Sofia Näsström

Short presentation

Sofia Näsström specialises in political theory. Recent publications include Democracy in Ten Questions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), The Spirit of Democracy (Oxford University Press 2021) and Demokrati. En liten bok om en stor sak (Historiska Media 2021), which won the Disa Prize. Her forthcoming book, under contract with Cambridge University Press, is entitled Democracy and the Social Question. Näsström is research director for the program Democracy and Higher Education at Uppsala University.

Keywords

• Democracy
• autocracy
• uncertainty
• the social question
• emancipation
• political lifeforms
• democracy and higher education
• representation
• the people
• boundaries.

Biography

See CV.

Research

My current research focuses on the concept of democracy, and more generally, on the difference between political forms. I have published a monograph on this topic, entitled The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021), and I am now working on a new one, Democracy and the Social Question. For descriptions of the two books, and current and recently concluded research projects, see below.

Democracy and the Social Question (under contract with Cambridge University Press)

Sofia Näsström

Autocracy is thriving, while democracy is struggling. Democratic theory is poorly equipped to address this predicament. To examine the autocratic turn, it is not enough to stay within the remit of different models of democracy, and asking what they can do to counter autocratic encroachments. The conflict between democracy and autocracy requires a return to a classic conversation about societal forms, and a recognition of the social as fundamental to modern democratic life.

This book revisits democratic theory with this salient task in mind. It takes issue with the fact that many scholars displace the social from the concept of democracy. Haunted by the spectre of actually existing socialism, they stress that while the distribution of power is integral to democracy, the distribution of resources is antithetical to it: it satisfies material needs at the expense of political freedom, jeopardises civic peace by confusing democracy with its ideological substance and/or trades democratic openness for closed-fate bureaucracy.

These are all powerful arguments, advanced by prominent twentieth century thinkers, and supported by a vast number of scholars today. Still, this book shows that while each argument raises an important dilemma for those who seek to address the social question in democratic terms, it simultaneously relies on an overly reductionist understanding of democracy - as ideational, procedural and discursive respectively - ill-equipped to address the conflict between democracy and autocracy. The positive argument is that by interpreting democracy as a form of society, these dilemmas no longer dictate the terms of democratic theory. We do not have to choose between the political and the social. They are co-constitutive in the regeneration of democracy.

The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021)

Sofia Näsström

Democracy is challenged by populism and elitism, as well as by the resurgence of new forms of authoritarianism. The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal argues that while we have good reasons to worry about the corruption of democratic practices and ideals, these worries are often attributable to questionable assumptions about what democracy is. Drawing on Montesquieu's classical work on the spirit of the laws, the book reconceives how we understand and conceptualize modern democracy: from sovereignty to spirit.

According to Montesquieu, different political forms are animated and sustained by different spirits: a republic by virtue or love of country and law, a monarchy by honour and distinction between classes, and a despotic form by fear. Montesquieu did not live to see the birth of modern democracy in the revolutions in the late eighteenth century.

This book argues that modern democracy is a sui generis political form animated and sustained by a spirit of emancipation. More specifically, the argument is twofold. First, with the removal of divine, natural, and historical authorities as collective sources of political legitimacy there arises a fundamental uncertainty about the future. In a democracy, we respond to that uncertainty by sharing and dividing it equally; both the freedom it opens up, and the responsibility it entails. It emancipates us from a state of self-incurred tutelage, i.e. from having the basic purpose and direction of society decided for us. Second, and precisely because the future is uncertain, we grant ourselves the freedom to fail in our judgements and decisions, and begin anew.

Based on this argument, the book develops a new theoretical framework for studying the corruption, disintegration and renewal of democracy; what it is, how it begins and where in society it plays out.

Current projects:

"Demagoguery and Democracy: A Theoretical and Historical Reconstruction", Funded by FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology), Portugal (2026-27). Co-applicant.

"Academic Actors as Guardians of Democracy?" Funded by the Democracy and Higher Education Programme, Uppsala University (2025-26). Co-applicant.

Recently concluded projects:

"Democracy and the Social Question", funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2023). PI.

"Democracy and the Social Question", funded by SCAS, Uppsala University (2022). PI.

"Democratic Self-Defence: The Social Model", funded by Marianne & Marcus Wallenberg Foundation (2019-2022). PI.

Media

What does it mean to be a democrat?

Lecture at Uppsala University, 15 minutes

https://media.medfarm.uu.se/play/kanal/498/video/9515

Receiving the Disaprize

Receiving the Disaprize

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfWYKEecUWA

Interview about the spirit of democracy, and the social question in Denik N 2025, transcript

https://www.uu.se/download/18.5c94b82019a0f44b18615ac9/1761569634440/Sofia%20Nasstro%CC%88m%20Denik%20N.pdf