This superbly researched and well-reasoned case for informed voting deftly emphasizes democratic traditions.
A political work warns readers about the costs of an uninformed electorate.
As a prolific author, physician, and clinical professor at Yale University, Levine has produced scholarship mostly centered on aging and health care reform. In this book, he offers a cautionary tale about a rising tide of a “general lack of knowledge of how government works” and “tribalism,” which he considers fundamental threats to America’s democratic tradition. As of 2017, international studies of the globe’s most liberal democracies ranked the United States 31st in the world, a significant decline from previous years. The author convincingly—and shockingly—demonstrates widespread ignorance among Americans toward their elected representatives and the basic organization of government itself. Just as problematic to Levine is political apathy, when a majority of eligible voters fail to even show up in off-year elections. The book’s strength lies in its international approach, placing America within the context of a global shift from democracy to autocracy, with examples of Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and the Philippines serving as warnings against populist and nationalist governments drawn to authoritarianism. The volume’s title and underlying premise may be off-putting to some readers who will be uncomfortable with blaming America’s current political crisis on ignorant voters (the majority of whom cast their ballots against the nationalist, populist candidate Donald Trump in 2016). They instead may place the blame on the undemocratic nature of the Electoral College itself. Though occasionally elitist in their characterization of American voters, some of Levine’s chapters highlight the role of disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and political corruption as contributing factors to the nation’s democratic decline. Well-researched with ample footnotes that demonstrate a firm grasp of contemporary scholarship on the subject, the work also features excellent chapters on the philosophical origins of democracy and the history of threats to the American system (for instance, contested presidential elections in 1876, 1960, and 2000 and political scandals like Watergate and the Iran-Contra Affair). Deliberately nonpartisan in its approach, the book concludes with a chapter on practical electoral reforms, such as ranked-choice voting and the revamping of primaries.
This superbly researched and well-reasoned case for informed voting deftly emphasizes democratic traditions.Pub Date: April 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-977225-87-0
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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