"We can no longer assume that liberal
democracy is the wave of the future... This splendid book is an invaluable
contribution to the debate about what ails democracy, and what can be done
about it."
--Michael
J. Sandel, author of Justice
"Everyone worried about the state of
contemporary politics should read this book."
--Anne-Marie
Slaughter, President of the New America Foundation
The world
is in turmoil. From Russia, Turkey, and Egypt to the United States,
authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result, democracy itself may
now be at risk.
Two core
components of liberal democracy--individual rights and the popular will--are
increasingly at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared
and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of
"rights without democracy" took hold. Populists who rail against this
say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create
something just as bad: a system of "democracy without rights." The
consequence, as Yascha Mounk shows in this brilliant and timely book, is that
trust in politics is dwindling. Citizens are falling out of love with their
political system. Democracy is wilting away. Drawing on vivid stories and
original research, Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters' discontent:
stagnating living standards, fear of multiethnic democracy, and the rise of
social media. To reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms
that benefit the many, not the few.
The People
vs. Democracy is the first book to describe both how we got here and what we
need to do now. For those unwilling to give up either individual rights or the
concept of the popular will, Mounk argues that urgent action is needed, as this
may be our last chance to save democracy.
Yascha
Mounk (born June 10, 1982) is a German-American political scientist. He is
currently Associate Professor of Practice at Johns Hopkins University's School
of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C.
Mounk was
born in Munich. His mother is Jewish, and had been granted permission to leave
Poland in 1969. He has said he felt like a stranger in Germany, and though
German is his native language, he never felt accepted as a “true German“ by his
peers. Mounk received a BA degree in History from Trinity College (Cambridge).
He then received a PhD from Harvard University in the United States. He
remained in the U.S. as a lecturer on Government and was named a Senior Fellow
in the Political Reform Program at New America.[2] Mounk became an American
citizen in 2017.
He was
executive director of the Renewing the Centre team at the Tony Blair Institute
for Global Change. As a freelance journalist he has written for the New York
Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and Slate. He runs a podcast
called The Good Fight. His dissertation on the role of personal responsibility
in contemporary politics and philosophy has been published by Harvard
University Press.
In July
2020, he founded Persuasion, an online magazine devoted to defending the values
of free societies.
Mounk
joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as a teenager. In 2015 he
resigned from the party, doing so by publishing an open letter to then-chairman
Sigmar Gabriel. He cited the lack of helpfulness of German institutions to
refugees, the passive attitude of SPD leaders and other parts of the party
during the Crimea crisis in 2014, and the SPD's policy on Greece, which he
called a "betrayal of the social democratic dream of a united
Europe".
In a
February 2018 interview that was published in Süddeutsche Zeitung, Mounk stated
that he had changed his position on nationalism. He initially considered it a
relic of the past that must be overcome, but he now advocates an
"inclusive nationalism" to head off the threat of aggressive
nationalism. On the German television newscast Tagesthemen, he stated that
Germany is on a "historically unique experiment, namely to transform a
mono-ethnic and monocultural democracy into a multi-ethnic one." In the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Mounk advised the "liberal camp" to adopt
this inclusive nationalism, to foster a multi-ethnic and democratic society.
"The key... is the adoption of the populist demand that people and nations
should again feel they have control of their lives or their destiny."
The People vs Democracy review – blood, soil and
Trump as strongman-lite
Yascha Mounk argues that democracy and liberalism are
not synonymous and counsels Americans to look to the examples of Hungary, India
and Turkey
Lloyd Green
Sun 4 Mar
2018 07.00 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/04/the-people-vs-democracy-review-trump
Liberal democracy is having a bad decade, with no end
in sight. According to Freedom House, a government-funded NGO, “democracy is in
crisis”, stuck in retrograde since the middle of George W Bush’s first term.
A clear
majority of Americans believe Donald Trump acts more like an autocrat than a
traditional president, while a quarter of US millennials view free elections as
non-essential. The US is regarded as a “flawed” democracy, lagging behind such
countries as Malta, Uruguay, Spain and South Korea. Even before Trump and
Brexit, the liberal order was losing its luster.
