Politics against Domination

by Ian Shapiro

Ian Shapiro makes a compelling case that the overriding purpose of politics should be to combat domination. Moreover, he shows how to put resistance to domination into practice at home and abroad. This is a major work of applied political theory, a profound challenge to utopian visions, and a guide to fundamental problems of justice and distribution.

Shapiro builds his case from the ground up, but he also spells out its implications for pressing debates about electoral systems, independent courts, money in politics, minimum wages, and the vulnerabilities of minorities. He takes up debates over international institutions and world government, intervention to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing, and the challenges of fostering democracy abroad. Shapiro is brutally realistic in his assessments of politics and power, yet he makes an inspiring case that we can reasonably hope to devise ways to combat domination and act on them. Gleaning insights from the battle against slavery, the creation of modern welfare states, the civil rights movement, Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, and the worldwide campaign against sweatshops, among other sources, Shapiro explains the ingredients of effective coalitions for political change and how best to press them into the service of resisting domination.

Politics against Domination ranges over political science, psychology, economics, history, sociology, and law. It will be of interest to seasoned veterans of political theory in all these disciplines. But it is written in the lucid and penetrating style for which Shapiro is widely known, making it readily accessible to newcomers.

Genres: Politics

288 pages, Hardcover

Published April 4, 2016

About the author

Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science and Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center at Yale University. He is known primarily for interventions in debates on democracy and on methods of conducting social science research. In democratic theory, he has argued that democracy's value comes primarily from its potential to limit domination rather than, as is conventionally assumed, from its operation as a system of participation, representation, or preference aggregation. In debates about social scientific methods, he is chiefly known for rejecting prevalent theory-driven and method-driven approaches in favor of starting with a problem and then devising suitable methods to study it.

Reviews

[Josh Cayetano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shapiro expands his theory of democratic, majoritarian politics grounded in his realist critique of republican constitutionalism from the perspective of nondomination. I found his framing of the political problem as a problem of power and domination, and his solution of democratic politics as essentially a trust-busting enterprise against monopolies of power, to be extremely illuminating. This book definitely requires at least some baseline of understanding about political theory to be readable, since Shapiro does not provide what would be a helpful contrast of democratic and republican theory until the final chapter. Also, I found the roving examples using comparative politics only slightly helpful—they often confused the narrative more than clarified it. Other than that, great book. Largely a summary of all his prior books.