| Title | : | Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0300238479 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780300238471 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 280 |
| Publication | : | Published May 21, 2019 |
Much of our politics today, Paul Starr writes, is a struggle over entrenchment—efforts to bring about change in ways that opponents will find difficult to undo. That is why the stakes of contemporary politics are so high. In this wide‑ranging book, Starr examines how changes at the foundations of society become hard to reverse—yet sometimes are overturned. Overcoming aristocratic power was the formative problem for eighteenth‑century revolutions. Overcoming slavery was the central problem for early American democracy. Controlling the power of concentrated wealth has been an ongoing struggle in the world’s capitalist democracies. The battles continue today in the troubled democracies of our time, with the rise of both oligarchy and populist nationalism and the danger that illiberal forces will entrench themselves in power. Entrenchment raises fundamental questions about the origins of our institutions and urgent questions about the future.
Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies Reviews
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I had the privilege of meeting with the author during a recent visit to Princeton. Dr. Starr told me about his work in this book and how it related to my own research. This book does not disappoint, giving a powerful argument about how power can become entrenched and when constitutional democracies that are entrenched might break down. I especially enjoyed the chapter on inherited wealth. I recommend reading this if you're interested in how path-dependency or locked-in social facts and rules.
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Mary Kay said her law school reading group was tackling this book. Since I was trying (and still am) to figure how we could get so far away from the United States I value, I decided to read this and see if it shed any light. Basically it was good but very, very dry. How Democracies Die is much better at answering the questions I have.
