Democracy against Nationalism. The A.C. Popovici Case

This article seeks out to analyze the critique of democracy in Romania during the first half of the twentieth century. The starting point of this analysis is the opposition between nationalism and democracy theorized by the Romanian political scientist Aurel C. Popovici. We can find the origin of A. C. Popovici’s conception in Eminescu’s critical attitude towards modern society and French liberalism. A.C. Popovici emphasizes the irreducible opposition between democracy, which is global and universal, and nationalism, which has the capacity to underline the cultural specificity of every nation. I will try to compare the way in which Popovici refers to democracy and nationalism with the approach of this ratio in Western societies (England or France).