism, and scientism, today the space of democratic politics is filled lÓg