Overview

The 2016 election of Donald Trump focused people's minds on populism, and most of the attention paid to the subject since has been on the threat it poses to wealthy democracies. In Democracy Unmoored, Samuel Issacharoff takes a far wider-angle view of the phenomenon, covering countries from across the globe: Brazil, Poland, Argentina, Turkey, India, Hungary, Venezuela, and more. Just as importantly, he focuses on populism's attack on the institutions of governance. Democracy requires two critical features: first, a commitment to repeat play such that political actors understand that what goes around comes around; and, second, institutional constraints so that the majority can prevail, albeit not by too much. Democracies must avoid the doomsday scenario in which the contending parties see the next election as the final choice between salvation and perdition. Issacharoff shows how populist governance undermines each of these two critical underpinnings of stable democracy, first by compressing the time horizon to the immediate, and second by eroding institutional constraints on strongman rule. At the same time, Issacharoff highlights the fact that ascendent populists were pushing in an open door as they found democracies in states of disrepair in the post-2008 world.

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"Samuel Issacharoff is the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. He is a leading figure in the study of democracy, constitutions, and the courts, and the author of Fragile Democracies: Contested Power in the Era of Constitutional Courts. He is a leading figure in the law of democracy in the US and has written scores of articles on democratic challenges around the world. He served as a senior legal advisor to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and is long experienced as an appellate advocate in American courts. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Stephen Caffrey has been a stage actor in New York, Los Angeles, and across the country for over thirty years. On film and television he directed and starred in the series Tour of Duty for over three seasons on CBS. He received an Emmy nomination for his year on All my Children. He has had leading roles in many TV movies and miniseries, as well as the Sundance Film Festival winner Longtime Companion. He also has had numerous guest star appearances, including on the famous ""Yada Yada"" episode of Seinfeld. He was more recently seen in Bosch, Cinema Verite on HBO, and recurring on NBC's American Odyssey. His stage work includes shows at New York Theatre Workshop, Classic Stage Co., Mark Taper Forum, Geffen Playhouse, Geva, Seattle Rep., Cleveland Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse, American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Rep., Old Globe, Hartford Stage, Royal George/Chicago, and many others."

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