Nadia Urbinati: Political Freedom: The Struggle of Our Time

By Nadia Urbinati (Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University)

The ideological view of democracy that emerged during the Cold War and still prevails today proposes a minimalist and a-normative conception of democracy. This conception is largely inadequate: it does not help us understand the risks of authoritarianism and offers us no meaningful guidance. It makes little sense to think that one might sacrifice oneself to defend the rules of the game or a procedure for selecting rulers. If this is what elections do, as the minimalist conception of democracy tells us, all we can do is remain passive and contemplate the inevitable course of events. In fact, once the minimum conditions are met, there is little to say except that, for some people, certain majorities are more questionable than others. There is very little to say. How can we defend institutions that have so little value? How can we make them the cornerstone of proposals for democratic renewal if those who must renew them consider them a flaw, a stopgap, or a trivial matter devoid of value? If we want to begin thinking in innovative terms and in terms of defending democracy, we cannot take the centrality of elections for granted by merely superimposing alternative institutions upon them. Nor is it sufficient to catalog the shortcomings of electoral systems while taking their existence for granted. In the current climate, elections cannot be taken for granted. Like previous generations, we must actively defend electoral democracy if we want it to endure. This is the theme of my presentation, which aims to place political freedom at the center of democracy, of which elections are a powerful expression.

Lecture as part of the 2026 Annual Conference of the Research Program “Zeitenwenden. Normative Ordnungen im Umbruch?” (Turning Points. Normative Orders in Transition?) at the Research Centre Normative Orders at Goethe University Frankfurt, funded by Stiftungsfonds Commerzbank im Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft e. V.

00:00 Introduction of the speaker
02:19 Lecture by Nadia Urbinati

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