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Democracy: A History Hardcover – June 5, 2006

by John Dunn (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 10 ratings
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For the last twenty-five years, fostering democracy around the world has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. Why is democracy so important today? Why should it hold such sway over the political speech of the modern world? In Democracy: A History , John Dunn – England's leading political theorist — sets out to explain the extraordinary presence of democracy in today's world. The story begins in Greece, where it began as an improvised remedy for a very local difficulty twenty–five hundred years ago. Athens gave democracy a name (demokratia) and worked out an elaborate, highly distinctive, and astonishingly thorough interpretation of the political conditions required to achieve it. However, democracy's tenure was short–lived, flourishing briefly and then fading away almost everywhere for nearly two thousand years. Democracy then suddenly reappeared with the founding of the new American republic and amid the struggles of France's Revolution. The word democrat suddenly became a partisan label and a badge of political honor, lending credibility to the idea of transforming human collective life, anywhere and everywhere, to fit the requirements of democracy that are so familiar to us today.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    248 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Atlantic Monthly Press
  4. Publication date
    June 5, 2006
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0871139316
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0871139313
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

All schoolchildren learn that ancient Athens was the birthplace of democracy, forebear of the philosophy of governance that Westerners now almost universally consider the natural right of every human being. But what does our system of protected freedoms, popular elections and checks and balances really share with the public congresses of Kleisthenes and Pericles? In this complement to his previous book, Democracy: The Unfinished Journey (1992), British political theorist Dunn traces the roots of democratic rule, examining the motivations and tactics of its major proponents and detractors while deftly leading his readers through thousands of years of political rhetoric. As much a linguistic and sociological exploration as it is a political history, Dunn's book questions why this word, democracy, has gone from a peculiar concept widely regarded as a failure to a term of ridicule and derision, then to its current status in all languages as an aspirational ideal. Dunn departs ancient Greece for the enlightened radicalism of the American Revolution and the jubilant chaos of the French Revolution in his quest to answer what exactly has given "this very old and much reviled word the stamina and drive to win through in the end." (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

A Fellow of King's College, John Dunn is professor of political theory at Cambridge University.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atlantic Monthly Press; First American Edition (June 5, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0871139316
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0871139313
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 10 ratings

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John Dunn

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
10 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

mohamed
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2019
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Good
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Destiny DuShane
1.0 out of 5 stars Interesting book
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2016
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This book was not very helpful for the class I used it for.
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MoseyOn
3.0 out of 5 stars Why Democracy?
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2011
Dunn, a Cambridge political theorist, has written a book that is just a bit exasperating. On the one hand, it is an erudite meditation on why democracy, of all political forms and ideologies, has emerged as the only justification for government that can be said to have no serious challengers today (regardless of what it actually looks like in practice). He is equally concerned with the question of why this particular name, one which for most of its history has more often than not been used in derision, should be the term used to describe the various forms of government that today claim its name. On the other hand, Dunn's tendency to make the clever aside quickly becomes an annoying, showy distraction, as does his insistence on repeating the same questions over and over again. The book contains only 188 pages of text; I think we can remember what is being asked. There are places where the narrative is unnecessarily convoluted, and other places where the point being made is belabored to distraction. At its best, however, the book is very interesting. Chapters 2 and 4 (there are only four chapters) are quite good. Chapter 2 discusses the development of democracy in America and France and the debt owed to those countries' struggles both by contemporary governments and by political theory. Dunn emphasizes the importance of the ideal of equality enshrined in democracy, even as the governments that seem to take most seriously democracy as a form fail to come to terms with the contradictions between the ideal of equality and the reality of entrenched privilege and unequal power. Chapter 4 ("Why Democracy?") is an eloquent summing-up of democracy's historical fate (to date) and its possible future. Dunn is very good on the contrasts between Athenian democracy and its modern name-sharers, and on the contradictions inherent in the practice of democracy today. The most important of those contradictions is the fact that while democracy insists that government be exercised on behalf of, and in some sense with the permission of, its multitude of citizens, as a practical matter it is in the hands of a very small number of those citizens, many of whom have become career politicians. In terms of both political and economic power, the mass democracy of Periclean Athens has given way (by necessity) to an accommodation with what Dunn refers to as the "order of egoism," sustained by an economic system that encourages the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny percentage of the population. The challenge for governments that wish to be seen as democratic is to preserve their ability to claim that they rule by the consent of the governed. In an age in which the ability of governments to intervene in the lives of their citizens is more powerful than ever, this is a matter of no small importance. "The more governments control what their fellow citizens know the less they can claim the authority of those citizens for how they rule. The more governments withhold information from their fellow citizens the less accountable they are to those who give them their authority." Dunn appears to be a critic of democracy in practice precisely because he is convinced of the need to preserve it--in both theory and practice.
6 people found this helpful
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psychtobe
4.0 out of 5 stars challenging, fascinating, a little repetitive
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2008
This is not an easy book to read. The phrasing is peculiar and the sentences are frankly long; it is easy to lose the author's main points.

Having said that, the story is fascinating and worth knowing: how an obscure and idiosyncratic idea born in Athens came to dominate world political thought 2000 years later with nary a single legitimate contender for the title. In particular its rebirth in the late 1700s in the throes of the American and French revolutions is particularly relevant to today's world. The Federalist Papers are discussed in relation to the development of the American Constitution and its specific mode of 'democracy' (ie, representative). The review above mentions one of the author's principal lines of inquiry, the distinction between American-style 'egoism' (ie, individualistic capitalism) and Reign of Terror-style 'equality' (ie, redistribution of wealth).

I found this book exciting and it has inspired me to read more about both the American and French Revolutions, as well as democracy, the American Constitution, and different forms of government.

It's a short book; dense but readable especially the meat of the book after the introduction.
6 people found this helpful
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