Tässä artikkelissa analysoidaan poliittisen epäluottamuksen käsitettä ja tutkitaan sen ilmenemismuotojen demokratiavaikutuksia. Poliittista epäluottamusta ei ole tutkittu yhtä paljon kuin poliittista luottamusta, vaikka politiikan teoria on jo vuosisatoja painottanut epäluottamuksen merkitystä demokratiassa. Tutkimuksen perusteella tiedetään, että poliittisen luottamuksen merkitys vaihtelee sen mukaan, kohdistuuko se ideaan, järjestelmään vai toimijaan. Luottamuksen vastinparina tai vastavoimana pidettyä epäluottamusta on kuitenkin tarkasteltu vain jäsentelemättömästi luottamuksen privaationa, vaikka sen typologisointi voisi tuoda uusia ulottuvuuksia demokratian ymmärtämiseen. Artikkelissa luodaan katsaus poliittisen epäluottamuksen teoriahistoriaan ja määritellään epäluottamus ja sen rinnakkaiskäsitteet. Systematisoimme myös poliittisen epäluottamuksen kansalaisen näkökulmasta. Tuloksena on neljä ideaalityyppiä epäluuloisesta kansalaisesta, joita voidaan pitää teoreettisena viitekehyksenä poliittisen epäluottamuksen demokratiavaikutusten tarkasteluun ja jotka luovat suuntaviivat sen tutkimukselle. Artikkelissa ehdotetaan, kuinka poliittista epäluottamusta tulisi tutkia empiirisesti ja pohditaan käytännön mahdollisuuksia vahvistaa sekä vakiintuneita että nuoria demokratioita. Päätelmä on, että poliittisessa epäluottamuksessa on selkeä hyödyntämätön potentiaali liberaalidemokratialle, jonka valjastamisessa käsitteellinen työ on ensimmäinen vaihe.

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The article suggests that Niccolò Machiavelli (1469Machiavelli ( -1527 is a crucial figure in a kind of understanding of politics in which no general rules can hope to grasp the contingent nature of political action, and that his "theory of politics" would inevitably mean the abolition of any virtues connected to political action. It is useful for the prince to remain "good" when he can but also to enter "evil" when necessary. In particular, this means shaking off the demands of Christian virtues, or any other essentially defeatist philosophies like that of the Stoics, which sing praise for the constancy of character in the face of changing fortune. Nevertheless, though Machiavelli's idea may contain an innuendo that those situations that require entering into evil would occur only occasionally, it is actually, according to him, a rather normal feature of political life. Machiavelli can thus be understood as the first exponent of the rather post-modern attitude towards politics. If politics is the art of dealing with the contingent event, where conditions do not remain serialized, reproduced or structured, it requires transformation from the actors themselves. No constancy of character is needed from successful political actors, and it is particularly imprudent to uphold some putatively eternal virtues that in the end prohibit the needed response to changing situations.

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The article scrutinizes Michel Foucault's interpretation of Machiavelli in his famous lecture on governmentality. Foucault is slightly misguided in his search for the origins of governmentality, the article asserts. Foucault gives credit for the development of what he calls a new art of government to anti-Machiavellian treatises, but also follows those treatises in their distorted interpretation of Machiavelli. Consequently, Foucault's analysis gets confused and regards as novel those arguments and developments that were essentially of ancient pedigree compared with Machiavelli's ideas. The article discusses especially two points in Foucault's interpretation of Machiavelli: Foucault's insistence on the singularity of the prince in Machiavelli and the importance of territory to Machiavelli. In both of these points Foucault is beside the mark. Foucault's interpretation inverts the development of an art of government and regards as new those ideas that were fundamentally reactionary vis-à-vis Machiavelli's ideas. The article suggests that a more viable lead in searching for an art of government might be found from Machiavelli's writings and the republican experience of the late medieval Italian city-states rather than from the birth of administrative monarchies of the 16th and 17th centuries. Therefore, the article concludes that Foucault is somewhat misled in contextualizing the birth of governmentality, a view which also has some wider implications for the whole framework of governmentality Foucault is trying to develop.