Is it possible, in the complex modern world, to have a government by the people? Does, for example, digital technology help us to bring the reality closer to the ideal? Or does it actually make the ideal unattainable?

The volume brings together conceptual historians, philosophers, political theorists and sociologists to discuss the criticisms and crises of democracy with fresh approaches to the idea of democracy, democratic theory, democratic institutions, trust and distrust, populism, and advancement of technologies in Western societies.

Eerik Lagerspetz is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland.

Oili Pulkkinen is a historian, who is currently researching artificial intelligence, democracy, political subjectivity and time.

1 Introduction.- PART I Trust, Distrust, and Democracy.- 2 Trust in Science Revisited. Social-Epistemic Challenges in Democratic and Digital Societies.- 3 Suspicious Minds: Towards a Typology of Political Distrust.- 4 Distrust and Democracy.- PART II Authoritarianism and Democracy.- 5 Whose populism? What democracy? On the Conceptual and Normative Connections of Populism and Democracy.- 6 Carl Schmitt and the Political Theology of Populism.- 7 Between Democracy and Authoritarianism: The Illiberal Challenge.- 8 The Grey Areas of Democracy: Indifference and the Erosion of Democratic Principles from Within.- 9 Constitutional Thought, Democracy and Crisis Government.- PART III DemocracyThe Will of the People?.- 10 From the Democracy of Opinions to the Democracy of Procedures.- 11 The Agenda Problem in Referendum Democracy.- 12 On the Concept and Practice of Democracy in Late Modern Mass Conditions: An Oakeshottian Update.