Quale democrazia? Democrazia e disincanto nel pensiero di Norberto Bobbio

This article aims at summarizing the theory of democracy proposed by Norberto Bobbio. In particular, two themes are addressed. The first one is the procedural conception odf democracy as an institutional mechanism to make collective decisions. The second theme is what Bobbio calls the "broken promises" of democracy, a set of obstacles and constraints that stand between the ideal democracy and its actual realization. While the refinement of the procedural theory of democracy is one of the long-lasting contributions of Bobbio's theory, the methodological criterion adopted by him to highlight the differences between democratic promises and outcomes raises more than one perplexity. Consider modern democracies not as something profoundly different from ancient democracies but as a kind of "attenuated democracy" does not seem the best way to understand the reality and the transformations of contemporary democratic regimes.