Time of Democracy

"In a world in which the future of democracy is increasingly at stake, Timo Miettinen's judiciously researched Time of Democracy is a timely contribution to a historically informed conception of what distinguishes the originality and challenge of democratic societies. The novelty of Miettinen's approach consists in his argument that underlying democratic institutions and values is a distinctive experience of political time. Based on chapters that take a reader from the breakthrough of democratic temporality in through its successive transformations in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries to the ‘end of history’ debate and rise of contemporary authoritarianism, Time of Democracy will surely be vital reading for political theorists, historians, policy makers, and politicians, not only in Europe and North America, but arguably wherever and whenever democratic co-existence hangs in the balance."

Nicolas de Warren, Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Penn State, USA

"Timo Miettinen approaches democracy–the most central idea of our time–as a historical, temporal, contested, and dynamic process in which the system continually reinvents itself in response to an open future. By tracing democratic thought through history, Miettinen demonstrates how recognizing democracy’s time-bound nature explains its capacity for renewal, even amid dominant narratives of crisis."

Pasi Ihalainen, Academy of Finland Professor, University of Jyväskylä, Finland