What’s behind the dangerous new notion that democracy should be left to the well-educated.
We Need To Rethink Democracy
What Happened to Liberal Democracy?: Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity - FROM THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS
'Timely ... an important call to arms' FINANCIAL TIMES'A must-read' THOMAS PIKETTY, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century'A thoughtful solution to the most important question of modern democracy' JARED DIAMOND, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel'Brilliant and insightful a tour de force' STEVEN LEVITT, author of FreakonomicsFrom its inception, liberalism offered a glittering promise of shared prosperity, equality, democratic values and the free pursuit of knowledge. At first, it flourished. And then it faltered. Once a tantalising beacon of hope, it began to erode and decay at the hands of elitism, intolerance and rising autocracy. One could say that liberalism is broken. So what comes next? Nobel prize-winning co-author of Why Nations Fail Daron Acemoglu charts the rise and fall of liberal democracy, and offers hope for a way forward: a new theory that lays the groundwork for how we can - and must - remake liberalism before it's too late.
The two-party system is killing our democracy
Here’s a long-shot idea to fix our system and make our democracy more democratic.
LiberationValues
LibertationValues is a political quiz aimed at anti-authoritarian leftists
LiberationValues
LibertationValues is a political quiz aimed at anti-authoritarian leftists
Capitalism, Democracy, and Du Bois’s <em>Two</em> Proletariats
[epq-quote align="align-right"]"What can be more radical or liberating than freedom and justice for all?"[/epq-quote] As an ideal, liberal democracy has great appeal. What can be more radical or liberating than...
What does it mean for AI to be democratic?
Some pushback on a specific fuzzy idea with some ominous implications
The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy
Abstract The Dispersion of Power is an urgent call to rethink centuries of conventional wisdom about what democracy is, why it matters, and how to make it better. Drawing from history, social science, psychology, and critical theory, it explains why elections do not and cannot realize the classic ideal of popular rule, and why prevailing strategies of democratic reform often make things worse. Instead, Bagg argues, we should see democracy as a way of protecting public power from capture—an alternative vision that is at once more realistic and more inspiring. Despite their many shortcomings, real-world elections do prevent the most extreme forms of tyranny, and are therefore indispensable. In dealing with the vast inequalities that remain, however, we cannot rely on standard solutions such as electoral reform, direct democracy, deliberation, and participatory governance. Instead, Bagg shows, protecting and enriching democracy requires addressing underlying inequalities of power directly. In part, this entails substantive policies attacking the advantages of wealthy elites. Even more crucially, deepening democracy requires the organization of oppositional, countervailing power among ordinary people. Neither task is easy, but historical precedents exist in both cases—and if democracy is to survive contemporary crises, leaders and citizens alike must find ways to revive and reinvent these essential democratic practices for the twenty-first century.
For all talk about how tech fascists want to "destroy democracy", people don't have a concrete idea of what comes after, i.e. "neo-feudalism" "monarchy" "patchworks", "fiefdoms", etc Very simple:
For all talk about how tech fascists want to "destroy democracy", people don't have a concrete idea of what comes after, i.e. "neo-feudalism" "monarchy" "patchworks", "fiefdoms", etc Very simple:— shanley (@shanley) August 5, 2026
America’s new oligarchy
Under Trump an ultra-wealthy clique has infiltrated government, raising concerns about democratic integrity
A Thrive/Survive Theory Of The Political Spectrum
I admitted in my last post on Reaction that I devoted insufficient space to the question of why society does seem to be drifting gradually leftward. And I now realize that in order to critique the …
“They have no allegiance to liberal democracy”: An expert on antifa explains the group
The left-wing group is back in the news. An expert explains where they come from and what they want.
Can Liberalism Be Saved?
The legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues for a more expansive definition of an ideology under threat.
A Strange Stain in the Sky: How Silicon Valley Is Preparing A Coup Against Democracy
(TL;DR: We no longer understand the reality around us and live in a state of growing confusion. The culprit is Silicon Valley, which is preparing a dystopian coup against democracy.) Wherever you go these days, everyone expresses in one way or another that reality seems to have stopped making sen
Laboratories against Democracy
As national political fights are waged at the state level, democracy itself pays the price
🧵 Democracy feels like it's in a rough state at the moment across the globe, and we hear various explanations, like polarisation, extremism, disinformation, and loss of trust. But what if those explanations are mainly symptoms and we've been trying to treat them rather than the underlying causes?
