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"Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa" One of America's greatest investigative reporters brings to life the gripping, no-holds-barred clash of two American titans: Robert Kennedy and his nemesis Jimmy Hoffa. Learn more | See more history books
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Product Details
Hardcover: 408 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (October 27, 2013)
The quote on the front page of this book says it all - this book is like no other book you normally see these days.
Instead of concentrating on current issues, the author takes a longer and deeper view of democracy. He starts with the French aristocrat de Tocqueville who toured America in 1831 and initially found it chaotic on the surface but later realized it was stable underneath.
The author's main thesis is that the strengths of democracy lie in its flexibility and thus its ability to address challenges. It is a self-correcting system because voters can change governments which can then change policies. This is in contrast to autocracies which are normally committed to an unchanging policy. But this self-correcting mechanism has resulted in democracies muddling through as they lurch from one crisis to another.
The general democratic pattern is crisis, compromised solution, complacency, drift, new crisis, and new compromised solution. This contrasts with the more decisive autocracies. The Soviets for example decided to solve their economic problems once and for all by eliminating all capitalists. The Nazis decided to solve their economic problems once and for all by conquest to obtain more living space. Nevertheless, it is the modern democracies that have survived.
The confidence trap is that while this process has worked so far, there is a belief that the democracies will always muddle through no matter what problems have built up.
Runciman fails to take a longer view of autocracies which have often survived longer than modern democracies. Many regimes have survived three centuries and the first modern democracy has survived only 237 years since its founding in 1776. Ancient Rome for example lasted about 1012 years (509BC to 476AD) and the autocratic Roman Empire lasted 503 of those years. So modern democracies have a long way to go to match those numbers.
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Pop sociology meets middle-brow British (a redundancy?) political "science". Or, as my history teacher always said about political science: "It's history without the history". Runciman doesn't actually provide analysis, but simply likes to make declarative assertions. For example, why was the victory of the Allies in WWI a victory of democracy over autocracy, as opposed to the vastly superior resources of the British, French, and Americans, against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians? And just why did democracy become so prevalent in the developed, Western world, but not the East (for the most part). What actually matters more (especially pertinent today), voting rights, or constitutional liberal rights and the rule of law. And why are democracies dysfunctional-is it an accident of history, because of their structure of government or because the pervasive nature of the levelling, antiestablishment egalitarianism that Toqueville understood had both benefits and dangerous negative capacities. Is democracy incompatible with a technocratic meritocracy? For a MUCH clearer and better analysis, at least from the same starting point, try Frank Prochaska's "Eminent Victorians on American Democracy". And read Weber, Durkheim, Veblen and Pareto!
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Readers will be quickly taken into this historical view and explanation of Democracies. Democracies are compared with other forms of government on the basis of weakness and strengths. I cannot help but agree with this author with regard to the trap. This is a controversy that deserves the attention of not only world leaders, but virtually everyone.
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I enjoy reading history books. I especially enjoy learning of the people and events that shaped the times in which I grew up, the 70's. This book traces the life of a concept and system of government from the early days of our nation until the present time and that, in itself, is fascinating. However, the author also deals with the impact upon that story of the other emerging democracies and various dictatorships over the last 100 years. Included are the roles of economists working within governments, academics, philosophers, and writers. I found it to be fascinating and enlightening. The tugs of war between leaders of opinion in the fields of finance, politics, practical governance are a peak behind the scenes of the events that have shaped and are shaping our society. The author reveals them to be all too human and the idea of Democracy to be a powerful yet human creation. Albeit, one of the greatest of human achievements.
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Fascinating analysis of our "developing" developed world It gives you major yet neutral insight into how our world moved on over the last 100 years Fareed Zakaria advised on a very intelligent writer. Well done David Runciman
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This item: The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present
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