Why our freedom is in danger

Mr Mounk uses a number of case studies to demonstrate how electoral democracy has, through legitimate means, brought to power populists who claim to speak in the name of people

The People vs. Democracy

Yascha Mounk 

Harvard University Press 

328 pages 

Rs 699

There is little doubt that we live today in an era of democratic recession. Across the world, in democracies, new and old, we witness the relentless rise of populism, often associated with a lurch towards authoritarianism. Yascha Mounk, who teaches politics at Harvard, dissects these political trends, identifies their structural origins and postulates what could rescue liberal democracy from the existential dilemma that beset it.

Mr Mounk makes an important distinction between liberalism and democracy. Democracy, he says, is a “set of binding electoral institutions that effectively translates popular views into public policy.”