How Democracy Ends - Hardcover

Runciman, David

3.71

1,291 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1781259747 ISBN 13: 9781781259740

Publisher: Profile Books, 2018

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'Scintillating ... thought-provoking ... one of the very best of the great crop of recent books on the subject.' Andrew Rawnsley, Observer

Democracy has died hundreds of times, all over the world. We think we know what that looks like: chaos descends and the military arrives to restore order, until the people can be trusted to look after their own affairs again. However, there is a danger that this picture is out of date.

Until very recently, most citizens of Western democracies would have imagined that the end was a long way off, and very few would have thought it might be happening before their eyes as Trump, Brexit and paranoid populism have become a reality.

David Runciman, one of the UK's leading professors of politics, answers all this and more as he surveys the political landscape of the West, helping us to spot the new signs of a collapsing democracy and advising us on what could come next.

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Review:

Scintillating ... thought-provoking ... Runciman's flair for turning a pithy and pungent phrase is one of the things to admire about his writing. 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. (Andrew Rawnsley Observer)

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 ... surely one of the most luminously intelligent books on politics to have been published for many years. (John Gray New Statesman)

Bracingly intelligent...a wonderful read (Mark Mazower Guardian)

Breezy yet incisive...Runciman may not have all the answers, but there is certainly plenty of nourishment here. (Klaus Dodds Geographical)

Full of intriguing new lines of thought (Gideon Rachman FT)

Refreshingly, rather than a knicker-twisting diatribe about Trump and Brexit, Runciman offers a thoughtful analysis about what popular democracy means, and its alternatives. (Katrina Gulliver Spectator)

Clear-headed, compact and timely (Irish Times)

An excellent book: it is well-written, evenly paced, accessible, non-academic in tone but very much so in rigour and thoughtfulness. It is sceptical but not pessimistic, and warnful but not alarmist ... It is heartily recommended for anyone who seeks to understand our current malaise and interested in this question of how democracy got to where it is today, and where it may go - if anywhere - next. (LSE Review of Books)

Refreshingly free of received and rehearsed wisdoms, Runciman doesn't tiptoe around sacred cows and invites us to take part in that most adult way of thinking: to examine contradictory ideas in tandem and ponder what the dissonance amounts to. . . . [H]e argues lucidly, persuasively, even exhilaratingly at times. The nightly news will never appear exactly the same again (Australian)

Praise for The Confidence Trap: Runciman's book abounds with fresh insights, arresting paradoxes, and new ways of posing old problems (Andrew Gamble Times Literary Supplement)

Book Description:

All political systems come to an end, even democracies - David Runciman shows us how to recognise the signs and how to think about what might come next.

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