Nadia urbinati's diarchical model of representative democracy: politics between will and judgement

This work examines the theoretical relationship between the concepts of democracy and political representation in the 20-21 century's democratic theory. The analysis of the literature uses the logical perspective proposed by the contemporary political theorist Nadia Urbinati: the role of representation in a democracy depends on how the concept of sovereignty is defined. According to Urbinati, the democratic theory is still dominated by the concept of sovereignty, which from the 18 century onwards is enshrined in the political voluntarism – a line of thinking, which argues that a political decision should arise from the will of the people, meaning that a law can only be passed by an act of direct decision or choice. As a result, the democratic theory is "stuck in a vicious circle" of the choice between direct participation and representation of the people. The first option is "impractical". And if representation is chosen, the question arises, to what extent can a regime in which the will of the people manifests itself only in separate moments (e.g. elections) can be called democratic? Thus usually representative democracy is conceived as “mixed regime”. However, Nadia Urbinati suggests a solution to these contradictions – the concept of "diarchical" sovereignty, which inserts the faculty of "opinion" next to the "will". Although Urbinati’s main goal in reviewing the concept of sovereignty is to demonstrate the principal compatibility of democracy and representation (contrary to the canon of political theory) and thus incorporate forms of political participation beyond elections (what she calls the sphere of opinion-forming), the bachelor thesis argues that the proposed concept of diarchy also paves the way for a proof of representative democracy as a distinctive political regime. Perhaps the most famous author who opposed the conceptualization of democracy as a political regime is the 20 century philosopher is Carl Schmitt. This philosopher's thoughts on the gradual transformation of the concept of democracy into a non-political category make it possible to single out the arguments, which try to prove that democracy does not mean political regime, and "test" Urbinati's definition of representative democracy