What do you think?
Rate this book
Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies
A demagogue is a tyrant who owes his initial rise to the democratic support of the masses. Huey Long, Hugo Chavez, and Moqtada al-Sadr are all clear examples of this dangerous byproduct of democracy. Demagogue takes a long view of the fight to defend democracy from within, from the brutal general Cleon in ancient Athens, the demagogues who plagued the bloody French Revolution, George W. Bush's naïve democratic experiment in Iraq, and beyond. This compelling narrative weaves stories about some of history's most fascinating figures, including Adolf Hitler, Senator Joe McCarthy, and General Douglas Macarthur, and explains how humanity's urge for liberty can give rise to dark forces that threaten that very freedom. To find the solution to democracy's demagogue problem, the book delves into the stories of four great thinkers who all personally struggled with democracy--Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published February 3, 2009
29 people are currently reading
139 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 17, 2020
This is a sobering survey of the age-old problem of demagogues and democracy. However, I fear it's ultimately too naive and optimistic to address our current predicament. To be fair, Signer wrote this book in the early years of Obama. That he describes George W. Bush as a potential demagogue is cute, based on what we've been through now. You have no idea what's coming, honey.
Signer lays out a four part test for demagoguery lifted from James Fenimore Cooper. The demagogue: (1) holds himself out as a champion of the common people over elites, (2) bases his politics on a powerful connection to his followers that dramatically transcends ordinary political popularity, (3) manipulates that connection and popularity for his own benefit and ambition, and (4) threatens or breaks established rules of conduct, norms, institutions and laws. (Does this sound like anyone we know???) Signer distinguishes the populist from a demagogue by the final point.
The first half of the book is the strongest, where Signer gives brief accounts of Ancient Greece and the American Framers to survey past approaches to the problem of demagogues in democracy. He identifies two strains of thought in solving the demagoguery problem: Plato's Republic (an enlightened aristocracy - the preference for Hamilton, Straussians, and neocons), or training in democratic practice (ascribed here to Aristotle, Aristophanes, and Jefferson). Signer champions a concept of "constitutionalism" as the proper antidote to demagoguery, where the people themselves are inoculated from the charms of the demagogue by an appreciation for the constitution and a healthy suspicion of flattery, empty promises, and change. Signer also gives a good breakdown of the cycle of regimes feared by Greek thinkers (and Hobbes), where democracy leads to the rise of a demagogue, who then becomes a tyrant and is in turn deposed by an oligarchic (and/or military) faction, which falls to popular revolt after weakened by in-fighting, when the cycle begins anew.
While I enjoyed the historical survey, Signer falters in his analysis of whether various figures meet the 4-factor test for demagogues. Rather than taking Cooper's elements as indicia of a spectrum of demagogic behavior, Signer treats them like elements of a legal definition. Thus, he disqualifies several eminent candidates for the title on technicalities, often specious ones. Andrew Jackson didn't threaten or break norms and laws? Come on bro.
Signer's book further loses steam when he turns to the modern era. I actually found his takedown of the neocons to be quite well-done, and his tracing of their intellectual history from Leo Strauss to be admirably concise. But he wanders afield of his purported topic. His issue with the neocons isn't really about demagoguery. It's about hubris and metaphysical commitments to the idea that democracy is a default state that can be expected to arise naturally (or be imposed from without) upon effecting a regime change. Signer's main thesis is that democracy is actually a lot of work, and depends on building a culture of constitutionalism in the people. Our continuing failure in Iraq is due to overconfidence and the refusal to meet the Iraqis where they are in crafting a stable political structure.
The last section of the book is a series of recommendations on how we can best export constitutionalism and democracy to the rest of the world. To that I say: physician, heal thyself. It's amazing to see how far things have shifted in 10 years. We're barely hanging on by a thread domestically, so we're in little position to be lecturing other burgeoning democracies around the world. It's the section that ages Signer's book the most.
He also points to a focus on individuals' "private moral feelings" as a firewall to a rising demagogue. But I have serious reservations about that saving us. Seems to me that simply leads to further atomism in society, which leaves people disaffected and therefore open to the depredations of demagoguery. We need a shared set of baseline values to make both democracy and constitutionalism work. And cultivating a sense of "individual possibility as limitless" (another Signer rec) is not in fact what most people want. It leads the masses to uncertainty and fear, and then straight into the arms of the strongman who promises to alleviate such painful uncertainty. People just ain't no good.
