MixedThe Washington PostThis vision of progress juxtaposes oddly with the first part of the book, which describes how previous attempts at diverse democracy all apparently devolved into petty and violent wreckage ... For the many social scientists who have been studying diversity and democracy for decades, the claim that we are undertaking a \'disorienting transformation\' that is \'without precedent\' may seem odd ... In such a widening gyre, Mounk’s calm mix of storytelling, political theory and social psychology exegesis, peppered with some charming insights, has a comforting seriousness...Yet for a book that is supposedly about \'diverse democracies,\' the actual institutions of democracy — elections, political parties and above all, power — are surprisingly peripheral ... In his more noble theorizing, Mounk grasps the key point that our best hope involves getting past the simplistic majority-minority dichotomy that dominates so much of the discourse. We should embrace complexity and avoid essentialism. But the big question remains: How?
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
