An incisive diagnosis of the debilitating disease that has infected democracy and subverted its egalitarian promise.
An insightful assessment of the illiberal populism that has arisen in numerous countries around the world.
Issacharoff, professor of constitutional law at NYU and author of Fragile Democracies, begins the book “with the simple observation that democracy today is under siege.” Fueling this incipient authoritarianism are economic insecurity, xenophobia, and democracy’s failure to deliver services to the laboring classes. “Strongman” leaders derive their legitimacy from elections in which they “bypass institutionalized forms of politics in favor of direct and frequent communication with the population.” Once elected, they use intralegal mechanisms to wear down and demonize their opponents, thereby undermining the peaceful transfer of power. Central to illiberal populism’s emergence is the weakening of legislative bodies and political parties, with the latter now unable to discipline their members and pursue effective methods of compromise. As a result, corruption is inevitable, involving personal aggrandizement, clientelism, and the erosion of the democratic safeguards that enable a free press, independent courts, administrative competence, and a separation of powers. Populist leaders govern mainly with “a dizzying array of deals and favors.” The author notes Masha Gessen’s concept of the “mafia state,” which is “defined as ‘a specific, clan-like system in which one distributes money and power to all other members.’ ” Issacharoff draws on political theory and constitutional law to describe authoritarian regimes in the U.S. (Trump), Hungary (Orbán), India (Modi), and Turkey (Erdoğan), among other countries. At the core of his argument is the belief that “the key to democratic stability is the strength of core institutions both inside and outside government.” He calls for restoring government capability, revitalizing the legislative branch, reengaging the citizenry, and recentering institutional forms of democratic politics. He ends optimistically by pointing to the resistance of the press, the courts, and the business community—and, regarding the U.S., the historical resilience of its basic institutions.
An incisive diagnosis of the debilitating disease that has infected democracy and subverted its egalitarian promise.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780197674758
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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