He also lifts up Hannah Arendt and Walt Whitman as exemplars of the constitutionalist spirit. That's good stuff I suppose, and certainly Arendt is an excellent role model as we anxiously confront a rising authoritarianism (which could well become totalitarian). In the end, I found this an imperfect but salutary guide to the basic problems of demagogues in democracy. I'd love to see an updated version that grapples with our contemporary morass.
Signer lays out a four part test for demagoguery lifted from James Fenimore Cooper. The demagogue: (1) holds himself out as a champion of the common people over elites, (2) bases his politics on a powerful connection to his followers that dramatically transcends ordinary political popularity, (3) manipulates that connection and popularity for his own benefit and ambition, and (4) threatens or breaks established rules of conduct, norms, institutions and laws. (Does this sound like anyone we know???) Signer distinguishes the populist from a demagogue by the final point.
The first half of the book is the strongest, where Signer gives brief accounts of Ancient Greece and the American Framers to survey past approaches to the problem of demagogues in democracy. He identifies two strains of thought in solving the demagoguery problem: Plato's Republic (an enlightened aristocracy - the preference for Hamilton, Straussians, and neocons), or training in democratic practice (ascribed here to Aristotle, Aristophanes, and Jefferson). Signer champions a concept of "constitutionalism" as the proper antidote to demagoguery, where the people themselves are inoculated from the charms of the demagogue by an appreciation for the constitution and a healthy suspicion of flattery, empty promises, and change. Signer also gives a good breakdown of the cycle of regimes feared by Greek thinkers (and Hobbes), where democracy leads to the rise of a demagogue, who then becomes a tyrant and is in turn deposed by an oligarchic (and/or military) faction, which falls to popular revolt after weakened by in-fighting, when the cycle begins anew.
While I enjoyed the historical survey, Signer falters in his analysis of whether various figures meet the 4-factor test for demagogues. Rather than taking Cooper's elements as indicia of a spectrum of demagogic behavior, Signer treats them like elements of a legal definition. Thus, he disqualifies several eminent candidates for the title on technicalities, often specious ones. Andrew Jackson didn't threaten or break norms and laws? Come on bro.
Signer's book further loses steam when he turns to the modern era. I actually found his takedown of the neocons to be quite well-done, and his tracing of their intellectual history from Leo Strauss to be admirably concise. But he wanders afield of his purported topic. His issue with the neocons isn't really about demagoguery. It's about hubris and metaphysical commitments to the idea that democracy is a default state that can be expected to arise naturally (or be imposed from without) upon effecting a regime change. Signer's main thesis is that democracy is actually a lot of work, and depends on building a culture of constitutionalism in the people. Our continuing failure in Iraq is due to overconfidence and the refusal to meet the Iraqis where they are in crafting a stable political structure.
The last section of the book is a series of recommendations on how we can best export constitutionalism and democracy to the rest of the world. To that I say: physician, heal thyself. It's amazing to see how far things have shifted in 10 years. We're barely hanging on by a thread domestically, so we're in little position to be lecturing other burgeoning democracies around the world. It's the section that ages Signer's book the most.
He also points to a focus on individuals' "private moral feelings" as a firewall to a rising demagogue. But I have serious reservations about that saving us. Seems to me that simply leads to further atomism in society, which leaves people disaffected and therefore open to the depredations of demagoguery. We need a shared set of baseline values to make both democracy and constitutionalism work. And cultivating a sense of "individual possibility as limitless" (another Signer rec) is not in fact what most people want. It leads the masses to uncertainty and fear, and then straight into the arms of the strongman who promises to alleviate such painful uncertainty. People just ain't no good.
He also lifts up Hannah Arendt and Walt Whitman as exemplars of the constitutionalist spirit. That's good stuff I suppose, and certainly Arendt is an excellent role model as we anxiously confront a rising authoritarianism (which could well become totalitarian). In the end, I found this an imperfect but salutary guide to the basic problems of demagogues in democracy. I'd love to see an updated version that grapples with our contemporary morass.
