The Life and Death of Democracy

The Life and Death of Democracy

Review by Sanford Levinson

John Keane has written an astounding, truly audacious, book. Indeed, it may be the first attempt at a comprehensive survey of “democracy” in well over a century. To describe it as “comprehensive” is no idle gesture. One reason for its 1000-page length is that he has illuminating discussions of societies ranging across time and space from the ancient Near East and Athens—one of his important theses is that we overestimate the “invention of democracy” by Athens by ignoring evidence of the significance of “assemblies” in the Near East well before the Greeks—to contemporary developments in Asia, Africa and Latin America as well as more predictable discussions of Europe and North America. He argues, for example, that the relative success of India in establishing itself as a meaningfully democratic country puts the lie to a number of basically Western assumptions about what is allegedly “necessary” for democracy to take root.

It would be a mistake to reduce such an ambitious work to a sound-bite thesis. To be sure, he argues that the initial forms of democracy emphasized popular assemblies, to be succeeded, beginning roughly around 1200, by what we have come to call “representative democracy,” where political authority comes from the ostensible selection of leaders by the demos rather than by direct action of the demos itself, as was true in assemblies. If that were all he was arguing, then there would be nothing particularly new or significant, save the range of his knowledge and examples. But he argues that “representative democracy,” with its focus on elections and then decision-making by those selected to hold public office, is being supplemented, and in some sense supplanted, by what he calls “monitory democracy.” He is referring to the ever-growing number of what are often called “non-governmental organizations” whose primary purpose is to engage in the active monitoring of governmental officials and, indeed, often to make their own important decisions about issues of public importance. “All fields of social and political life,” Keane writes (and italicizes), “come to be scrutinized, not just by the standard machinery of representative democracy but by a whole host of non-party, extra-parliamentary and often unelected bodies operating within, underneath and beyond the boundaries of territorial states.”

Keane describes the central purpose of his book as “Stretching and sharpening the mental geography of our understanding of democracy.” In this he succeeds admirably, perhaps overwhelmingly, for one cannot read it without being stretched and sharpened in innumerable ways. As one might easily imagine in a book so ambitious (and sprawling), this does not mean that any given reader will agree with every argument, whether of historical reconstruction or the normative vision of what some might regard as near-anarchy that sometimes appears to be Keane’s own ultimate vision of a truly democratic culture. But few books are more worth reading, and confronting, especially at a time when governments of almost all ostensible political ideologies declare themselves to be devotees of “democracy,” including, sometimes ominously, the willingness to engage in warfare to bring democracy to other places across the world.

Hardcover: 1024 pages

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc. ( August 01, 2009 )

Item #: 34-1382

ISBN: 9780393058352

Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 x 2.014 inches

Product Weight: 54.0 ounces