An incisive diagnosis of the debilitating disease that has infected democracy and subverted its egalitarian promise.
An insightful assessment of the illiberal populism that has arisen in numerous countries around the world.
Issacharoff, professor of constitutional law at NYU and author of Fragile Democracies, begins the book “with the simple observation that democracy today is under siege.” Fueling this incipient authoritarianism are economic insecurity, xenophobia, and democracy’s failure to deliver services to the laboring classes. “Strongman” leaders derive their legitimacy from elections in which they “bypass institutionalized forms of politics in favor of direct and frequent communication with the population.” Once elected, they use intralegal mechanisms to wear down and demonize their opponents, thereby undermining the peaceful transfer of power. Central to illiberal populism’s emergence is the weakening of legislative bodies and political parties, with the latter now unable to discipline their members and pursue effective methods of compromise. As a result, corruption is inevitable, involving personal aggrandizement, clientelism, and the erosion of the democratic safeguards that enable a free press, independent courts, administrative competence, and a separation of powers. Populist leaders govern mainly with “a dizzying array of deals and favors.” The author notes Masha Gessen’s concept of the “mafia state,” which is “defined as ‘a specific, clan-like system in which one distributes money and power to all other members.’ ” Issacharoff draws on political theory and constitutional law to describe authoritarian regimes in the U.S. (Trump), Hungary (Orbán), India (Modi), and Turkey (Erdoğan), among other countries. At the core of his argument is the belief that “the key to democratic stability is the strength of core institutions both inside and outside government.” He calls for restoring government capability, revitalizing the legislative branch, reengaging the citizenry, and recentering institutional forms of democratic politics. He ends optimistically by pointing to the resistance of the press, the courts, and the business community—and, regarding the U.S., the historical resilience of its basic institutions.
An incisive diagnosis of the debilitating disease that has infected democracy and subverted its egalitarian promise.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780197674758
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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