Description
Book SynopsisAs populism presaging authoritarianism surges worldwide and political rights and civil liberties erode, pundits, politicians, and political scientists agree: democracy is in crisis. But where many blame the rise of neoliberalism, Kyong-Min Son suggests that a longer historical perspective is in order.
Trade ReviewThe Eclipse of the Demos offers a striking account of the current fate of democracy in the North Atlantic world and puts paid to presentist accounts of neoliberalism and right-wing ascendance. By focusing on the distinctive contours of Cold War democratic theory and practice, the book sheds light on the historical trajectory of liberal democracy and how it relates both historically and conceptually to neoliberalism, while carefully contextualizing current modalities of democratic disaffiliation. Written with audacity and erudition, Son's book constitutes an important contribution to an accurate and sober understanding of the current travails of democracy." - Antonio Y. Vázquez-Arroyo, author of
Political Responsibility: Responding to Predicaments of Power"The critique of democracy by neoliberal thinkers like F. A. Hayek is often treated as a scandal, a basic sin against the ideology of the free society. Yet Kyong-Min Son's illuminating book shows that skepticism about democracy ran down the mainstream of scholarly conversation after 1945. There was no Golden Age. To understand the challenge to democracy posed by neoliberalism, we must reckon with the entire postwar period." - Quinn Slobodian, author of
Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism
