Readings that organize

01Author

Immanuel Kant

• Enlightenment
• Republic
• Rights

Prussian philosopher (1724–1804). One of the roots of modern republican and rights-based thought. His political programme —autonomy, dignity, peace as a task— still orders contemporary democratic conversation.

• 

  1795

  Perpetual Peace

  The most famous sketch of an international order founded on republics and cosmopolitan law. Peace, Kant argues, is not established by inertia: it is built as a political and moral task.

• 

  1784

  What is Enlightenment?

  “Dare to think.” The brief essay that captured, better than any other, the modern call to intellectual autonomy against every tutelage. Essential reading for any serious discussion of freedom of conscience.

02Author

Alexis de Tocqueville

• Liberal democracy
• Civic culture
• Republic

French thinker (1805–1859). His analysis of American democracy opened much of the modern vocabulary on civic equality, soft despotism and associational life.

• 

  1835–1840

  Democracy in America

  An early and acute observation of the internal risks of modern democracies: the conformism of opinion, administrative tutelage and the weakening of intermediary bodies.

03Author

Norberto Bobbio

• Liberal democracy
• Rule of law
• Rights

Italian philosopher of law and politics (1909–2004). Defender of procedural democracy and rights. His work is one of the clearest syntheses of post-war democratic liberalism.

• 

  1984

  The Future of Democracy

  On the unfulfilled promises of modern democracy: invisible powers, the persistence of privilege, technocracy. Not to abandon the project, but to understand it at its real scale.

• 1994

  Left and Right

  A brief, honest essay on why the distinction remains useful —when it is and when it becomes sterile— and on the place of equality as a criterion.

04Author

Raymond Aron

• Liberal democracy
• Totalitarianism
• Pluralism

French sociologist and political scientist (1905–1983). A tireless reader of Tocqueville and Weber. Defender of a sober view of political regimes, far from ideological enthusiasm.

• 

  1965

  Democracy and Totalitarianism

  A classic course that distinguishes —with a care we are little used to— constitutional democracies and one-party regimes. Indispensable for comparative discussion.

• 1938

  Introduction to the Philosophy of History

  Aron's doctoral thesis, in which he lays the epistemological foundations of all his later work: the limits of historical knowledge, the plurality of interpretations and the intellectual's responsibility before the judgment of time.

05Author

Isaiah Berlin

• Liberty
• Pluralism
• Humanism

Philosopher and historian of ideas (1909–1997). He reopened the post-war debate on liberty and showed —with rare care— why legitimate values can enter irreducible conflict with one another.

• 1958

  Two Concepts of Liberty

  The distinction between negative liberty —freedom from interference— and positive liberty —being the effective master of one's own decisions. A brief and still central lecture for discussing the contemporary meaning of the liberal project.

06Author

Michael Walzer

• Pluralism
• Equality before the law
• Common good

American political philosopher (1935). He thought of justice as plural spheres and rigorously revisited the theory of just war and the place of cultural pluralism.

• 

  1983

  Spheres of Justice

  Why equality is not measured by a single good, but by many —money, education, recognition, health— each with its own logic. An indispensable map for discussing equality without reductionism.

07Author

Charles Taylor

• Pluralism
• Modern identity
• Civic culture

Canadian philosopher (1931). A central reading for thinking modern identity, democratic secularism and the possibility of a shared public life among plural communities.

• 

  1991

  The Ethics of Authenticity

  A brief essay on the risks —and possibilities— of the modern culture of the individual. Critical of relativism, but also of conservative moralism.

08Author

Henry David Thoreau

• Civil disobedience
• Moral conscience
• Liberty

American philosopher (1817–1862), thinker of civil disobedience and of the moral conscience against the State. His brief essay gave its name to a century of non-violent resistance and still runs through the contemporary vocabulary on conscientious objection.

• 1849

  On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

  Why the conscience's ultimate loyalty is not to the State but to moral judgment. A brief text that inspired figures from Gandhi to Martin Luther King and that still feeds the contemporary vocabulary on conscientious objection.

09Author

Hannah Arendt

• Totalitarianism
• Liberty
• Democratic conscience

German political philosopher (1906–1975). She thought of freedom as a public capacity and warned about the conditions that make totalitarian regimes and the banality of evil possible.

• 

  1951

  The Origins of Totalitarianism

  How antisemitism, imperialism and social atomization made the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century possible. A question that remains ours: what conditions allow a society to yield to fear.

• 

  1958

  The Human Condition

  Classic distinction between labour, work and action. Politics is not the administration of things: it is the space in which people appear before one another and begin something new.

10Author

Karl Popper

• Open society
• Critique of authoritarianism
• Pluralism

Philosopher of science and politics (1902–1994). An early and consistent defender of the open society against the temptation of a single answer. His critique of historicism left its mark on much of twentieth-century democratic liberalism.

