AN ALTHUSIAN DEMOCRACY FOR THE EU? ABOUT A BOOK BY GIUSEPPE DUSO

The article presents and critiques Giuseppe Duso’s latest book, published by FrancoAngeli in 2022 under the title Reinventare la democrazia. Dal popolo sovrano all’agire politico dei cittadini. The book, which is the successful systematisation of a long process of research and analysis, is divided into two parts: the first part is devoted to criticising and highlighting the inconsistencies of the main political concepts of modernity (e.g. equality, freedom, sovereignty and representation); the second part is devoted to proposing a new way of thinking about and structuring democracy, with particular reference to the European Union. To this end, Duso proposes to draw inspiration from and update the ideas of the pre-modern German philosopher and jurist Johannes Althusius (1557-1638), in particular his concept of federalism. After recalling the contents of the first part of the book, the article presents the reflections of the last three chapters, which contain the author’s intellectual proposal. This is followed by some critical reflections, which highlight the still unclear or undefined aspects of Duso’s argumentation, and some conclusions.