Review: The Populist Century. History, Theory, Critique by Pierre Rosanvallon, trans. Catherine Porter

The Populist Century is the latest work to be translated into English of Pierre Rosanvallon, professor at the Collège de France and, over the last thirty years, the author of a series of major works on the history of liberalism, political representation and civil society in France. Rosanvallon is not as well-known in Britain as he should be. Although he delivered the Seeley lectures at the University of Cambridge in 2006, his important trilogy on democracy in nineteenth century France, published between 1998 and 2001, remains untranslated. Outside France, critical appreciations of his scholarship and influence have come largely from Germany and America. And it has been veteran American translators and French commentators such as Art Goldhammer and now Catherine Porter (who translated the volume under review), who have ensured that some of Rosanvallon's work reaches an Anglophone audience.