How Democracy Ends
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Narrated by:
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David Runciman
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By:
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David Runciman
About this listen
How will democracy end? And what will replace it? A preeminent political scientist examines the past, present, and future of an endangered political philosophy
Since the end of World War II, democracy's sweep across the globe seemed inexorable. Yet today, it seems radically imperiled, even in some of the world's most stable democracies. How bad could things get?
In How Democracy Ends, David Runciman argues that we are trapped in outdated 20th-century ideas of democratic failure. By fixating on coups and violence, we are focusing on the wrong threats. Our societies are too affluent, too elderly, and too networked to fall apart as they did in the past. We need new ways of thinking the unthinkable - a 21st-century vision of the end of democracy, and whether its collapse might allow us to move forward to something better.
A provocative book by a major political philosopher, How Democracy Ends asks the most trenchant questions that underlie the disturbing patterns of our contemporary political life.
©2018 David Runciman (P)2018 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"How Democracy Ends is a thorough study of democracy and its trials and tribulations on approaching midlife. Inhabitants have enjoyed its fruits: freedom, prosperity, and longevity. Democracy offers us opportunities to do exciting things." (New York Journal of Books)
"What kills democracies? And, when they're dead, what replaces them? In this bracing reckoning, the brilliant David Runciman asks a series of questions whose answers take him from Hobbes to Gandhi, from the Colosseum to Facebook. A searching and urgent book." (Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States)
"Those who welcome encouragement to consider all sides and avoid jumping to conclusions...will find this a reasoned and balanced analysis of the political moment." (Publishers Weekly)
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A polemic against Putin
- By David on 05-27-16
By: Garry Kasparov
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America in Retreat
- The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder
- By: Bret Stephens
- Narrated by: Bret Stephens, Sean Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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America in Retreat identifies a profound crisis on the global horizon. As Americans seek to withdraw from the world to tend to domestic problems, America’s adversaries spy opportunity. Vladimir Putin's ambitions to restore the glory of the czarist empire go effectively unchecked, as do China's attempts to expand its maritime claims in the South China Sea, as do Iran's efforts to develop nuclear capabilities.
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The Burden of American Exceptionalism
- By Harry Paget on 08-15-15
By: Bret Stephens
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The Jungle Grows Back
- America and Our Imperiled World
- By: Robert Kagan
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Recent years have brought deeply disturbing developments around the globe. American sentiment seems to be leaning increasingly toward withdrawal in the face of such disarray. In this powerful, urgent essay, Robert Kagan elucidates the reasons why American withdrawal would be the worst possible response, based as it is on a fundamental and dangerous misreading of the world. Like a jungle that keeps growing back after being cut down, the world has always been full of dangerous actors who, left unchecked, possess the desire and ability to make things worse.
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Out of date: covid, Trump nobel nominations etc
- By David on 11-13-18
By: Robert Kagan
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Flashpoints
- The Emerging Crisis in Europe
- By: George Friedman
- Narrated by: Bruce Turk, George Friedman
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
George Friedman has forecasted the coming trends (politics, technology, population, and culture) of the next century in The Next 100 Years, and focused his predictions on the coming ten years in The Next Decade. Now, in Flashpoints, Friedman zooms in on the region that has, for 500 years, been the cultural hotbed of the world - Europe - and examines the most basic and fascinating building block of the region: culture.
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Important Reading: Old Grievances Do Not Go Away
- By John on 02-21-15
By: George Friedman
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Blood Oil
- Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules That Run the World
- By: Leif Wenar
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 20 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Natural resources empower the world's most coercive men. Autocrats like Putin and the Saudis spend oil money on weapons and repression. ISIS and Congo's militias spend resource money on atrocities and ammunition. For decades resource-fueled authoritarians and extremists have forced endless crises on the West - and the ultimate source of their resource money is us, paying at the gas station and the mall.
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Caveat: Human beings -- Totally untrustworthy
- By lost the power cord could you send me another cord address 13 east wilmont ave somers point nj 08244 on 05-17-16
By: Leif Wenar
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America
- Imagine a World Without Her
- By: Dinesh D'Souza
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Is America a source of pride, as Americans have long held, or shame, as Progressives allege? Beneath an innocent exterior, are our lives complicit in a national project of theft, expropriation, oppression, and murder? Or is America still the hope of the world? New York Times best-selling author Dinesh D'Souza says these questions are no mere academic exercise.
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We can think for ourselves
- By score bags on 06-21-14
By: Dinesh D'Souza
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The Precipice
- Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change
- By: Noam Chomsky, C.J. Polychroniou
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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In The Precipice, Noam Chomsky sheds light into the phenomenon of Trumpism, exposes the catastrophic nature and impact of Trump's policies on people, the environment, and the planet as a whole, and captures the dynamics of the brutal class warfare launched by the masters of capital to maintain and even enhance the features of a dog-eat-dog society to the unprecedented mobilization of millions of people against neoliberal capitalism, racism, and police violence.
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Of Incalculable Importance
- By Anonymous User on 12-15-21
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
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Creating Freedom
- The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future
- By: Raoul Martinez
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A manifesto for deep and radical change, Creating Freedom explores the limits placed on freedom by human nature and society. It explodes myths, calling for a profound transformation in the way we think about democracy, equality, and our own identities.
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The BEST book, I've listened to in a long time
- By G. Newton on 04-16-17
By: Raoul Martinez
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Understanding Power
- The Indispensable Chomsky
- By: Noam Chomsky, John Schoeffel - editor, Peter R. Mitchell - editor
- Narrated by: Robin Bloodworth
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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A major new collection from "arguably the most important intellectual alive" ( The New York Times). Noam Chomsky is universally accepted as one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the modern era. Over the past thirty years, broadly diverse audiences have gathered to attend his sold-out lectures. Now, in Understanding Power, Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffel have assembled the best of Chomsky's recent talks on the past, present, and future of the politics of power.
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Current times demand you get this into your head.
- By Comatoso on 08-12-15
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
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The Weaponisation of Everything
- A Field Guide to the New Way of War
- By: Mark Galeotti
- Narrated by: Mark Galeotti
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hybrid war, grey-zone warfare, unrestricted war: Today, traditional conflict - fought with guns, bombs, and drones - has become too expensive to wage, too unpopular at home, and too difficult to manage. In an age when America threatens Europe with sanctions, and when China spends billions buying influence abroad, the world is heading for a new era of permanent low-level conflict, often unnoticed, undeclared, and unending.
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Clear, concise, and thought provoking
- By Dad / Husband (who rarely reviews) on 03-08-22
By: Mark Galeotti
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The Square and the Tower
- Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Elliot Hill
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Most history is hierarchical: it's about emperors, presidents, prime ministers, and field marshals. It's about states, armies, and corporations. It's about orders from on high. Even history "from below" is often about trade unions and workers' parties. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less well documented social networks that are the true sources of power and drivers of change?
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Not his best by a long chalk: Read Steven Pinker.
- By David on 02-05-18
By: Niall Ferguson
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