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’s insights are trenchant, especially with regards to the Citizens United decision, and his counsel on how the ‘status-quo bias’ in national political institutions favors the privileged. After more than a decade of imperial overreach, his restrained account of foreign policy should likewise find support.”—Scott A. Lucas, Los Angeles Review of Books“Shapiro has a brief and compelling section on the importance of hope in his first chapter. This book enacts and encourages hope, with its analytical clarity, deep engagement of complicated political issues that resist easy theorizing, and emphasis on the politically possible.”—Kathleen Tipler, Political Science Quarterly“Offers important insights for thinking about democracy’s prospects.”—Christopher Hobson, Perspectives on Politics

Genres: Politics

281 pages, Kindle Edition

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.