Read
December 22, 2016Not as scholarly and well written as it should have been but popular level and timely in light of the threat Mr. Trump poses to our democracy and the rule of law.
May 7, 2018
Michel Signer's Demagogue is the sort of book that ought to be very good, because it deals with an extremely important topic, and the author is very well read and is a good writer to boot. I found it only pretty good, though, because it lacked the focus that very good books require, and it ends up overshooting its own argument and landing somewhere else.
The book begins as a historical survey of demagogues--those characters who come to power in a democracy by flattering people the people and then try to change the rules once they are in office. Hitler was a demagogue. So were Huey Long and Joe McCarthy. Andrew Jackson was sort of a demagogue, but he didn't meet quite all of the criteria, so Signer gives him a pass. Donald Trump is definitely a demagogue, but this book was written in 2009, so it can be forgiven for not mentioning the new guy.
In the introduction, Signer gives four criteria for identifying demagogues, which he draws from James Fenimore Cooper's 1838 essay "On Demagogues." I think that he is wrenching Cooper's essay out of context a little bit. The four statements he derives are there, but they are not listed as criteria, and they are mixed in with other potential criteria that Signer ignores. But the ones he gives work pretty well:
Throughout the book, Signer applies these categories exactingly, as if they were rigid requirements instead of just four statements pulled from an essay by some guy who wrote novels about Indians. This, then, leads him to argue that Andrew Jackson was not a demagogue because he technically did break any rules (which I don't really agree with, given his de facto nullification of the Supreme Court), and that George Bush was not a demagogue because he did not have a strong connection to the masses. This frames demagoguery as an either-or thing rather than a more-or-less thing, which, I think, makes the concept less useful.
The main argument of the book is that demagogues present a maddening paradox to a democracy: if the people have the power, then they have the right to give away that power, so there is always the danger that they will be seduced by a flattering demagogue. So most of the important political theory produced in a democracy will be focused on preventing the demagogue problem.
The book unfolds like a drama in three acts. The prologue comes from the work of Polybius, whose notion of the "cycle of regimes" explains how democracies give way to tyranny through the instrument of the demagogue. Then each act explores the consequences of this idea in a different historical moment.
Act I is set in Ancient Greece. The demagogue was Cleon (and to a much lesser extent, Alcibiades), and the philosopher-heroes were Plato and Aristotle, each of whom tried to create a political theory capable of controlling the kind of demagoguery that got Socrates sentenced to death. Plato did it by swearing off democracy and theorizing about a philosopher king. Demagogues could not manipulate the people to come to power because the people didn't have any power to give them. Aristotle, more grounded in realpolitik, took a milder approach and argued that democracy could be successful if 1) people knew stuff, and 2) strong constitutions existed to enshrine barriers and limit participation to the people who know the most stuff. This ends up producing something that is less like a democracy and more like an oligarchy with a really, really big group of intellectual oligarchs.
Act II is set in America at and after the Founding. The demagogues are Daniel Shays and (sort of) Andrew Jackson, and the philosopher-heroes are Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville. Jefferson, like all of the Founders, was haunted by the specter of the demagogue. Unlike Hamilton, who wanted to set up Constitutional road blocks to protect the nation from demagogues, Jefferson believed that demagogues were caused by too much government, not too little, and his answer was to devolve more power to the people and then spend lavishly to educate them so that they would exercise this power responsibly. Tocqueville, who came out of the Reign of Terror in France, was trying to understand why democracy worked in American but not in France. The difference, he concluded, lay in "mores," or a kind of habit of citizenship that had become part of American culture. Act II moves into the 20th century to discuss Huey Long and Joe McCarthy, which is informative, but not as tied to the theoretical stuff as it could be.
