
Contents
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4.1 Toward a Theory of Plebiscitary Democracy 4.1 Toward a Theory of Plebiscitary Democracy
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4.2 The Usual Understanding of Plebiscitary Democracy: A Politics of Diremption 4.2 The Usual Understanding of Plebiscitary Democracy: A Politics of Diremption
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4.3 Plebiscitary Democracy’s Ocular Model of Popular Power 4.3 Plebiscitary Democracy’s Ocular Model of Popular Power
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4.4 Shakespeare and the Candid Candidate: Coriolanus versus Caesar 4.4 Shakespeare and the Candid Candidate: Coriolanus versus Caesar
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4 The Concept of Plebiscitary Democracy: Past, Present, and Future
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Published:November 2009
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Abstract
This chapter revisits the overly maligned concept of plebiscitary democracy, reviewing its historical development, and arguing for its relevance as a present-day ethical paradigm. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 4.2 reviews the standard, purely pejorative interpretation of plebiscitary democracy that has arisen among contemporary political scientists: the understanding of plebiscitarianism as a politics of diremption. Against this reductive and negative interpretation of the meaning of plebiscitarianism, Section 4.3 returns to the theoretical origins of plebiscitarianism and recovers a forgotten, highly innovative, ethical component of plebiscitary democracy: namely, an ocular model of popular power whose basic features were introduced in Chapter 1. Finally, Section 4.4 turns to two of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, as concrete examples that illustrate the ocular model in action and that demonstrate the moral logic for wishing to revive a plebiscitarian alternative within contemporary democratic thought.
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