Description: Democracy and despotism are closer than you think--in this briskly astute book, a leading political thinker reveals why that should alarm us all.
Review Quotes: "In a field choking on academic jargon, Demagogues and Despots reads like a blast of cold air--urgent and merciless in its clarity. Keane writes in images that cut, but the real force is in what they reveal: "Demagogues are despots in the making. Despots are what demagogues would like to be." The diagnosis is bleak, but Keane will not let the book end there. Democracy's last line of defense, we're told, is not its hollowed-out institutions but the civil societies that refuse to stop making trouble. This is the book the field needed and did not know how to ask for." -- Umut Özkirimli PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, and author Theories of Nationalism
"Vividly describes the greed, ambition and political cunning that underpin the world's new age of despotism. Unsparing in his analysis, Keane nevertheless holds out the hope that the spirit of true democracy will eventually prevail." -- Victor Mallet, award-winning correspondent for the Financial Times and Reuters, and author of Far-Right France: Le Pen, Bardella and the Future of Europe"An urgent book stunning in its sweep and depth, Demagogues and Despots flags a frightening possibility: despotism may no longer be something that's happening to other people. What if you are living in a version of it? Is despotism becoming the only political game in town, and are demagoguery and despotism our planet's future?" -- Debasish Roy Chowdhury, journalist, researcher and co-author of To Kill a Democracy: India's Passage to Despotism"Keane exposes a world confronted by a new despotism spreading across the globe, feeding on democracy itself, seducing citizens while hollowing out its core. A bracing, indispensable guide to how it works and how to resist it." -- Olivia Stokes Dreier, Senior Research Fellow for Global Challenges to Democracy, Toda Peace Institute"For those who have already been grappling with what has become of America's democracy - and Israel's and those of Russia, Iran, Turkey, China, and Myanmar - the power of the no-nonsense clarity of Keane's writing will harden the resolve of the urgency to get democracy back. . . Which is exactly what we need next." -- Sydney Morning Herald"A convincing argument in favor of liberal democracy." -- Kirkus