Act III is set in the modern day, with flashbacks to World War II. The demagogues are Hitler and the Iraqi Sh'ia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the philosopher-heroes are Leo Strauss (who is more like a villain) and Hannah Arendt. This section really gets away from the problem of demagoguery and becomes an analysis of what makes democracy work generally. It is a sustained intellectual attack on Straussian neo-conservatism and on its direct descendant, the neo-con movement that gave the intellectual impetus to the war in Iraq. Signer does a good job taking down these theoretical underpinnings, but he doesn't really relate it to the problem of demagogues. Al-Sadr really doesn't fit in the Cleon-Jackson-Long-Hitler mode, and Signer stretches his own argument past the breaking point to try to get him there.
This is not to say that Act III ends in a bad place. It just ends in a place that is only tangentially related to the overall theme of the book. By the end, Signer uses Hannah Arendt's work on totalitarianism to talk about the institutions that must work for democracy to emerge, which is not the same problem as trying to prevent a demagogue from emerging in a democracy.
The book begins as a historical survey of demagogues--those characters who come to power in a democracy by flattering people the people and then try to change the rules once they are in office. Hitler was a demagogue. So were Huey Long and Joe McCarthy. Andrew Jackson was sort of a demagogue, but he didn't meet quite all of the criteria, so Signer gives him a pass. Donald Trump is definitely a demagogue, but this book was written in 2009, so it can be forgiven for not mentioning the new guy.
In the introduction, Signer gives four criteria for identifying demagogues, which he draws from James Fenimore Cooper's 1838 essay "On Demagogues." I think that he is wrenching Cooper's essay out of context a little bit. The four statements he derives are there, but they are not listed as criteria, and they are mixed in with other potential criteria that Signer ignores. But the ones he gives work pretty well:
As Cooper recognized, true demagogues meet four rules: (1) They fashion themselves as a man or woman of the common people, as opposed to the elites; (2) their politics depends on a powerful, visceral connection with the people that dramatically transcends ordinary political popularity; (3) they manipulate this connection, and the raging popularity it affords, for their own benefit and ambition; and (4) they threaten or outright break established rules of conduct, institutions, and even the law. They can break these rules, institutions, and laws internally, by threatening tyranny in their own countries, or externally by attacking other nations or groups or by testing the international rule of law. Either way, they are intrinsically violent. As these rules suggest, demagogues (35).
Throughout the book, Signer applies these categories exactingly, as if they were rigid requirements instead of just four statements pulled from an essay by some guy who wrote novels about Indians. This, then, leads him to argue that Andrew Jackson was not a demagogue because he technically did break any rules (which I don't really agree with, given his de facto nullification of the Supreme Court), and that George Bush was not a demagogue because he did not have a strong connection to the masses. This frames demagoguery as an either-or thing rather than a more-or-less thing, which, I think, makes the concept less useful.
The main argument of the book is that demagogues present a maddening paradox to a democracy: if the people have the power, then they have the right to give away that power, so there is always the danger that they will be seduced by a flattering demagogue. So most of the important political theory produced in a democracy will be focused on preventing the demagogue problem.
The book unfolds like a drama in three acts. The prologue comes from the work of Polybius, whose notion of the "cycle of regimes" explains how democracies give way to tyranny through the instrument of the demagogue. Then each act explores the consequences of this idea in a different historical moment.
Act I is set in Ancient Greece. The demagogue was Cleon (and to a much lesser extent, Alcibiades), and the philosopher-heroes were Plato and Aristotle, each of whom tried to create a political theory capable of controlling the kind of demagoguery that got Socrates sentenced to death. Plato did it by swearing off democracy and theorizing about a philosopher king. Demagogues could not manipulate the people to come to power because the people didn't have any power to give them. Aristotle, more grounded in realpolitik, took a milder approach and argued that democracy could be successful if 1) people knew stuff, and 2) strong constitutions existed to enshrine barriers and limit participation to the people who know the most stuff. This ends up producing something that is less like a democracy and more like an oligarchy with a really, really big group of intellectual oligarchs.
Act II is set in America at and after the Founding. The demagogues are Daniel Shays and (sort of) Andrew Jackson, and the philosopher-heroes are Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville. Jefferson, like all of the Founders, was haunted by the specter of the demagogue. Unlike Hamilton, who wanted to set up Constitutional road blocks to protect the nation from demagogues, Jefferson believed that demagogues were caused by too much government, not too little, and his answer was to devolve more power to the people and then spend lavishly to educate them so that they would exercise this power responsibly. Tocqueville, who came out of the Reign of Terror in France, was trying to understand why democracy worked in American but not in France. The difference, he concluded, lay in "mores," or a kind of habit of citizenship that had become part of American culture. Act II moves into the 20th century to discuss Huey Long and Joe McCarthy, which is informative, but not as tied to the theoretical stuff as it could be.
