Philip Pettit/ Gabriel Wollner

This event is jointly organised with the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Wednesday 29 October 2014, 6.30 – 8pm
Senate Room, first floor, Senate House, London WC1E 7HU

Philip Pettit, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values, Princeton University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University

Chair: Gabriel Wollner, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE and Forum for European Philosophy Fellow

Democracy, at its best, requires the demos or people to have kratos or control. Since control involves not just influencing policy but also shaping it, democracy in this sense is a very rich ideal; it requires people to have an equally accessible form of influence that imposes on government policy an equally acceptable shape. Yet there are institutions that can deliver that result. They implement a modern version of the old republican ideal of a mixed constitution and a contestatory citizenry.