BOOKS BY ALFIO MASTROPAOLO

Formal or Substantial Democracy? Inasmuch as it depends on a value-option, the dilemma cannot be solved. What is democracy for some, is not for others. Surely the dilemma can be used in an historical perspective. Born in the West as procedural democracy, the latter has evolved to become substantial as well. Over the last quarter of the century, though, the trend seems to be going in the opposite direction: substantial democracy, that is welfare policies, tends to become more and more a purely procedural democracy. The effects of this evolution are such that this should better be thought of as an involution: inequalities grow bigger, citizens dislike politics and care less about it, money becomes more and more important, movements appear which are quite worrying from a democratic point of view, politics suffers from a growing lack of legitimacy. For some people everything is still fine: democracy has to be in this way, it is the only way that the situation allows. This model of democracy, though is extremely thin, a sort of anorexic variant of it, which cannot promise much for the future. In closing, author puts out a final doubt: to what extent the present situation is due to mistakes of evaluation, wrong choices, superficiality, arrogance by the democratic ruling?