Democracy is at a crossroads . Paradoxically, the historical period in which it has managed to become shared by most of humanity horizon is threatened by disturbing processes -democratization or reelitización and must face populism , disaffection and social conditions , cultural and economic more inhospitable than the recent past.

The story could go either way . We could attend the confrontation between two unattractive models for any Democrat , among neoliberal regimes , using the remains of representative democracy to focus public attention on the financial markets , and regimes like China , where the party and elites bureaucratic try to maintain consensus ensuring higher levels of consumption and silencing the democratic longing.

But at the same time, the global world could be a completely different scenario development : mature democracies of the West, after the hard lesson of the present neoliberal crisis could develop ways to contain the neoabsolutista power of financial markets and invent new strategies to reassert the primacy of politics and the participation of every citizen illustrated .

Between this and these two opposing perspectives a space for reflection to which this book aims to help open. Based on the regulatory framework developed by Rawls and turning to aesthetic sources of normativity investigated by Ferrara himself in the past - the exemplary , judgment, imagination , the author maintains that political liberalism is the most qualified to address philosophical framework and understand the complex interplay between democracy and what he calls the normativity of identity.