Yascha Mounk's The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure has taken some fairly visceral abuse of late. (See, in particular Ian Beacock's review in The New Republic.) This response may stem not so much from anything within the pages of the book but rather result from Mounk's participation on the punditry circuit--particularly within Persuasion, his centrist, neo-liberal Substack. In any case, he seems to have managed to inspire somewhat biting commentary from both his left and his right.
While I don't myself think The Great Experiment moves the discussion very far forward--and I'm pretty confident that none of Mounk's proposed remedies are capable of doing much to reduce the frequency or intensity of conflicts occurring either between diverse ethnic, racial or cultural groups or within individual groups--I also don't think this book deserves quite the pounding it has taken in some quarters. I mean, even sketches of inhuman brutality around the world along with the description of bromides claimed likely to reduce their number can be put engagingly, and--somewhat unusually for writers on democracy--Mounk has done that. His book is both elegantly written and interesting throughout, and those alone seem to me noteworthy merits.
Anyhow, my new Hornbook review of the work can be found here.
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