Princeton University Press
Democracy Erodes from the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe
Key Metrics
- Larry M Bartels
- Princeton University Press
- Paperback
- 9780691244525
- -
- -
- Political Science > Political Ideologies - Democracy
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Why leaders, not citizens, are the driving force in Europe's crisis of democracy
A seeming explosion of support for right-wing populist parties has triggered widespread fears that liberal democracy is facing its worst crisis since the 1930s. Democracy Erodes from the Top reveals that the real crisis stems not from an increasingly populist public but from political leaders who exploit or mismanage the chronic vulnerabilities of democracy.
In this provocative book, Larry Bartels dismantles the pervasive myth of a populist wave in contemporary European public opinion. While there has always been a substantial reservoir of populist sentiment, Europeans are no less trusting of their politicians and parliaments than they were two decades ago, no less enthusiastic about European integration, and no less satisfied with the workings of democracy. Anti-immigrant sentiment has waned. Electoral support for right-wing populist parties has increased only modestly, reflecting the idiosyncratic successes of populist entrepreneurs, the failures of mainstream parties, and media hype. Europe's most sobering examples of democratic backsliding--in Hungary and Poland--occurred not because voters wanted authoritarianism but because conventional conservative parties, once elected, seized opportunities to entrench themselves in power.
By demonstrating the inadequacy of conventional bottom-up interpretations of Europe's political crisis, Democracy Erodes from the Top turns our understanding of democratic politics upside down.
Author Bio
Larry M. Bartels holds the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. His scholarship and teaching focus on public opinion, electoral politics, public policy, and political representation.
His books include Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (with Christopher Achen) and Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2nd edition), both published in 2016. He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles, and of commentaries in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other prominent outlets. Bartels has received the Warren E. Miller Prize for contributions to the study of elections, public opinion, and voting behavior and Vanderbilt’s Earl Sutherland Prize for Career Achievement in Research.
He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society.
Source: Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University
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