Can Democracy Work?: A Short History of a Radical Idea, from Ancient Athens to Our World - Hardcover

Miller, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374137641 ISBN 13: 9780374137649

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018

Synopsis

"Of all the books on democracy in recent years one of the best is James Miller’s Can Democracy Work? . . . Miller provides an intelligent journey through the turbulent past of this great human experiment in whether we can actually govern ourselves." ―David Blight, The Guardian

A new history of the world’s most embattled idea

Today, democracy is the world’s only broadly accepted political system, and yet it has become synonymous with disappointment and crisis. How did it come to this? In Can Democracy Work? James Miller, the author of the classic history of 1960s protest Democracy Is in the Streets, offers a lively, surprising, and urgent history of the democratic idea from its first stirrings to the present. As he shows, democracy has always been rife with inner tensions. The ancient Greeks preferred to choose leaders by lottery and regarded elections as inherently corrupt and undemocratic. The French revolutionaries sought to incarnate the popular will, but many of them came to see the people as the enemy. And in the United States, the franchise would be extended to some even as it was taken from others. Amid the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century, communists, liberals, and nationalists all sought to claim the ideals of democracy for themselves―even as they manifestly failed to realize them.

Ranging from the theaters of Athens to the tents of Occupy Wall Street, Can Democracy Work? is an entertaining and insightful guide to our most cherished―and vexed―ideal.

About this title

About the Author

James Miller is a professor of politics and the chair of liberal studies at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of The Passion of Michel Foucault and Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock & Roll, 1947–1977, among other books. He lives in New York City.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374137641
• ISBN 13: 9780374137649
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320