The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure

One of Barack Obama's Recommended Reads for Summer 

“[A] brave and necessary book . . . Anyone interested in the future of liberal democracy, in the US or anywhere else, should read this book.” —Anne Applebaum

“A convincing, humane, and hopeful guide to the present and future by one of our foremost democratic thinkers.” —George Packer

“A rare thing: [an] academic treatise . . . that may actually have influence in the arena of practical politics. . . . Passionate and personal.” —Joe Klein, New York Times Book Review

From one of our sharpest political thinkers, a brilliant big-picture vision of how to bridge the bitter divides within diverse democracies

Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment of our time. Drawing on history, social psychology, and comparative politics, Mounk explains why we need to create a world in which our ascriptive identities come to matter less—not because we ignore global injustices, but because we have succeeded in addressing them.

The Great Experiment is that rare book that offers both a profound understanding of an urgent problem and genuine hope for our human capacity to solve it. As Mounk contends, it is up to us and the institutions we build whether we come to see each other as strangers or compatriots. Giving up on the prospect of diverse democracies is simply not an option—and that is why we must strive to realize a more ambitious vision for the future of our societies.

Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. Born in Germany to Polish parents, Mounk received his BA in history from Trinity College Cambridge, and his PhD in government from Harvard University. He is a professor of the practice of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, the founder of the digital magazine Persuasion, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Great Experiment and The Identity Trap.