Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780199746316
Total Pages : 136 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (463 download)

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Book Synopsis Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction by : Harvey C. Mansfield

Download or read book Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction written by Harvey C. Mansfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-13 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one has ever described American democracy with more accurate insight or more profoundly than Alexis de Tocqueville. After meeting with Americans on extensive travels in the United States, and intense study of documents and authorities, he authored the landmark Democracy in America, publishing its two volumes in 1835 and 1840. Ever since, this book has been the best source for every serious attempt to understand America and democracy itself. Yet Tocqueville himself remains a mystery behind the elegance of his style. Now one of our leading authorities on Tocqueville explains him in this splendid new entry in Oxford's acclaimed Very Short Introduction series. Harvey Mansfield addresses his subject as a thinker, clearly and incisively exploring Tocqueville's writings--not only his masterpiece, but also his secret Recollections, intended for posterity alone, and his unfinished work on his native France, The Old Regime and the Revolution. Tocqueville was a liberal, Mansfield writes, but not of the usual sort. The many elements of his life found expression in his thought: his aristocratic ancestry, his ventures in politics, his voyages abroad, his hopes and fears for America, and his disappointment with France. All his writings show a passion for political liberty and insistence on human greatness. Perhaps most important, he saw liberty not in theories, but in the practice of self-government in America. Ever an opponent of abstraction, he offered an analysis that forces us to consider what we actually do in our politics--suggesting that theory itself may be an enemy of freedom. And that, Mansfield writes, makes him a vitally important thinker for today. Translator of an authoritative edition of Democracy in America, Harvey Mansfield here offers the fruit of decades of research and reflection in a clear, insightful, and marvelously compact introduction.

Democratic Despotism

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Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000624528
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Democratic Despotism by : Swagato Sarkar

Download or read book Democratic Despotism written by Swagato Sarkar and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-29 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the history of forced land acquisition and transformation of power in the Fifth Schedule areas in India. It examines the contradictory imperatives of extractive capitalism and primitive accumulation, on the one hand, and autonomy and devolution of power to local communities, on the other. The book traces the long history of conflict, displacement, and violence in these areas in central India which are home to the Adivasis or indigenous people and are rich in natural resources. Drawing from an analysis of public policy debates, land acquisition acts, and political and developmental interventions, the book critically looks at the relationship between capitalism, dispossession, and democracy. The author investigates how the state constructed a weak democracy amenable for primitive accumulation, the role of NGOs in this process, the struggle for sovereignty and autonomy by local communities, and the attempts made by human rights activists to find judicial redressal to state violence. Through this engagement, the book offers a new theory of power. This book will interest researchers and students of political science, political anthropology, governance and public policy, development studies, sociology, law and government, minority and indigenous studies, and Odisha and South Asian studies.

The New Despotism

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Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674246691
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis The New Despotism by : John Keane

Download or read book The New Despotism written by John Keane and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Australian Book Review Best Book of the Year A disturbing in-depth exposé of the antidemocratic practices of despotic governments now sweeping the world. One day they’ll be like us. That was once the West’s complacent and self-regarding assumption about countries emerging from poverty, imperial rule, or communism. But many have hardened into something very different from liberal democracy: what the eminent political thinker John Keane describes as a new form of despotism. And one day, he warns, we may be more like them. Drawing on extensive travels, interviews, and a lifetime of thinking about democracy and its enemies, Keane shows how governments from Russia and China through Central Asia to the Middle East and Europe have mastered a formidable combination of political tools that threaten the established ideals and practices of power-sharing democracy. They mobilize the rhetoric of democracy and win public support for workable forms of government based on patronage, dark money, steady economic growth, sophisticated media controls, strangled judiciaries, dragnet surveillance, and selective violence against their opponents. Casting doubt on such fashionable terms as dictatorship, autocracy, fascism, and authoritarianism, Keane makes a case for retrieving and refurbishing the old term “despotism” to make sense of how these regimes function and endure. He shows how they cooperate regionally and globally and draw strength from each other’s resources while breeding global anxieties and threatening the values and institutions of democracy. Like Montesquieu in the eighteenth century, Keane stresses the willing complicity of comfortable citizens in all these trends. And, like Montesquieu, he worries that the practices of despotism are closer to home than we care to admit.

Democratic Despotism

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Democratic Despotism by : Raoul Eugene Desvernine

Download or read book Democratic Despotism written by Raoul Eugene Desvernine and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term (1933-1937), there were accusations that the Roosevelt administration had adopted measures, was pursuing policies, and were engaged in activities which were intended to transform the political institutions and to remodel the social and economic order in a manner absolutely incompatible with traditional American ideals. This volume presents an exploration of the teachings and activities of the New Deal, with an eye to learning if there was any basis for these accusations. By examining the contradictions and incompatibilities between two schools of political thought -- Americanism and the new despotisms; constitutional democracy and the totalitarian state -- readers can better understand the real issues raised by these accusations, and their effect on the political principles involved.

Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift

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Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 030014492X
Total Pages : 399 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift by : Paul Anthony Rahe

Download or read book Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift written by Paul Anthony Rahe and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1989, the Cold War abruptly ended and it seemed as if the world was at last safe for democracy. But a spirit of uneasiness, discontent, and world-weariness soon arose and has persisted in Europe, in America, and elsewhere for two decades. To discern the meaning of this malaise we must investigate the nature of liberal democracy, says the author of this provocative book, and he undertakes to do so through a detailed investigation of the thinking of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville. Paul A. Rahe argues that these political thinkers anticipated the modern liberal republic's propensity to drift in the direction of “soft despotism”—a condition that arises within a democracy when paternalistic state power expands and gradually undermines the spirit of self-government. Such an eventuality, feared by Tocqueville in the nineteenth century, has now become a reality throughout the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. So Rahe asserts, and he explains what must be done to reverse this unfortunate trend.

The Despot's Accomplice

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190668016
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis The Despot's Accomplice by : Brian Paul Klaas

Download or read book The Despot's Accomplice written by Brian Paul Klaas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the world is steadily becoming less democratic. Though the true culprits are dictators and counterfeit democrats, the West is often complicit in contributing to the global decline of democracy. In pursuit of short-term economic and political objectives, governments in Washington, London and Brussels ultimately make the world less prosperous and stable. As Brian Klaas argues in this ... new book, this is in nobody's interests, least of all Western democracies--it is time for a rethink. The Despot's Accomplice draws on interviews on the frontlines of the global struggle for democracy, from a poetry-reading, politician-kidnapping general in Madagascar, and Islamist torture victims in Tunisia, to Belarusian activists tailed by the KGB, and tea-sipping members of the Thai junta"--From publisher description.

To Kill A Democracy

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192588273
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis To Kill A Democracy by : Debasish Roy Chowdhury

Download or read book To Kill A Democracy written by Debasish Roy Chowdhury and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: India is heralded as the world's largest democracy. Yet, there is now growing alarm about its democratic health. To Kill a Democracy gets to the heart of the matter. Combining poignant life stories with sharp scholarly insight, it rejects the belief that India was once a beacon of democracy but is now being ruined by the destructive forces of Modi-style populism. The book details the much deeper historical roots of the present-day assaults on civil liberties and democratic institutions. Democracy, the authors also argue, is much more than elections and the separation of powers. It is a whole way of life lived in dignity, and that is why they pay special attention to the decaying social foundations of Indian democracy. In compelling fashion, the book describes daily struggles for survival and explains how lived social injustices and unfreedoms rob Indian elections of their meaning, while at the same time feeding the decadence and iron-fisted rule of its governing institutions. Much more than a book about India, To Kill A Democracy argues that what is happening in the country is globally important, and not just because every third person living in a democracy is an Indian. It shows that when democracies rack and ruin their social foundations, they don't just kill off the spirit and substance of democracy. They lay the foundations for despotism.

The Despot's Apprentice

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1510735933
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis The Despot's Apprentice by : Brian Klaas

Download or read book The Despot's Apprentice written by Brian Klaas and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ”[A] primer on the threat to democracy posed by—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—the current president of the United States.” —David Litt, New York Times bestselling author Donald Trump isn’t a despot. But he is increasingly acting like The Despot’s Apprentice, an understudy in authoritarian tactics that threaten to erode American democracy, including: Attacking the press Threatening rule of law by firing those who investigate his alleged wrongdoings Using nepotism to staff the White House and countless other techniques Donald Trump is borrowing tactics from the world’s dictators and despots. Trump’s fascination with the military, his obsession with his own cult of personality, and his deliberate campaign to blur the line between fact and falsehood are nothing new to the world of despots. But they are new to the United States. With each authoritarian tactic or tweet, Trump poses a unique threat to democratic government in the world’s most powerful democracy. At the same time, Trump’s apprenticeship has serious consequences beyond the United States. His bizarre adoration and idolization of despotic strongmen—from Russia’s Putin, to Turkey’s Erdogan, or to the Philippines’ Duterte—has transformed American foreign policy into a powerful cheerleader for some of the world’s worst regimes. In The Despot’s Apprentice, an ex-US campaign advisor who has sat with the world’s dictators explains Donald Trump’s increasingly authoritarian tactics and how Trump uniquely threatens American democracy... and how to save it from him.

Liberty, Equality, Democracy

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Author :
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814757782
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberty, Equality, Democracy by : Eduardo Nolla

Download or read book Liberty, Equality, Democracy written by Eduardo Nolla and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1996-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volumes explores the whole range of Alexis Tocqueville's ideas, from his political, literary and sociological theories to his concept of history, his religious beliefs, and his philosophical doctrines. Among the topics considered are: Tocqueville's beliefs about foreign policy as applied to American democracy; Tocqueville and Machiavelli on the art of being free; Tocqueville and the historical sociology of state; virtue and politics in Tocqueville; Tocqueville's debt to Rousseau and Pascal; Tocqueville's analysis of the role of religion in preserving American democracy; Tocqueville and American literary critics; and Tocqueville and the postmodern refusal of history. The different approaches to Tocqueville's classical work represented in this book, combined with the frequent use of unpublished sources, present a fresh and renewed vision of his classic Democracy in America, reinforcing after a century and a half its reputation as the most modern, provocative, and profound attempt to explain the nature of democracy. Contributing to the volume are: Pierre Birnbaum (University of Sorbonne), Herbert Dittgen (University of Goettingen), Joseph Alulis (Lake Forest College), Dalmacio Negro (Universidad Complutense, Madrid), Peter A. Lawler (Berry College), Catherine Zuckert (Carleton College), Francesco de Sanctis (Naples University), Hugh Brogan (University of Essex), Cushing Strout (Cornell University), Gisela Schlueter (Universitaet Hannover), Roger Boesche (Occidental College), Edward T. Gargan (University of Wisconsin), and James T. Schleifer (College of New Rochelle).

Pliny's Defense of Empire

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136676244
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (366 download)

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Book Synopsis Pliny's Defense of Empire by : Thomas R. Laehn

Download or read book Pliny's Defense of Empire written by Thomas R. Laehn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite perennial interest in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, the world’s first encyclopedia, as a record of the prodigious, the quotidian, and the useful in Rome in the first century AD, for centuries Pliny has been derided as little more than an inept compiler of facts and marvels intellectually incapable of formulating a cogent argument supported through the selective marshaling of his materials. In Pliny’s Defense of Empire, Laehn offers a radical reinterpretation of the architecture of Pliny’s encyclopedia, exposing fundamental errors in the inherited understanding of the text traceable to its initial reception in ancient Rome. Recognition of the text’s true structure reveals that Pliny’s encyclopedia is in fact a first-rate work of political philosophy constituting an apology for Roman imperial expansionism grounded in a sophisticated account of human nature. Correcting the accreted errors and prejudices of nearly 2,000 years of faulty Plinian scholarship, Laehn critically examines one of the most persuasive apologies for the Roman Empire ever written and succeeds in rehabilitating the Elder Pliny as one of the world’s greatest political thinkers. An excellent resource and a must read for scholars in political theory, philosophy, and classical studies.

How to Make Love to a Despot: An Alternative Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century

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Author :
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1631496603
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (314 download)

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Book Synopsis How to Make Love to a Despot: An Alternative Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century by : Stephen D. Krasner

Download or read book How to Make Love to a Despot: An Alternative Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century written by Stephen D. Krasner and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After generations of foreign policy failures, the United States can finally try to make the world safer—not by relying on utopian goals but by working pragmatically with nondemocracies. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign economies in the hope that its investments would help remake the world in its own image—or, at the very least, make the world “safe for democracy.” So far, the returns have been disappointing, to say the least. Pushing for fair and free elections in undemocratic countries has added to the casualty count, rather than taken away from it, and trying to eliminate corruption entirely has precluded the elimination of some of the worst forms of corruption. In the Middle East, for example, post-9/11 interventionist campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have proved to be long, costly, and, worst of all, ineffective. Witnessing the failure of the utopian vision of a world full of market-oriented democracies, many observers, both on the right and the left, have begun to embrace a dystopian vision in which the United States can do nothing and save no one. Accordingly, calls to halt all assistance in undemocratic countries have grown louder. But, as Stephen D. Krasner explains, this cannot be an option: weak and poorly governed states pose a threat to our stability. In the era of nuclear weapons and biological warfare, ignoring troubled countries puts millions of American lives at risk. “The greatest challenge for the United States now,” Krasner writes, “is to identify a set of policies that lie between the utopian vision that all countries can be like the United States . . . and the dystopian view that nothing can be done.” He prescribes a pragmatic new course of policy. Drawing on decades of research, he makes the case for “good enough governance”—governance that aims for better security, better health, limited economic growth, and some protection of human rights. To this end, Krasner proposes working with despots to promote growth. In a world where a single terrorist can kill thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people, the United States does not have the luxury of idealistically ignoring the rest of the world. But it cannot remake the world in its own image either. Instead, it must learn how to make love to despots.

