In ‘The People vs. Democracy,’ Trump Is Just One Populist Among Many

Yascha Mounk's book The People vs. Democracy was reviewed in the New York Times.

The title of Yascha Mounk’s new book, The People vs. Democracy, makes clever use of what looks like a glaring oxymoron: After all, what is democracy if not rule by the people? When democracy is under siege, the belligerents are supposed to be dictators, oligarchs and autocrats; the people are supposed to be the guardians (if all goes well), or else the victims (if it doesn’t).

But that’s just the delusions of liberal democracy talking. Mounk, who lectures on political theory at Harvard and builds on the important work of scholars like Jan-Werner Müller and Cas Mudde, shows how populist insurgencies can undermine democracy — in the long run, that is.