The People vs. Democracy

Yascha Mounk

Related Links

• Watch Yascha Mounk in “The Post-Election Path,” a November 2020 roundtable discussion hosted by The State of American Democracy Project as part of its series “Democracy Unchained”
• Read Mounk’s virally popular Atlantic essay on COVID-19 and social isolation, “Cancel Everything” (and a follow-up, on the “moral instincts” behind Americans’ seeming inability to heed directives to stay home)
• At the Atlantic, read Mounk’s (August 2019) argument that Democrats should embrace a path of moderation—rather than edgy progressivism—in order to win in 2020
• Read a Times of Israel interview with Mounk on how, as spring 2019 elections approach, Israel’s oft-maligned coalition system could act as a crucial check on creeping populism
• Read The Economist’s interview with Mounk as well as an excerpt from The People vs. Democracy
• Watch Mounk explore with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour why Westerners are increasingly eschewing democracy in favor of populist authoritarianism
• At Politico, read Mounk on when, exactly, America “jumped the shark”
• Read a November 2018 Q&A with Mounk at BLARB, the blog of the Los Angeles Review of Books
• Watch Mounk discuss whether “this populist moment will turn into a populist age” on MSNBC’s Morning Joe
• Read an August 2018 New Statesman interview with Mounk, who “thought democracy was in crisis before it was cool”
• In the New Yorker, read Mounk’s analysis of the relatively recent rise of entrenched party politics and platform solidification at the national level in the United States, where previously most politicking happened much more locally—and personally
• Read Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa’s Foreign Affairs feature, “The End of the Democratic Century: Autocracy’s Global Ascendance”
• Watch an episode of PBS’s The Open Mind in which Mounk explains how popular opinion is turning to favor authoritarianism
• At the National Observer, read a Canadian analysis—informed by The People vs. Democracy—of the threat of authoritarianism in the United States
• Listen to Mounk debate the state of American democracy with Vox’s Ezra Klein on Klein’s eponymous podcast (and read Klein’s follow-up essay considering many of the issues discussed)
• Watch Mounk’s June 2018 conversation with Ivo Daalder, President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs
• Listen to Mounk’s discussion with the Irish Times podcast Inside Politics
• At Slate, read Mounk’s argument that Donald Trump is following the same playbook as other authoritarian populists around the world
• Watch Mounk on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight and read an excerpt from The People vs. Democracy
• On TVO Canada’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, watch Mounk explain how authoritarian populists have placed democracy at risk
• Listen to Mounk discuss the uncertain future of liberal democracy on CBC Radio’s The Sunday Edition
• In the Washington Post, read Mounk’s warning that even when populist leaders like Silvio Berlusconi lose power, they often find a way back to it
• At Zócalo Public Square, watch or listen to Mounk’s spring 2018 presentation at the Daniel K. Inouye Institute, “Is the Public Destroying Democracy?”
• On WNPR’s Colin McEnroe Show, listen to Mounk present the idea that democracy is dying
• On WNYC’s Midday, listen to Mounk argue that this may be the last chance to save democracy—both in the United States and globally
• On KQED’s Forum, listen to Mounk consider what can be done to keep democracy across the globe intact
• Listen to Mounk discuss The People vs. Democracy on KPFA’s Letters and Politics, KUER’s RadioWest, WAMU’s 1A, and Wisconsin Public Radio’s Central Time
• Read a Vox interview with Mounk on why so many Westerners feel democracy has failed them
• Read Mounk’s interview with Vice in which he considers what the end of American democracy could look like
• Read Mounk’s in-depth interview with the Washington Post conservative blog Right Turn: Part I | Part II
• Read an adapted excerpt from The People vs. Democracy, “How Populist Uprisings Could Bring Down Liberal Democracy,” at The Observer
• At the Atlantic, read Yascha Mounk’s argument (adapted from The People vs. Democracy) that across a range of issues, public policy does not reflect the preferences of the majority of Americans—and that we need to think more honestly about the ways in which we can (and cannot!) put the people back in control
• Listen to Mounk on the University of Melbourne podcast The Pursuit, the Foreign Policy podcast, the Lawfare podcast, the World Affairs podcast (from the World Affairs Council of Northern California), Slate’s Trumpcast, The American Interest’s podcast, Social Europe’s podcast Start Worrying, Details to Follow, the Scholars Strategy Network’s podcast No Jargon, the Roxanne Coady’s Just the Right Book! podcast, and Salon writer Chauncey DeVega’s podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show
• Via Social Europe, watch Mounk’s February 2018 presentation to the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University
• In the New York Times, read Mounk’s close-of-2017 warning that Donald Trump, Fox News, and Republicans in Congress are no longer just passively obfuscating the truth, but instead actively using falsehoods to prepare an assault on the very institutions that allow American democracy to function
• Watch Mounk discuss the crisis of liberal democracy with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria
• Watch Mounk argue for the motion that “Western Democracy Is Threatening Suicide” in an October 2017 Oxford-style debate hosted by Intelligence²
• Watch Mounk argue for the motion that “Automation Will Crash Democracy” in another Intelligence² debate in May 2018
• Read profiles of Mounk and his work to expose and resist threats to liberal democracy in the Atlantic, the Chronicle Review, and the Harvard Crimson
• Read coverage of the research behind The People vs. Democracy in the New York Times
• Read Mounk’s New York Times essay on the long-term danger to democracy of the current presidential administration’s actions
• Read a Council on Foreign Relations conversation with Mounk about the rise of illiberal democracy
• Read Mounk’s spring 2017 New York Times essay on recounting how he celebrated his brand-new U.S. citizenship: by immediately joining a protest President Trump’s executive order on immigration
• In Politico, read Mounk on American democracy’s vulnerability to demagoguery
• Listen to Mounk’s podcast, The Good Fight
• Read Mounk’s columns at Slate
• Visit Mounk’s website

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