What's Behind the “Crisis of Democracy”?
According to the conventional wisdom, the biggest threats to liberal democracy today come from abstract groups of people, with one side blaming "elites" and the other decrying the poor judgement of the masses. Yet by ignoring the evolving role of political institutions, this dichotomy misses what is really going on.
Hélène Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century, Princeton University Press, 2020.
Armin Schäfer and Michael Zürn, Die demokratische Regression: Die politischen Ursachen des autoritären Populismus (The Democratic Regression: The Political Causes of Authoritarian Populism), Suhrkamp, 2021.
PRINCETON – Donald Trump is out of the White House, but nobody in their right mind would say that the world has been made safe for democracy. Trump’s return cannot be ruled out, and even if the man spends the rest of his days as the grifter cum internet troll that he is, the United States (and the world) must deal with a thoroughly Trumpified Republican Party.