• 

  1945

  The Open Society and Its Enemies

  A critique of the traditions —Plato, Hegel, Marx— that promise a definitive political truth. Freedom, Popper argues, depends on the willingness to correct oneself together. Still essential reading against any authoritarian temptation.

11Author

Steven Levitsky y Daniel Ziblatt

• Critique of authoritarianism
• Institutions
• Liberal democracy

American political scientists at Harvard. They study comparatively how contemporary democracies erode without the need for classical coups: the role of unwritten norms, the partisan capture of institutions and extreme polarization.

• 

  2018

  How Democracies Die

  An already-classic piece of contemporary democratic analysis. Why most present-day democracies do not fall by tanks but by elected rulers who erode, step by step, the norms that sustain fair play.

• 2023

  Tyranny of the Minority

  A natural continuation of the previous book. How institutions designed to limit power can, under certain conditions, shield a political minority from majority will. A warning about the limits of constitutional design.

12Author

Timothy Snyder

• Critique of authoritarianism
• Political history
• Democratic conscience

American historian (1969), professor at Yale. He studies twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe and writes on contemporary democratic backsliding.

• 

  2017

  On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

  A brief manual on how democracies erode —from within— and what an ordinary citizenry can do to resist. Concise and useful far beyond the country that prompted it.

13Author

Jacques Maritain

• Humanism
• Human dignity
• Rights

French philosopher (1882–1973). One of the principal voices of twentieth-century personalist humanism. He had a decisive influence on the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

• 1936

  Integral Humanism

  A programme of thought that places the person at the centre of political life without renouncing the communal dimension. Foundational reading for understanding contemporary democratic humanism.

14Author

Albert Camus

• Moral conscience
• Humanism
• Critique of authoritarianism

French essayist and novelist (1913–1960). Lucid in the face of the totalitarian temptations of the twentieth century —of one sign and the other— and a sober defender of moral rebellion against absurdity and violence.

• 

  1951

  The Rebel

  Why rebellion against injustice never authorizes political crime. A text uncomfortable for every maximalism.

• 

  1942

  The Stranger

  The novel that crystallized Camus's notion of the absurd and which, without being a text of political philosophy, ordered the reader's moral conscience like few others before a world without automatic transcendence.

15Author

Amartya Sen

• Human dignity
• Liberty
• Common good

Indian economist and philosopher (1933), Nobel Prize in Economics 1998. He rethought development as the expansion of effective capabilities, articulating political freedom and fulfilled life.

• 

  1999

  Development as Freedom

  Why political freedom, education and health are not luxuries of development: they are its form. A clear and demanding reading for discussing the place of the State and of rights.

16Author

Jürgen Habermas

• Deliberation
• Public sphere
• Liberal democracy

German philosopher and sociologist (1929). His theory of communicative action and the public sphere is one of the most used tools for discussing democratic deliberation and legitimacy.

• 

  1962

  The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

  A reconstruction of the emergence of a bourgeois public sphere between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and of its later transformation. An obligatory starting point for thinking the press, deliberation and democracy.

• 1981

  The Theory of Communicative Action

  Habermas's major work. A theory of rational understanding as the core of social and democratic life: two volumes that articulate philosophy of language, sociology and political theory to ground deliberative democracy.

17Author

John Rawls

• Equality before the law
• Pluralism
• Liberal democracy

American philosopher (1921–2002). He reformulated the central questions of contemporary political philosophy: what makes the institutions of a free society just.

• 

  1971

  A Theory of Justice

  The two principles of justice, the original position, the veil of ignorance. A conceptual architecture that articulated contemporary egalitarian liberalism and still orders the debate.

• 

  1993

  Political Liberalism

  How a free society can be sustained when its citizens hold reasonable but incompatible moral and religious doctrines. One of the great questions of pluralism.

18Author

Adam Przeworski

• Liberal democracy
• Institutions
• Critique of authoritarianism

Polish-American political scientist (1940). One of the most rigorous voices in the empirical study of democracies: why they are born, how they are sustained and what makes them recede.

• 2019

  Crises of Democracy

  A long-range look at the symptoms of democratic backsliding in the West. Democracies do not always fall by coups: sometimes they empty out slowly, while one watches.

19Author

Pierre Rosanvallon

• Liberal democracy
• Representation
• Democratic conscience

French historian and political scientist (1948). He studies the contemporary transformations of representation, legitimacy and democratic distrust.

• 2006

  Counter-Democracy

  How other forms of citizen action —oversight, denunciation, judgment— coexist with the vote, and can either correct electoral democracy or, ill used, weaken it.

20Author

Anthony Giddens

• Modernity
• Reflexivity
• Globalization

British sociologist (1938), former director of the London School of Economics. He thought of late modernity as a horizon of risk, self-organization and growing reflexivity —and, with it, the challenges that globalization poses to contemporary democracies.

