How Democracy Ends
How Democracy Ends book cover

How Democracy Ends

Hardcover – June 5, 2018

by
Price
$20.24
Format
Hardcover
Pages
256
Publisher
Basic Books
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1541616783
Dimensions
6.63 x 1 x 9.63 inches
Weight
15.2 ounces

Description

"The cogency, subtlety and style with which he teases out the paradoxes and perils faced by democracy makes this one of the very best of the great crop of recent books on the subject."― The Guardian (UK) " How Democracy Ends is a thorough study of democracy and its trials and tribulations on approaching midlife. Inhabitants have enjoyed its fruits: freedom, prosperity, and longevity. Democracy offers us opportunities to do exciting things."― New York Journal of Books "In his admirable analysis, How Democracy Ends, he says the trouble is that we remember the least helpful bits of history, perpetually harking back to the 1930s to explain the aspects of modern politics we like least: Trump especially."― Evening Standard (UK) "Presented in pellucid prose free of the jargon of academic political science, How Democracy Ends is a strikingly readable and richly learned contribution to understanding the world today."― New Statesman (UK) "Democracy isn't dead, not yet, but it could use some physical therapy while it steps gingerly into the grave. For all its optimism, an urgent, necessary book of cold comforts."― Kirkus "Those who welcome encouragement to consider all sides and avoid jumping to conclusions...will find this a reasoned and balanced analysis of the political moment."― Publishers Weekly "What kills democracies? And, when they're dead, what replaces them? In this bracing reckoning, the brilliant David Runciman asks a series of questions whose answers take him from Hobbes to Gandhi, from the Colosseum to Facebook. A searching and urgent book."― Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States "As our advanced democracies wither, David Runciman suggests we may have been looking in the wrong places to understand what is happening. This wise and sobering book argues convincingly that neither history nor contemporary autocratic regimes offer a good guide to democratic decay. If and when Western democracies end, they will do so in novel ways not experienced previously or elsewhere. Runciman's book breaks genuinely new ground in a very crowded field."― Dani Rodrik, Harvard University David Runciman is a professor of politics at Cambridge University. The author of five previous books and a contributing editor to the London Review of Books , he hosts the widely-acclaimed podcast Talking Politics . Runciman lives in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Features & Highlights

  • 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.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(110)
★★★★
25%
(92)
★★★
15%
(55)
★★
7%
(26)
★
23%
(84)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Not very insightful, but mercifully short

This seems to be a good example of a type of book that is all too common these days. A book on a topical subject, by an academic expert, the main purpose of which seems to be to show that the author has a lot of interesting Pensees, which he is just too damn brilliant to marshal into a coherent argument. This book reads as if it were the author's personal notebook about his feelings about democracy. Here is a typical paragraph:

"The stories of Japan and Greece turn out to be different from what might have been feared, or even from what might have been hoped. As morality tales go, they are missing something. What they lack is a moral. Instead of the drama reaching a climax, democracy persists in a kind of frozen crouch, holding on, waiting it out, even if it is far from clear what anyone is waiting for. After a while, the waiting becomes the point of the exercise. Something will turn up eventually. It always does."

If this is kind of vapid prose poem is your cup of tea, there are 224 pages of it (and this paragraph is better than some...at least it is about some actual countries, rather than, for example, the author's opinion about the nature of death). On the positive side, in the author's efforts to sound erudite, he does mention a bunch of other books, some of which sound like they might actually be interesting. And the font is nice and large, kind of like the term paper of an undergraduate who is struggling to fill the required space.
23 people found this helpful
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One small thought mixed in with tons of filler

The author has one thing to say, namely that democracies can end with a military coup, electoral fraud, or the executive slowly accumulating all the power. He adds that a military coup isn't likely in a mature democracy. So, after dozens of pages, he's managed to state the obvious. But since he could have covered that in a few pages, and he doesn't have anything else interesting to day, the rest is just filler. His main filler technique is to mention example after example after example, with little attempt to connect them to anything. His other filler technique is to try to organize his thoughts two more themes. One is a lot of worry about disasters like nuclear war and environment collapse, which so obviously could end democracy that they hardly merit a mention, much less dozens of pages. The other theme is to spend dozens more pages worrying about AI and robots taking over, without saying anything beyond what's been said over and over in many other places. If you make it that far, you will find a discussion of a number of possibilities for improving democracy so that it would survive longer, and on page 216 you'll find that he says he has no suggestions. What a waste.
10 people found this helpful
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Its heart will go on and on

Democracy has been in danger even in its early days in the 4th century yet it survived and thrived. So why the proliferation of books considering its end? Apart from this, Steven Levitsky has written, ‘How Democracies Die’, and Yascha Mounk, Robert Kuttner, and Benjamin Carter Hett, have scrawled alarm across the publishing corridors. Democracy, Runciman says, is clearly not working well because if it were, there would be no populist backlash.

