How Democracy Ends
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
How will democracy end? And what will replace it? A preeminent political scientist examines the past, present, and future of an endangered political philosophy
Since the end of World War II, democracy's sweep across the globe seemed inexorable. Yet today, it seems radically imperiled, even in some of the world's most stable democracies. How bad could things get?
In How Democracy Ends, David Runciman argues that we are trapped in outdated twentieth-century ideas of democratic failure. By fixating on coups and violence, we are focusing on the wrong threats. Our societies are too affluent, too elderly, and too networked to fall apart as they did in the past. We need new ways of thinking the unthinkable -- a twenty-first-century vision of the end of democracy, and whether its collapse might allow us to move forward to something better.
A provocative book by a major political philosopher, How Democracy Ends asks the most trenchant questions that underlie the disturbing patterns of our contemporary political life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Political philosopher Runciman (The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present) provides a meandering exploration of "the malaise of contemporary democracy" and identifies various possible means by which it might end. Runciman contends that observers who worry about the collapse of democratic institutions all too often focus on signs of democratic failure familiar from the last century: "backsliding" into "fascism, violence, and world war." Rather, Runciman theorizes, democracy is going through a "midlife crisis," and when the end comes, "we are likely to be surprised by the form it takes." The book examines several potential democracy enders: coups, the lurking disasters of climate change or nuclear war, and technology or corporations running amok. It also considers potential replacements for democracy: pragmatic authoritarianism, epistocracy the distribution of power based on knowledge and submission to artificial intelligence. This work is thought-provoking about the defects of contemporary democratic politics, but the free-flowing and loose structure and Runciman's avoidance of claiming certainty can make it inconclusive and uninspiring. Those who welcome encouragement to consider all sides and avoid jumping to conclusions, however, will find this a reasoned and balanced analysis of the political moment.
