Mounk, Y. (2018)

Mounk, Y. (2018). ''The people vs. Democracy. Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It.'' Harvard University Press.


 * 6. There is a “slow divergence of liberalism and democracy”.
 * 13. In Greece under the troika: “a form of undemocratic liberalism”. In Hungary: illiberal democracy.
 * 27. “A democracy is a set of binding electoral institutions that effectively translates popular views into public policy”
 * 27. “Liberal institutions effectively protect the rule of law and guarantee individual rights such as freedom of speech, worship, press, and association to all citizens (including ethnic and religious minorities)”
 * 48. Populists claim to be “the sole representatives of the people’s will”. “Over time, they come to regard anybody who disagrees with them as a traitor and conclude that any institution that stands in their way is an illegitimate perversion of the people’s will. Both have to be done away with.”
 * 78. Who influences Congress? “Economic elites and narrow interest groups were very influential. Mass-based interest groups had little effect on public policy. The views of ordinary citizens had virtually no independent impact at all.”
 * 120. “Citizens are less committed to democracy and more open to authoritarian alternatives than they once were. Respect for democratic norms and rules has precipitously declined.”
 * 120. ”young people in a broad range of countries are actually more likely to identify as radical than older people.”
 * 135. Scope conditions for democratic stability: “First, the dominance of mass media limited the distribution of extreme ideas, created a set of shared facts and values, and slowed the spread of fake news. ... Second, all throughout the history of democratic stability, most citizens enjoyed a rapid increase in their living standards, and held high hopes for an even better future. ... And third, nearly all stable democracies were either founded as monoethnic nations or allowed one ethnic group to dominate.”
 * 149. Internet communication revolution “in empowering outsiders, digital technology destabilizes governing elites all over the world and speeds up the pace of change.” Both in democracies and non-democracies.
 * 149. Internet communication revolution “in the short run – which is to say, for the rest of our lives – it will make for a more chaotic world.”
 * 158. Jonathan Rothwel and Pablo Diego-Rosell on Trump supporters “might not be experiencing acute economic distress, but are living in places that lack economic opportunity for the next generation.” Jed Kolko adds: “Economic anxiety ... is about the future, not just the present.”
 * 171. Anti-immigration sentiment rise most “when highly homogenous societies first encounter outsiders”. “the most fundamental transition in the lives of most citizens might take place when they start having to deal with immigrants on a regular basis, not when the number of immigrants with whom they interact on a regular basis increases.”
 * 174. “A lot of the anger at immigration is driven by fear of an imagined future rather than by displeasure with a lived reality.”
 * 180. “When economic growth is rapid, everybody can be a winner. ... When economic growth is slow”: zero sum game.
 * 200. “the core of the populist appeal is the claim to a “moral monopoly of representation””
 * 233. As soon as an “earned” identity, associated with jobs, “slips out of their reach, they are likely to default to an “ascriptive” identity – making their ethnicity, their religion, and their nationality more central to their worldview.”
 * 234. New jobs do not make it possible “to derive a sense of identity and belonging from their jobs”
 * 245. “Ever since philosophers began to think about the concept of self-rule, they have put a particular emphasis on civic education.”
 * 254. Is there a “dramatic swing from undemocratic liberalism to illiberal democracy”?