Demagogue

I especially liked the discussion of the "cycle of regimes" that started in ancient Greece. Signer managed to give readers an eloquent history lesson on the roots of democracies problems and the threats that are posed by those who would usurp the power granted them by the people. Too much blind devotion to a ruler tends to create a tyranny. The tyrant becomes corrupt. His enemies begin to die. The ship of state tends to flounder. Noblemen rise to overthrow the tyrant. Jealousy forces the disquieted people to conspire and overthrow the noblemen restarting the cycle with the next ruthless, charismatic personality with personal ambition. Signer may believe too much in his described "constitutional conscious" as the means to hold off a demagogue in the face of a society lacking in civic knowledge and political engagement. Read this book and formulate you own opinion. Converse with me about your findings at usrepublic (at) aol dot com.

Before he became world famous for putting forth his theory of a "clash of civilisations", the political scientist Samuel Huntington was known for his work on the processes of democratisation. In his 1991 book The Third Wave, Huntington traced the expansion of democratic freedoms in Europe after the upheavals of 1848 through their demise at the hands of fascist dictators in the 1930s, the post-Second World War wave of democratisation in the Third World that ended in the brutal African and Latin American dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s and, finally, a third wave that reached its height at the end of the Cold War. In his new book, Michael Signer - a fellow at the Center for American Progress, political scientist, lawyer and current candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia - argues that Huntington's third wave is giving way to a tide of strongmen who take advantage of democratic elections to consolidate their own power. Signer is not alone in worrying that the spread of democracy, if not properly conceived, is potentially dangerous. The Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria's 2003 book, The Future of Freedom, examined the dilemma posed by "illiberal democracies", which go through the motions of holding elections but do not govern by liberal, constitutional principles; the Yale law professor Amy Chua's 2003 book, World on Fire, warned that rapid democratisation in socioeconomically polarised societies could encourage the rise of tyrants who channel popular anger toward economically dominant minority groups, such as whites in Zimbabwe or Bolivia; more recently, the Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond wrote of a "democratic recession". As nascent democracies are cannibalised by corrupt, predatory governments, Diamond argues, they fail to become anything more than states that happen to allow citizens to vote. Signer's book continues in the same vein, but focuses on the peril of instances where a single, popular individual comes to power through democratic means and uses that power to subvert democracy. Demagogue is, at its core, a meditation on an inherent danger: "As democracy expands," Signer writes, "it increases the potential for its own destruction." Framing his argument around the ancient Greek historian Polybius's cycle of regimes - the notion that monarchy will always descend into tyranny, aristocracy will lead to oligarchy, and that pure democracy will decay into "government of violence and the strong hand" - Signer's book revisits a conundrum that has occupied the great political theorists from Plato, who saw his mentor Socrates sentenced to death by the mob, to Hannah Arendt, who watched as her professor and lover Martin Heidegger was seduced by Nazism. Signer sets out four criteria that define the demagogue: he is a leader who presents himself as a common man, depends on charisma and a deep emotional connection with the people, exploits his own popularity to satisfy his political ambitions and, finally a

Michael Signer's book is an interesting synthesis of history, philosophy and foreign affairs and is likely to be enjoyed by any enthusiast of the same. As the Obama Administration inherits the previous administration's attempt to spread democracy, it would do well to draw on Signer's compelling explanation of constitutionalism as the glue that hold genuine democracy together. The book welds historical events from Cleon of Athens through Huey Long and Saddam Hussein with the philosophers that drew conclusions from those same events. The final conclusion is that democracy promotion abroad is undoubtedly important, but cannot just be the mere mechanics of electing leaders. Rather, successful democracy promotion is really an exercise in nurturing the spirit of individual accountability amongst all citizens for the sustenance of the franchise. Signer illustrates how Athens and the United States were able to establish this spirit and gives specific ideas on how America may peacefully and sustainably foster democracy by drawing on those lessons. This book is well worthwhile for anyone interested in democracy today, whether they are the President or a rifle platoon leader on his way to Afghanistan. (I wish I had read it before my deployment to Afghanistan). Short in length, the reader can breeze through it quickly, but the more pensive reader is likely to tarry and think through many of the passages.

Had I not spoken with Michael Signer at a political event, I would probably never have read Demagogue: The Fight To Save Democracy--and I would have been the poorer for it. The purpose of his book is to provide a political theory, both empirical (what is) and normative (what can be), to craft a foreign policy that promotes democracy by working with people within their own cultural context--as opposed to installing/imposing "one size fits all" democracy from the outside. And while his argument for such a foreign policy is compelling, his writing is far richer for what it tells us about our own (constitutional) democracy. Signer uses the four criteria posited by James Fenimore Cooper in 1838 (yes, the Last of the Mohicans guy) to describe the demagogue (used in the most negative way).He included the "political tsunami" (41) Cleon of Athens and from the 20th century foreign favorites such as Hitler and Mussolini and lesser known domestic ones, such as Huey Long, Father Coughlin, George Wallace, among others. Against this background, Signer introduces "seven great political thinkers who personally grappled with the fight to save democracy" (22)--Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, and Walt Whitman (yes, the poet as political thinker!) While Plato and Strauss "joined [together] on the wrong side of the democracy divide" (149) basically asserting the common people needed an elite to govern them, the rest of our grapplers "call[ed] for a strengthened political role for ordinary people [we the people!], coupled with a greater civic education and a stronger sense of responsibility and obligation" (23). Along the way, Signer reminded me that ours is a constitutional democracy based on our collective constitutional conscience (the mores that de Tocqueville described), which values the rule of law and the "spirit that underlies the law" (210). And while we do employ the mechanisms of a structural democracy (elections, political parties, etc.) our constitutional democracy is not to be confused with the mere structural democracies of countries such as Lebanon, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba--and, of course, Iraq. Singer's prose is engaging and his tone objective and respectful. For example, he gives a cogent and, for me, quite enlightening history of the move from conservatism through neoconservatism to the present day neocon movement. His assessment of the Bush administration's disaster in Iraq was justifiably (IMO) pointed in fact and analysis but civil in tone. As "we the people" recover from the Bush administration, Demagogue couldn't be more timely. After the eight years of the demagogic forces within his administration, this book is a (clichéd) "must read" for those of us who have wondered why the egregious attacks on our Constitution were allowed by "we the people" to happen. More important, however, is to realize ways that we can renew our collective constitutional conscience so such attacks are