The Daily Beast
Published 18 August, 2009 (original link here)
An ambitious book turns the history of democracy on its head.
In the wake of George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda”—which attempted to promote democracy across the globe—now is a good time to re-examine what Winston Churchill called “the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
In The Life and Death of Democracy, John Keane sets out to debunk many of the romantic notions we have about democracy—starting with where it was born. Although we typically think of democracy as originating in Athens, precursors can be found in Mesopotamia 2,000 years earlier, Keane writes. What the Athenians shared with the current global leaders of democracy are “its self-importance, its sense of destiny,” The Guardian notes in a review.
Keane highlights versions of democracy that existed during the Dark Ages, as well as its less-than-ideal incarnations in 19th-century Latin America. The book declares that today we are living in a “monitory democracy,” in which people keep an eye on their leaders with a litany of tools, including the Internet. But Keane may take the concept of liberalism a little too literally: The Life and Death of Democracy spans 992 pages.