Demagogues and Despots

Description

We live in troubled times, marked by a sinister trend threatening democracy everywhere: the triumph of despotism not only in countries like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, but also in states run by popularly elected demagogues—Orbán and Erdoğan, Netanyahu and Trump.

Leading political thinker John Keane shows why this new despotism defies the laws of political gravity. Instead of relying exclusively on fear or force, it fosters a strange, pseudo-democratic type of government, led by rulers skilled in winning public loyalty through election-rigging, legal trickery, corruption, weaponised lying and talk of enemies. And alarmingly, the new despots hunt in packs.

But what’s so good about democracy? In bold, energetic prose, Keane explains that it’s much more than popular self-government based on free and fair elections. Democracy is the collective insistence that unaccountable power is always dangerous—and that democratic institutions are our best weapon against demagogues and despots.

Author(s)

John Keane, Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney, is renowned globally for his creative thinking about politics, history, media and democracy. His books include The Shortest History of Democracy; The Life and Death of Democracy; the bestselling Tom Paine: A Political Life; and the acclaimed biography Václav Havel. Photo © Angel Sanchez