Democratic despotism

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Democratic despotism by : Raoul Eugene Desvernine

Download or read book Democratic despotism written by Raoul Eugene Desvernine and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Narrow Corridor

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin Books
ISBN 13 : 0735224382
Total Pages : 594 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis The Narrow Corridor by : Daron Acemoglu

Download or read book The Narrow Corridor written by Daron Acemoglu and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does history end? -- The Red Queen -- Will to power -- Economics outside the corridor -- Allegory of good government -- The European scissors -- Mandate of Heaven -- Broken Red Queen -- Devil in the details -- What's the matter with Ferguson? -- The paper leviathan -- Wahhab's children -- Red Queen out of control -- Into the corridor -- Living with the leviathan.

Democratic Despotisms

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527589390
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (275 download)

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Book Synopsis Democratic Despotisms by : Marta Nunes Da Costa

Download or read book Democratic Despotisms written by Marta Nunes Da Costa and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-09-29 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible to speak of democratic despotisms, to attribute the adjective “democratic”, in the plural, to despotism? Can there be several types of despotism, simultaneously, in a democratic horizon? This book is born form the intuition that the answer to this question is positive; however, like any work that requires the activity of thinking, the initial hypothesis had to be tested. Through a dialogue with Alexis de Tocqueville, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault, this book reconstructs some of their political concepts in order to create a broad theoretical horizon in which we will move. Having set its conceptual horizon, it then progressively builds a diagnosis of our present condition. Despite the difficulties and aporias brought about by liberal democracy, it is necessary to become aware that it has anti-democratic, anti-liberal and even totalitarian seeds within. Human beings oscillate between the search for security and certainty, brought about by the establishment and maintenance of order, and, on the other hand, the desire for a freedom that allows them to believe, to be and to live with others.

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Revised Edition)

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Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393069396
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (693 download)

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Book Synopsis The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Revised Edition) by : Fareed Zakaria

Download or read book The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Revised Edition) written by Fareed Zakaria and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-10-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A work of tremendous originality and insight. ... Makes you see the world differently.”—Washington Post Translated into twenty languages ?The Future of Freedom ?is a modern classic that uses historical analysis to shed light on the present, examining how democracy has changed our politics, economies, and social relations. Prescient in laying out the distinction between democracy and liberty, the book contains a new afterword on the United States's occupation of Iraq and a wide-ranging update of the book's themes.

Democratic Despot; a Life of Napoleon III

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Author :
Publisher : Hassell Street Press
ISBN 13 : 9781014355867
Total Pages : 442 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (558 download)

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Book Synopsis Democratic Despot; a Life of Napoleon III by : T A B (Thomas Anthony Buch Corley

Download or read book Democratic Despot; a Life of Napoleon III written by T A B (Thomas Anthony Buch Corley and published by Hassell Street Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The New Despotism

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Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674660064
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (746 download)

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Book Synopsis The New Despotism by : John Keane

Download or read book The New Despotism written by John Keane and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A disturbing in-depth exposé of the antidemocratic practices of despotic governments now sweeping the world. One day they’ll be like us. That was once the West’s complacent and self-regarding assumption about countries emerging from poverty, imperial rule, or communism. But many have hardened into something very different from liberal democracy: what the eminent political thinker John Keane describes as a new form of despotism. And one day, he warns, we may be more like them. Drawing on extensive travels, interviews, and a lifetime of thinking about democracy and its enemies, Keane shows how governments from Russia and China through Central Asia to the Middle East and Europe have mastered a formidable combination of political tools that threaten the established ideals and practices of power-sharing democracy. They mobilize the rhetoric of democracy and win public support for workable forms of government based on patronage, dark money, steady economic growth, sophisticated media controls, strangled judiciaries, dragnet surveillance, and selective violence against their opponents. Casting doubt on such fashionable terms as dictatorship, autocracy, fascism, and authoritarianism, Keane makes a case for retrieving and refurbishing the old term “despotism” to make sense of how these regimes function and endure. He shows how they cooperate regionally and globally and draw strength from each other’s resources while breeding global anxieties and threatening the values and institutions of democracy. Like Montesquieu in the eighteenth century, Keane stresses the willing complicity of comfortable citizens in all these trends. And, like Montesquieu, he worries that the practices of despotism are closer to home than we care to admit.