Act III is set in the modern day, with flashbacks to World War II. The demagogues are Hitler and the Iraqi Sh'ia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the philosopher-heroes are Leo Strauss (who is more like a villain) and Hannah Arendt. This section really gets away from the problem of demagoguery and becomes an analysis of what makes democracy work generally. It is a sustained intellectual attack on Straussian neo-conservatism and on its direct descendant, the neo-con movement that gave the intellectual impetus to the war in Iraq. Signer does a good job taking down these theoretical underpinnings, but he doesn't really relate it to the problem of demagogues. Al-Sadr really doesn't fit in the Cleon-Jackson-Long-Hitler mode, and Signer stretches his own argument past the breaking point to try to get him there.
This is not to say that Act III ends in a bad place. It just ends in a place that is only tangentially related to the overall theme of the book. By the end, Signer uses Hannah Arendt's work on totalitarianism to talk about the institutions that must work for democracy to emerge, which is not the same problem as trying to prevent a demagogue from emerging in a democracy.
December 20, 2016
Originally published several years ago, this book takes on a new urgency in the light of USanian elections this year. A fascinating study of the ways democracy undermines itself and of the history of demagoguery in the classical and USAnian contexts. My only quibble is the author's tendency to occasionally wax a bit utopian (this is limited to the introductory and concluding parts of the text); he does an admirable job, overall, of staying in the realistic camp but it seems that on occasion his natural instincts get the better of him.
October 24, 2016
In the age of Donald Trump's run for the White House, this is an important book. While Trump isn't the subject, he might as well be (and the author has been interviewed several times saying that Trump fits the definition of demagogue to a T). But we do meet several of history's demagogues as well as some of the most important thinkers on the subject of democratic constitutionalism, which is seen as the antidote to demagoguery.
April 3, 2018
Very informative read, but a bit muddled at the end.
Very good explanation of the real enemy of the USA; the attack on democracy known from Ancient Greece to modern times from the populist Demagogue. The author has a difficult time, at the end in formulation of practical solutions however.
Very good explanation of the real enemy of the USA; the attack on democracy known from Ancient Greece to modern times from the populist Demagogue. The author has a difficult time, at the end in formulation of practical solutions however.
April 11, 2011
a good and cohesive account of how America came to be the bastion of freedom, against all odds. It gives the reader good insight into the mechanics of democracy.
June 21, 2018
This book is enlightening and relevant, however I think in light of the current political environment I think it needs to be updated.
July 1, 2017
It is strange to read this book in 2017 when it seems demagogues are present in so many places, particularly in the United States. Signer does a very nice job of describing what makes someone a demagogue, he has written articles about the election of President Trump where he argues that he is indeed a demagogue, and I think does a great job of describing how to stop a demagogue. Demagogues are stopped by average citizens speaking back to power and having a "constitutionalism" embedded within their culture. At times it seems a little grandiose, and unrealistic. At other times, it feels like exactly what is happening (and hopefully continues to) in the U.S.A. One interesting part of Signer's book is the way he seems to be confident that the U.S. will not have a demagogue that attains power, yet he has done so and he continues to consolidate power. Every few months I will make a habit of searching to see if Signer has written a follow up piece or an op-ed.
November 9, 2025
Book Needs a modern response, but what I find encouraging is that these reviews in " good reads " are much more useful than the professional ones also available, especially those from 2009. Which supports the idea that Democracy is a Res Publica , a thing of the People. Are we simply on this journey of discovery, experiencing the inevitable ups and downs of progress? The message of many is "don't check out, ever."
October 11, 2020
Completely pertinent to the demagoguery of the Trump Presidency. Hopefully democracy prevails and votes him out to protect our country's future.
June 25, 2024
Loved this book. Though the book was published in 2009, I would love to see an updated revision to a post Trump political world.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews