All Points Books
The Demagogue's Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump
Key Metrics
- Eric A Posner
- All Points Books
- Hardcover
- 9781250303035
- 8.6 X 5.5 X 1.1 inches
- 0.8 pounds
- Political Science > American Government - Executive Branch
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Pick
What Happens to Democracy When a Demagogue Comes to Power?
It is hard to imagine understanding the Trump presidency and its significance without reading this book.
--Bob Bauer, Former Chief Counsel to President Barack Obama
What--and who--is a demagogue? How did America's Founders envision the presidency? What should a constitutional democracy look like--and how can it be fixed when it appears to be broken?
Something is definitely wrong with Donald Trump's presidency, but what exactly? The extraordinary negative reaction to Trump's election--by conservative intellectuals, liberals, Democrats, and global leaders alike--goes beyond ordinary partisan and policy disagreements. It reflects genuine fear about the vitality of our constitutional system. The Founders, reaching back to classical precedents, feared that their experiment in mass self-government could produce a demagogue: a charismatic ruler who would gain and hold on to power by manipulating the public rather than by advancing the public good.
President Trump, who has played to the mob and attacked institutions from the judiciary to the press, appears to embody these ideas. How can we move past his rhetoric and maintain faith in our great nation?
In The Demagogue's Playbook, acclaimed legal scholar Eric A. Posner offers a blueprint for how America can prevent the rise of another demagogue and protect the features of a democracy that help it thrive--and restore national greatness, for one and all.
Cuts through the hyperbole and hysteria that often distorts assessments of our republic, particularly at this time. --Alan Taylor, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History
Author Bio
Eric Posner is the Kirkland and Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Arthur and Esther Kane Research Chair.
His research interests include financial regulation, international law, and constitutional law. His books include Radical Markets (Princeton, 2018) (with Glen Weyl); Last Resort: The Financial Crisis and the Future of Bailouts (University of Chicago Press, 2018); The Twilight of International Human Rights (Oxford, 2014); Economic Foundations of International Law (with Alan Sykes) (Harvard, 2013); Contract Law and Theory (Aspen, 2011); The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic (with Adrian Vermeule) (Oxford, 2011); Climate Change Justice (with David Weisbach) (Princeton, 2010); The Perils of Global Legalism (Chicago, 2009); Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty and the Courts (with Adrian Vermeule) (Oxford, 2007); New Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis (with Matthew Adler) (Harvard, 2006); The Limits of International Law (with Jack Goldsmith) (Oxford, 2005); Law and Social Norms (Harvard, 2000); Chicago Lectures in Law and Economics (editor) (Foundation, 2000); Cost-Benefit Analysis: Legal, Economic, and Philosophical Perspectives (editor, with Matthew Adler) (University of Chicago, 2001).
He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Law Institute.
- Education
Harvard Law School - JD, magna cum laude, 1991- Yale University - BA, MA philosophy, summa cum laude, 1988
Source: The University of Chicago Law School
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