Democracy Disrupted The Politics Of Global Protest [Paperback]

Since the financial meltdown of 2008, political protests have spread around the world like chain lightning, from the Occupy movements of the United States, Great Britain, and Spain to more destabilizing forms of unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Russia, Thailand, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Ukraine. InDemocracy Disrupted: The Politics of Global Protest, commentator and political scientist Ivan Krastev proposes a provocative interpretation of these popular uprisings—one with ominous implications for the future of democratic politics.

Challenging theories that trace the protests to the rise of a global middle class, Krastev proposes that the insurrections express a pervasive distrust of democratic institutions. Protesters on the streets of Moscow, Sofia, Istanbul, and São Paulo are openly suspicious of both the market and the state. They reject established political parties, question the motives of the mainstream media, refuse to recognize the legitimacy of any specific leadership, and reject all formal organizations. They have made clear what they don't want—the status quo—but they have no positive vision of an alternative future.

Welcome to the worldwide libertarian revolution, in which democracy is endlessly disrupted to no end beyond the disruption itself.

Few people can question the conventional wisdom of democracy like Ivan Krastev.Democracy Disruptedis his latest and most interesting intervention. —George Soros

A must read. —Moisés Naím, Carnegie Endowment and author ofThe End of Power

Introduction
Chapter 1: Protest against Politics
Chapter 2: The Democracy of Rejection
Chapter 3: Exit Politics

Acknowledgments
Notes

From the Introduction

The desire to make sense of the present is what guided me in writing this little book on protests and democracy. It is not a book about any particular protest, although the protests in Bulgaria inspired l*