Enter
Yascha Mounk, a political theorist at Harvard. In his latest book, The People
vs Democracy, Mounk focuses on the rise of illiberal democracy – that is the
emergence of societies that elect their governments but which give short shrift
to liberal norms such as a free press, due process, transparency, tolerance and
civil liberties. Oban’s Hungary, Modi’s India and Erdoğan’s Turkey are leading
members of this dubious club, according to Mounk.
Mounk
convincingly argues that democracy and liberalism are not synonymous and that
in the face of uneven growth and a multicultural world, friction (or worse)
between the two concepts is now almost predictable. The People vs Democracy
delivers a clear-eyed take on how liberal democracy fell out of favor in swaths
of the Anglosphere and elsewhere. Not surprisingly, Mounk is alarmed by the
rise of populism and what he diagnoses as liberal democracy’s fragility.
He
acknowledges that nationalism will be with us for the foreseeable future and
posits the possibility that “citizens have built up loyalty to their political
system because it kept the peace and swelled their pocketbooks, not because
they hold a deep commitment to its most fundamental principles”. Does he
overstate? Only maybe.
Over
decades, political values become baked into the national DNA. In the US, they
are embedded in the constitution and celebrated on 4 July. Yet those same
conventions are being buffeted by sustained centrifugal forces. In Mounk’s
words, “democracy is deconsolidating”.
On that
note, the tropes of 2016 bore an eerie resemblance to some place other than the
Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Chants of “lock her up” and
“Lügenpresse”, egged on by Trump and embraced by his minions, became campaign
hallmarks.
As if on
cue, Republican politicians accepted Trump as strongman-lite. In a radio
interview Paul LePage, Maine’s governor, treated Trump’s tropism toward
authoritarianism as a political plus. In response to a questioner, LePage
conflated the rule of law with law and order, and declared that “our
constitution is not only broken, but we need a Donald Trump to show some
authoritarian power in our country”. History does not necessarily repeat
itself, but it can rhyme.
Although
Mounk is openly discomfited by nationalism, he is impressed by its potency and
durability, calling it the “most defining political force of its time”. He
contends that in the 18th and 19th centuries, nationalism “nearly always took
the form of a hankering for ethnic purity as well as democracy”.
To be sure,
the homogeneous impulse, a frequent component of nation-building, was a part of
the American Genesis. In the drive to ratify the constitution, common ancestry
and religion were enlisted, with English and Protestant the operative ties that
bound. John Jay, the nation’s first chief justice and an abolitionist, wrote of
Americans being “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same
language, professing the same religion”. Alexander Hamilton was not the only
voice; the debate still rages.
An
immigration proponent, Mounk observes that going back in time citizenship was
usually restricted to a subset of the overall population. In ancient Athens,
the status of citizen was limited to the offspring of two Athenian parents. By
contrast, the Roman empire was more elastic in its approach, mindful that
citizenship and ethnic sameness counted for less when an emperor occupied the
throne.
The People
vs Democracy is conscious of how the west arrived at its current inflection
point. In addition to listing the usual causes, Mounk writes that too much
distance emerged between government and the governed. As an illustration he points
to the European commission, an opaque and unelected bureaucracy that affects
the lives of hundreds of millions.
Mounk also
casts a wary eye at tribalism. Like Columbia University’s Mark Lilla, he
rejects identity politics as antithetical to the “possibility of a truly open
and multiethnic society”. And therein lies the challenge for Mounk and
proponents of modern-day liberal democracy: preserving democracy with its attendant
checks and balances while protecting individual freedoms in the face of growing
antagonisms.
As
expected, The People vs Democracy lists possible remedies to this malaise,
including “inclusive patriotism”. Mounk’s solutions will probably come up short
as the haves and have-nots continue to move down separate paths, with the rich
hiving off and the cognitive elites pairing off. Moreover, in the US
reconciliation is further complicated by political affiliation becoming
increasingly aligned with race and religion. These divides are organic if not
intractable.
Mounk is
dead-on when he observes that candidates can no longer preach the virtues of
the status quo when life is an unbridgeable moat to far too many. Citizens do
not want to be sneered at as would-be vandals by their duly elected stewards.
The world
is no longer flat and, once again, blood and soil are relevant. Voters derided
as “deplorables”, that is those who came up short in the march toward
globalization, will no longer tolerate being ignored. How liberalism and
democracy eventually respond to this latest test is the critical but unanswered
question.
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