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One of Barack Obama's Recommended Reads for Summer "[A] brave and
necessary book . . . Anyone interested in the future of liberal
democracy, in the US or anywhere else, should read this book."
-Anne Applebaum "A convincing, humane, and hopeful guide to the
present and future by one of our foremost democratic thinkers."
-George Packer "A rare thing: [an] academic treatise . . . that may
actually have influence in the arena of practical politics. . . .
Passionate and personal." -Joe Klein, New York Times Book Review
From one of our sharpest and most important political thinkers, a
brilliant big-picture vision of the greatest challenge of our
time-how to bridge the bitter divides within diverse democracies
enough for them to remain stable and functional Some democracies
are highly homogeneous. Others have long maintained a brutal racial
or religious hierarchy, with some groups dominating and exploiting
others. Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both
diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or
religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central
to the democratic project in countries around the world. It is,
Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment of our time. Drawing
on history, social psychology, and comparative politics, Mounk
examines how diverse societies have long suffered from the ills of
domination, fragmentation, or structured anarchy. So it is hardly
surprising that most people are now deeply pessimistic that
different groups might be able to integrate in harmony, celebrating
their differences without essentializing them. But Mounk shows us
that the past can offer crucial insights for how to do better in
the future. There is real reason for hope. It is up to us and the
institutions we build whether different groups will come to see
each other as enemies or friends, as strangers or compatriots. To
make diverse democracies endure, and even thrive, we need to create
a world in which our ascriptive identities come to matter less-not
because we ignore the injustices that still characterize the United
States and so many other countries around the world, but because we
have succeeded in addressing them. The Great Experiment is that
rare book that offers both a profound understanding of an urgent
problem and genuine hope for our human capacity to solve it. As
Mounk contends, giving up on the prospects of building fair and
thriving diverse democracies is simply not an option-and that is
why we must strive to realize a more ambitious vision for the
future of our societies.
The origins, consequences and limitations of an ideology that has
quickly become highly influential around the world. For much of
their history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious
and sexual minorities. It is no surprise then that many who
passionately believe in social justice have come to believe that
members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity
if they are to resist injustice. But over the past decades, a
healthy appreciation for the culture and heritage of minorities has
transformed into an obsession with group identity in all its forms.
A new ideology - which Yascha Mounk terms the 'identity synthesis'
- seeks to put each citizen's matrix of identities at the heart of
social, cultural and political life. This, he argues, is The
Identity Trap. Mounk traces the intellectual origin of these ideas.
He tells the story of how they were able to win tremendous power
over the past decade. And he makes a nuanced case why their
application to areas from education to public policy is proving to
be deeply counterproductive. In his passionate plea for
universalism and humanism, he argues that the proponents of
identitarian ideas will, though they may be full of good
intentions, make it harder to achieve progress towards genuine
equality.
A novel focus on "personal responsibility" has transformed
political thought and public policy in America and Europe. Since
the 1970s, responsibility-which once meant the moral duty to help
and support others-has come to suggest an obligation to be
self-sufficient. This narrow conception of responsibility has
guided recent reforms of the welfare state, making key entitlements
conditional on good behavior. Drawing on intellectual history,
political theory, and moral philosophy, Yascha Mounk shows why the
Age of Responsibility is pernicious-and how it might be overcome.
Personal responsibility began as a conservative catchphrase. But
over time, leaders across the political spectrum came to subscribe
to its underlying framework. Today, even egalitarian philosophers
rarely question the normative importance of responsibility.
Emphasizing the pervasive influence of luck over our lives, they
cast the poor as victims who cannot be held responsible for their
actions. Mounk shows that today's focus on individual culpability
is both wrong and counterproductive: it distracts us from the
larger economic forces determining aggregate outcomes, ignores what
we owe our fellow citizens regardless of their choices, and blinds
us to other key values, such as the desire to live in a society of
equals. Recognizing that even society's neediest members seek to
exercise genuine agency, Mounk builds a positive conception of
responsibility. Instead of punishing individuals for their past
choices, he argues, public policy should aim to empower them to
take responsibility for themselves-and those around them.
* SELECTED FOR BARACK OBAMA'S SUMMER READING LIST 2022 * 'Anyone
interested in the future of liberal democracy should read this
book' ANNE APPLEBAUM ---------- One of our most important political
thinkers looks to the greatest challenge of our time: how to live
together equally and peacefully in diverse democracies. It’s easy
to be pessimistic about the fate of democracy in multi-ethnic
societies. At the end of the Second World War, fewer than one in
twenty-five people living in the UK were born abroad; now it is one
in seven. The history of humankind is a story of us versus them,
and the project of diverse democracies is a relatively new one –
it is, in other words, a great experiment. How do identity groups
with different ideologies and beliefs live together? Is it possible
to embark on a democracy with shared values if our values are at
odds? Yascha Mounk argues that group identity is both deeply rooted
and malleable. No community is beyond conciliation: groups are
moving towards cooperation across the world. The Great Experiment
offers a profound understanding of the problem behind all our other
problems, and genuine hope for our capacity to solve it.
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "Everyone worried
about the state of contemporary politics should read this book."
-Anne-Marie Slaughter "A trenchant survey from 1989, with its
democratic euphoria, to the current map of autocratic striving."
-David Remnick, New Yorker The world is in turmoil. From Russia and
Turkey across Europe to the United States, authoritarian populists
have seized power as two core components of liberal
democracy-individual rights and the popular will-are increasingly
at war. As the role of money in politics has soared, a system of
"rights without democracy" has taken hold. Populists who rail
against this say they want to return power to the people. But in
practice they create something just as bad: a system of "democracy
without rights." Yascha Mounk offers a clear and trenchant analysis
of what ails our democracy and what it will take to get it back on
track. "Democracy is going through its worst crisis since the
1930s... But what exactly is the nature of this crisis? And what is
driving it? The People vs. Democracy stands out in a crowded field
for the quality of its answers to these questions." -The Economist
"Brilliant... As this superb book makes clear, we need both the
liberal framework and the democracy, and bringing them back
together is the greatest challenge of our time." -Los Angeles Times
"Extraordinary...provides a clear, concise, persuasive, and
insightful account of the conditions that made liberal democracy
work-and how the breakdown in those conditions is the source of the
current crisis of democracy around the world." -The Guardian
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Responsibility-which
once meant the moral duty to help and support others-has come to be
equated with an obligation to be self-sufficient. This has guided
recent reforms of the welfare state, making key entitlements
conditional on good behavior. Drawing on political theory and moral
philosophy, Yascha Mounk shows why this re-imagining of personal
responsibility is pernicious-and suggests how it might be overcome.
"This important book prompts us to reconsider the role of luck and
choice in debates about welfare, and to rethink our mutual
responsibilities as citizens." -Michael J. Sandel, author of
Justice "A smart and engaging book... Do we so value holding people
accountable that we are willing to jeopardize our own welfare for a
proper comeuppance?" -New York Times Book Review "An important new
book... [Mounk] mounts a compelling case that political
rhetoric...has shifted over the last half century toward a markedly
punitive vision of social welfare." -Los Angeles Review of Books "A
terrific book. The insight at its heart-that the conception of
responsibility now at work in much public rhetoric and policy is
both punitive and ill-conceived-is very important and should be
widely heeded." -Jedediah Purdy, author of After Nature: A Politics
for the Anthropocene
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