• 1990

  The Consequences of Modernity

  On the institutions that produced a world simultaneously freer and more exposed to risk —the nation-state, the global market, science. A key piece for thinking globalization carefully.

• 1991

  Modernity and Self-Identity

  How personal identity becomes a reflexive project in societies where traditional certainties dissolve. Useful reading for discussing the link between intimate life, freedom and civic bond.

21Author

Carlo Galli

• Liberal democracy
• Sovereignty
• Critique of populism

Italian political philosopher (1950–), professor at the University of Bologna. A critic of the “fluidity” of power in contemporary democracy and author of works on sovereignty, political space and a critique of post-Fordist liberalism.

• 2011

  The Malaise of Democracy

  Why contemporary democracy feels, simultaneously, the pull of populism and the exhaustion of its representative institutions. An Italian reading of the tensions of the democratic project in the twenty-first century.

22Author

Gherardo Colombo

• Rule of law
• Democratic conscience
• Institutions

Italian judge and jurist (1946–), known for the “Mani Pulite” investigations into political corruption. A writer of democratic outreach and a critic of the culture of impunity: one of the most level-headed Italian voices defending the common sense of the rule of law.

• 2011

  Democracy

  An elementary and serene defence of democracy as a form of common life, written from the experience of a judge who saw the corruption of institutions up close. A reading at once accessible and demanding.

23Author

G. John Ikenberry

• International order
• Liberal democracy
• Institutions

American political scientist (1954), professor at Princeton. One of the central voices of contemporary liberal internationalism: how rule-based international orders, grounded in institutions and liberal democracies, are built, sustained and eroded.

• 2001

  After Victory

  How the victorious powers of major wars build —or fail to build— international orders that bind them to themselves through institutions. A key reading for discussing the post-war international architecture and its current crisis.

• 2011

  Liberal Leviathan

  The liberal international order as a paradoxical Leviathan: hegemonic and at the same time bound by the rules it itself created. A foundational piece for understanding the promise and limits of liberal internationalism.

• 2020

  A World Safe for Democracy

  A long history of liberal internationalism as a political project. Why liberal democracies have, time and again, needed an international order to protect them from one another, and why that order is once again under contest.

24Author

Robert Keohane y Joseph Nye

• International order
• Interdependence
• Soft power

American political scientists, leading figures of the liberal theory of international relations. They rethought power, cooperation and interdependence among States in a world more complex than the mere logic of force.

• 1977

  Power and Interdependence

  The book that reformulated the conversation on power in international relations: no longer mere military coercion, but a web of economic, institutional and social interdependencies that also constrain and orient States.

• 2004

  Soft Power

  Joseph Nye explains why a country's ability to make itself attractive —its culture, its democratic ideals, its institutions— is a form of power as real as its military capacity. A conceptual tool now under contest.

25Author

Natalio Botana

• Republic
• River Plate tradition
• Institutions

Argentine historian and political scientist (1937). One of the most serious voices of contemporary republican thought in the River Plate. A precise reader of Tocqueville, Sarmiento and Alberdi.

• 1977

  El orden conservador

  The institutional construction of the Argentine regime between 1880 and 1916: how a political order was forged with legal foundations and, at the same time, with a limited horizon of citizenship. A classic piece for understanding how politics is thought in the country.

• 1984

  La tradición republicana

  A journey through Alberdi, Echeverría and Sarmiento as thinkers of an Argentine republic under construction. Useful for discussing, today, what is inherited and what is rewritten from that tradition.

26Author

Daniel Muchnik

• Critique of authoritarianism
• Political history
• River Plate tradition

Argentine journalist and essayist (1934–2022). A chronicler of politics, economics and democratic backsliding in the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. A River-Plate voice for discussing barbarism without giving up democratic hope.

• 2014

  La humanidad frente a la barbarie: reflexiones sobre la guerra, la muerte y la supervivencia

  A series of reflections on the civilizational regressions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries —totalitarianisms, genocides, war as horizon— and on what modern societies can still learn from those experiences in order not to repeat them.

27Author

Guillermo O'Donnell

• Democratization
• Accountability
• River Plate tradition

Argentine political scientist (1936–2011). One of the most rigorous voices on democratic transitions, horizontal accountability and delegative democracy. His work defined much of the contemporary vocabulary on democratization.

• 1973

  Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism

  The classic analysis of the emergence of “bureaucratic” authoritarian regimes in Latin America as a response to the contradictions of dependent development. It established the conceptual framework for understanding Southern Cone authoritarianism.

• 1999

  Counterpoints

  A collection that brings together the central essays on delegative democracy, horizontal accountability and the limits of the polyarchic model for Latin America.

• 2010

  Democracy, Agency, and the State

  The most mature elaboration of O'Donnell's theoretical project: thinking democracy from the effectiveness of the State and the capacity for citizen agency, not only from the formal rules of the regime.