Includes bibliographical references (p.164-179) and index

An enormously important book on politics and democracy. What makes it both interesting and brilliant reading is not Chou’s abandonment of democracy but his scorching analysis of how democracy is misrepresented – the perversions and swindles made in its name against its real promise. Read this book and you will never again take democracy for granted.’Henry A. Giroux is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University and a distinguished visiting scholar at Ryerson University.‘Mark Chou reveals the endogenous factors that can make democracy unsustainable. This eloquently written book offers new insights on democratic politics for scholars, students, and citizens.’Nancy S. Love, Professor of Political Science, Appalachian State UniversityA lively exploration of the reasons why some democracies self-destructThat all democracies have, by their very nature, the potential to destroy themselves is a fact too rarely documented by acolytes of the system. In the decades since Joseph Goebbels, then as Reich Minister of Propaganda, reminded the world that it ‘will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed’, democrats have quickly forgotten just how precarious a political framework it can be.Using as illustrative examples the collapse of democracy in ancient Athens and the Weimar Republic, as well as the uncertain fate of democratic rule in the United States and China today, this book examines the conditions and characteristics of democracy that make it prone to self-destruct. In drawing out the political lessons from these past collapses, Mark Chou explains how a democracy can, in the course of being democratic, sow the seeds of its own destruction.