Dr. David Ragazzoni

Dr. David Ragazzoni is currently an academic research fellow at NYU Law School, where he works in the history of political and constitutional thought and contemporary democratic theory. He was an Early Career Lecturer in Political Theory and then a Core Lecturer in Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University, where he served as a Faculty Advisor for the MA Program in Political Theory. He received his MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees in Political Science from Columbia University, and was trained in the history of political philosophy and intellectual history at Scuola Normale Superiore and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa (Italy). 

His research excavates and connects historical and transnational debates on factions, parties, and leaders, with a focus on two key chapters in the long history of democracy and constitutionalism: Renaissance Italy – before and after Machiavelli – and early 20th-century Continental Europe (specifically Weimar and Fascist Italy). He also maintains wide-ranging interests in the history of 20th-century democratic theory, the study of political ideologies, and Enlightenment political philosophy (specifically the work of Cesare Beccaria and its contribution to the theory and practice of the rule of law). 

His work in English so far has appeared in Ethics and International Affairs, Journal of Political Ideologies, Constellations. An International Journal of Democratic and Critical Theory, Political Theory, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, as well in a number of volumes, including Compromise and Disagreement in Contemporary Political Theory (Routledge), Multiple Populisms: Italy as Democracy’s Mirror (Routledge), Cultural History of Democracy (Bloomsbury Academic), and Rhetoric, Demagoguery, and Populism in Historical Perspective (Oxford UP). His most recent book - Hans Kelsen on Constitutional Democracy: Genesis, Theory, Legacies (eds. Sandrine Baume and David Ragazzoni, Afterword by Duncan Kelly) - is forthcoming with Cambridge UP in 2025.