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How Democracy Ends

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How Democracy Ends

By: David Runciman
Narrated by: David Runciman
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About this listen

 Democracy has died hundreds of times, all over the world. We think we know what that looks like: chaos descends and the military arrives to restore order, until the people can be trusted to look after their own affairs again. However, there is a danger that this picture is out of date.

Until very recently, most citizens of Western democracies would have imagined that the end was a long way off, and very few would have thought it might be happening before their eyes as Trump, Brexit and paranoid populism have become a reality.

David Runciman, one of the UK's leading professors of politics, answers all this and more as he surveys the political landscape of the West, helping us to spot the new signs of a collapsing democracy and advising us on what could come next.©2018 David Runciman (P)2018 Hachette Audio UK Political Science Politics & Government United States World Socialism Military

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I'm a big fan of DR's podcast, Talking Politics. I found this a little ponderous in places. Gives a good account of recent populist victories and their shortcomings. If it has a failing it's that it's prone to jump from a fairly factual description of things that have happened recently, most of which you'll already be aware of if you're interested in current affairs, then pulls its punches on drawing conclusions, opting instead for a sort of no-one-can-tell-the-future stance.

Worth a listen, though, especially if you've enjoyed his other work.

Thoughtful and interesting

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Lots of good insight on the system of democracy, it’s history, it’s current challenges, it’s potential threats. It’s entertaining enough and quite comprehensive, covering some interesting topics like the influence of AI. He’s very clear as a reader, but (understandably) it’s hardly the most exciting book in terms of performance or story.

Good overview of the state of democracy

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Let me start by saying that I am as far from Trump and his Bottom Trumpets as it is possible to be - the “most helpful” review on here which denounces the anti-Trump tendency of Runciman is not my view at all. Almost everyone outside the USA thinks it has become a dystopian nightmare under Trump, and has not improved under Biden. Yet even with that said, I can’t but agree that this book is awful. It is a litany of clichés, often without anything like an attempt to unpack or justify the assumptions it is shot through with. Runciman is a good example of the kind of smug, self-satisfied academic whose every elongated vowel confirms they’ve never lived in the real world of insecure employment, paltry employment rights, falling real wages, rising interest rates and decimated social provision in housing, health, education and welfare. That he seems to focus on the USA, and makes only the most cursory and ignorant comments on his native UK, just makes it that bit harder to take him seriously.

Unlike one of the more sympathetic reviewers, I’ve never liked his podcasts, which are often advertised by the London Review of Books, to which I gladly subscribe. I wanted to give a slightly longer form piece of work an opportunity, as I did with “Disorder”, by his fellow podcaster Helen Thompson. Unlike her excellent and genuinely interesting if slightly incomplete book on the politics of oil and gas, Runciman’s sneers and pomposity are no better in long form. Best advice, skip it!

Awful

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Coming from Talking Politics' History of Ideas, I was expecting enriching, politically agnostic, insightful discourse around democracy and political philosophy.
You do occasionally get that, but it's drowned in a broth of biased remarks on Trump, climate change, evil corporations, social justice, etc that the author casts on his readers like axioms of nature.

It feels like reading The Guardian.

Huge let down

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I was looking forward to a serious and totally bipartisan, indeed not expecting to hear anything remotely bias. How disappointing to hear an apparently self reflecting human being carry bias, catastrophic thinking, exaggerated sound bites and ignorance. This is just a slaughter of Trump that if you are a Liberal left reactionary self illuminated you'll love. Oh and there was no collusion despite one of the greatest witch hunts in political history.

This is not a book supportive of the democracy but of wild bias thinking. Hiding behind his position and education he nit picks and muddies the plain facts.

The real threat to democracy is always from the think tank and the people that unthinking support the excess of the powerful. This is more applicable to previous administrations. No screening or short ripping then.

Pathetic.

Fantasy fearnongering nonsense

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