In her book, Distorted Democracy, Nadia Urbinati diagnoses the problems facing politics in an era of partisan passions and the monopolization of the mass media, and vigorously defends the core of democracy: the need for difficult compromises and the inevitability of ambiguous decisions. Urbinati identifies three types of distortion of democracy: non-political, populist, and plebiscitary. Each of them destroys a critical division that is essential for a functioning democracy to preserve: the barrier between the free public forum of public opinion and the governmental institutions that implement the will of the people. “Non-political” democracy places expert judgment above political opinion. Populist democracy polarizes the public forum where different opinions are expressed and debated to the extreme. And plebiscitary democracy attaches an unjustifiably high importance to the aesthetic and irrational aspects of opinion. According to the author, democracy presupposes a constant struggle to identify those issues that citizens consider most important for their lives. Therefore, expressing an opinion is a form of action that is no less important than the mechanisms of organizing elections and implementing decisions.

Urbinati focuses his attention not so much on the open enemies of democracy, but on those who pose as its supporters: technocrats who are only concerned with the correctness of decisions, demagogues who flatter the "people", media moguls who want to turn political governance into a spectator sport, and citizens into fans of opposing teams.