Sofia Näsström

• Medarbetarportalen vid Uppsala universitet (kräver inloggning)

• Vad innebär det att vara demokrat?

  https://media.medfarm.uu.se/play/kanal/498/video/9515

  Föreläsning Uppsala universitet, 15 minuter

• Intervju

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfWYKEecUWA

  I samband med mottagande av Disapriset

• Demokrati - Filosofisk podcast

  https://open.spotify.com/episode/0YBiR2mkHobmzJn2rrQYde

  Demokrati, vad är det, varför ska vi ha det? En konversation mellan Sofia Näsström och Folke Tersman på Hedengrens bokhandel hösten 2022. I regi av Filosofisk podcast.

See CV.

My research focuses on the difference between political lifeforms (in Montesquieu's sense of the term), and I have published a monograph on this topic, entitled The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021). I am currently working on a new monograph, Democracy and the Social Question: Sharing Uncertainty in Uncertain Times. For descriptions of the two books, and a sample of representative publications, see below.

I recently published a trade book on democracy in Swedish - Demokrati. En liten bok om en stor sak (Lund: Historiska Media, 2021) - which is contracted with the literary agency Bonnier Rights for translation.

Democracy and the Social Question: Sharing Uncertainty in Uncertain Times (forthcoming)

Sofia Näsström

The future of democracy is more uncertain than ever. While this experience of uncertainty can serve as a potential for democratic reform and renewal, it can also be mobilised for authoritarian purposes. How do we make it work for democracy rather than against it?

To recreate confidence in democracy it is not enough to support rule of law and elections. We must also pay attention to the social question, and integrate social and material factors in the concept of democracy.

Still, many political theorists refrain from including the social question in the concept of democracy. Haunted by the spectre of twentieth century socialism, they argue that it undermines democracy; it satisfies material needs at the expense of political freedom, it confuses democracy with the ideological substance of politics and/or it reduces democracy to bureaucracy. I think they are mistaken, and this book is an attempt to explain why. The central thrust is that by defining democracy as a political lifeform that pivots on uncertainty, it is possible to integrate the social question in the concept of democracy without falling prey to said dilemmas.

The renewed international interest in a social defence of democracy places this book project at the forefront of existing political theoretical research on democracy. The intention of the book is not merely to offer new knowledge on the conceptual link between democracy and the social question. In a more general and long-term perspective, it hopes to contribute to better theoretical tools to understand and evaluate trends of democratic decline and renewal.

The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021)

Sofia Näsström

Democracy is challenged by populism and elitism, as well as by the resurgence of new forms of authoritarianism. The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal argues that while we have good reasons to worry about the corruption of democratic practices and ideals, these worries are often attributable to questionable assumptions about what democracy is.

Drawing on Montesquieu's classical work on the spirit of laws, the book reconceives how we understand and conceptualize modern democracy: from sovereignty to spirit. According to Montesquieu, different political forms are animated and sustained by different spirits: a republic by virtue or love of country and law, a monarchy by honour and distinction between classes, and a despotic form by fear. Montesquieu did not live to see the birth of modern democracy in the revolutions in the late eighteenth century.

This book argues that modern democracy is a sui generis political form animated and sustained by a spirit of emancipation. More specifically, the argument is twofold. First, with the removal of divine, natural, and historical authorities as collective sources of political legitimacy there arises a fundamental uncertainty about the future. In a democracy, we respond to that uncertainty by sharing and dividing it equally; both the freedom it opens up, and the responsibility it entails. It emancipates us from a state of self-incurred tutelage, i.e. from having the basic purpose and direction of society decided for us. Second, and faced with an uncertain future, we grant ourselves the freedom to fail in our judgements and decisions, and begin anew.

Based on this argument, the book develops a new theoretical framework for studying the corruption, disintegration and renewal of democracy; what it is, how it begins and where in society it plays out.

Selected publications:

The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal (Oxford,UK: Oxford University Press, 2021).

"Democratic Self-Defense: Bringing the Social Model Back In", Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 2021.

Demokrati. En liten bok om en stor sak (Lund: Historiska Media, 2021).

"A Democratic Critique of Precarity", Global Discourse (2015), Vol. 5, Issue 4: 556-573. Co-authored with Sara Kalm. Access here.

"Democratic Representation beyond Election", Constellations (2015), Vol. 22, Issue 1: 1-12. Abstract

"The Right to have Rights: Democratic, not Political", Political Theory, (2014) Vol. 32, No 5: 543-568. Abstract.

"Where is the Representative Turn Going?", European Journal of Political Theory (2011), Vol. 10, No 4: 501-510. Abstract.

"The Challenge of the All-Affected Principle", Political Studies (2011). Vol. 59, Issue 1: 116-34. Abstract.

"The Legitimacy of the People", Political Theory, (2007), Vol 35, No 5: 624-658. Abstract.

"Representative Democracy as Tautology: Ankersmit and Lefort on Representation", European Journal of Political Theory, (2006), Vol. 5, No 3: 321-342. Abstract.

The An-Archical State. Logics of Legitimacy in the Social Contract Tradition, (Stockholm: Department of Political Science, Stockholm Series in Politics 99, 2004).

"What Globalization Overshadows", Political Theory, (2003), Vol. 31, No. 6: 808-834. Abstract.