In this book, Runciman covers the situations that might have arisen in the USA and other democratic countries that may create chaos in the democratic system as we know it; but what exactly do we understand by the democratic system? Runciman discusses democracies virtues and the importance of free speech, elections, and against these, he points a finger at the evil of money and the manipulation by the elite – the few with money and technology – the two weapons of destruction. These weapons can manipulate news and elections. Runciman regales us with the AI named ‘Nigel’ that has the ability to vote for us on the basis of its having knowledge of our likes and dislikes as well as our reluctance to exercise our own mind.

Amidst the gloom, Runciman points to Japan and Greece and the sad stories that flowed from them when their economic bubbles burst. These two countries once hailed, then derided, may now serve as an indication of what democracy may be like when the end comes – peaceful, stable, albeit boring, societies that find space to reinvigorate the democratic nation. Hasn’t this been happening since the 4th century? Is Trump and the likes of him just the latest version of a democratic system in the throes of adjusting itself, and will, as it has always proven, correct itself?
8 people found this helpful
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A book for today!

'How Democracy Ends' is an essential work for those concerned with the health of our democracy in the USA. As the author instructs: "During the twentieth century the collective experience of political struggle -- both to solve shared problems and to enhance democratic recognition -- kept democracy intact. In the twenty-first century the dispersed experience of political anger is pulling it apart." He reminds us (if we need reminding!) that: "The inauguration of Donald Trump saw an old man with the political personality of a child come to the head of a state in uncomfortable middle age ... It is time to think again about what it means for democracy ...." He goes on then to analyze the concept of democracy from Athens to the present.
He deftly instructs that: "The threat to democracy is not manipulation. It is mindlessness." He instructs that: "The appeal of modern democracy is essentially twofold. First, it offers dignity. .... Second, it delivers long-term benefits." The combination of these two principles is formidable, he goes on to prove.
He reminds us that "in the twenty-first century the dispersed experience of political anger is pulling (democracy) apart."
The misuse of information in our digital age has undermined our lives, to wit, he opines that "Mark Zuckerberg is a bigger threat to American democracy than Donald Trump." He goes on tho explain why.
Really a good read!
There are a number of negative reviews of this book from right-wing apologists -- ignore their yammering! Essential reading for our very troubled times.
4 people found this helpful
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Philosophical look at where democracies mid-life crisis may lead

Just finished David Runciman’s “How Democracy Ends.” Solid read. Not so much a past, contemporary, nor speculative history as a philosophical exploration of democracy (past and present), and the present and possible future times we live. Very though provoking if at times a bit wandering and unfocused.
3 people found this helpful
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An important political vision about our times.

Great book of an important author! This writer here tells decisive truths about our times. The role of social networks has got the place of democracy: we should talk about populism or other equivalent forms of autoritharism. Only so we could understand the strange aspects of actual political model: it is something of new, but still it can be studied with the traditional categories of the old politics. In last analysis, something of truly interesting for a correct knowledge as the institutions today really rule the our behaviors.
2 people found this helpful
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A silly book

This is a silly book. The author starts with a cartoon characterization of Trump’s undeniable communication/style crudeness. He never considers the causal factors of the failure of neoliberal globalization to provide a compelling narrative for working and middle class citizens. Now with the benefit of hindsight we can see that economic nationalism produced the first increase in working and middle class wages since the 1970’s. The “America First” economic nationalism is waxing and will grow stronger with time. Now that are seeing that the real threat to deliberative democracy comes from the left, expect the freedom loving resistance to grow. The bigger question is will the Red States from a coalition for a unified resistance to the authoritarian left and the “woke” camouflage being used to cover their strategies?

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