How Democracy Ends Quotes

“Weak democracies are vulnerable to coup d’états because their institutions cannot absorb a frontal assault. Strong democracies are relatively immune to a frontal assault because their institutions are resilient. As a result, the assault on stable democracies comes from the sides. Some of it gets deflected into idle chatter – the constant talk of betrayal, failure and crisis that is the background noise of partisan politics. Some of it gets pushed under the surface and behind the scenes, where only the adults in the room can be sure what really took place, and even they don’t agree. These phenomena feed off each other. Idle talk about the end of democracy is excellent cover for incremental assaults on democracy to hide behind. Meanwhile, the incremental assaults help to feed the talk of failure, without anyone being sure.”
― David Runciman, How Democracy Ends

“Weak democracies are vulnerable to coup d’états because their institutions cannot absorb a frontal assault.”
― David Runciman, How Democracy Ends

“Nozick thinks the mistake utopians make is to assume that their idealised society will work for everyone. No matter how it works or who designs it, some people are bound to loathe it. Instead we should recognise that the best society would be one in which different human types can find their own way to live. Communism would only be utopia for the people who prefer things this way;for others it would be hell. The same is true for Gandhi's asceticism, for Emma Goldman's anarchism and even Ayn Rand's version of libertarianism, which trumpets the virtues of the free market. Nozick thinks a true utopia would need to have a room for all these things, and to allow them to be freely chosen by the different people who lived there.”
― David Runciman, How Democracy Ends

“On the other hand, had Obama refused to permit Trump’s inauguration, on the grounds that he was still occupying the White House, or that he was planning to install Clinton there, then democracy in America would have been done for, at least for now.”
― David Runciman, How Democracy Ends