Reviews

Monitory democracy for better governance

The Nation

Jan 28, 2012

John Keane challenges the myth that democracy began in Athens 2,500 years ago and argues that the ancient civilisations of Syria-Mesopotamia were experimenting with popular assemblies up to 2,000 years before the Athenians. Keane objects to the distorting foundation myth that leads us to assume that, as an inherently Western idea, democracy must have gone into hibernation until rediscovered in England/France/the US about 2,000 years later. (Full Review here)

 

The Father of Modern Voting

By John Reardon

June 1, 2011

I’d never heard of William Robinson Boothby (1829 – 1903) until I started reading some months ago John Keane’s widely and rightly acclaimed book The Life and Death of Democracy. (Full Review here)

 

Fudan, Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 09 February 2011

After more than 10 years of hard work, Professor Keane successfully helps his readers to extend their understanding of democracy from its origins in the ancient world of Syria-Mesopotamia to the present-day world. (View here) (Chinese translation)

 

Kirkus Reviews, 25 May 2009

A distinguished political scientist takes a broad view of democracy, speculating on both the lineage and the prospects of a cherished doctrine.

 

The Times, 27 May 2009

Political scandal, public outrage, celebrity activism – as the current storm rages around Westminster, David Aaronovitch welcomes a book that explains how we got here and what the future may hold.

‘I had been as confused as any other observer about these events’ – writes Aaronovitch – ‘thrashing around attempting to catch their meaning – and then I read John Keane’s The Life and Death of Democracy’ (here)

 

The Telegraph, 31 May 2009

Despite the onwards and upwards approach taken by Kohn Keane in his Life and Death of Democracy, our own system is proof that the story of democracy still has a long way to go, says Noel Malcolm (Full review here)

 

The Sunday Times, June 7, 2009

‘In John Keane’s global history of democracy’ writes Dominic Sandbrook, ‘Britain plays only a supporting role, with an index entry far smaller than India’s and hardly bigger than Brazil’s’.

 

The Observer, June 7, 2009

‘Though it is often difficult to know what democracy really means, it has never been hard to say where it started, or when: it all began in Athens about 2,500 years ago. Right? Wrong, according to John Keane, who thinks that our taste for these sorts of founding myths is a large part of why we are so confused about what democracy is and how it works’. From David Runciman’s review appeared on The Observer on 7 June 2009. Read full review here

 

Literary Review, June 2009

Ben Wilson reviews The Life and Death of Democracy in the June issue of the Literary Review, pp. 36-38.

 

The Guardian, June 2009

Review by John Kampfner – It appeared in the Guardian on Saturday 20 June 2009 on p8

‘The other day, as I was waiting to meet someone in the House of Commons, an old-school MP accosted me. “Isn’t it terrible, all that’s going on?” His implication was that the expenses scandal had unjustly dragged this venerable institution into the mud. “No, it isn’t,” I replied. “It’s marvellous.

 

Financial Times, June 2009

Review by Sunil Khilnani – Published: June 20 2009

‘The story of democracy is replete with surprising disappointments and triumphs. Witness in recent weeks the collapse of the moral authority of the “mother of all parliaments” in the UK in a scatter of expense claims. Meanwhile, in India, that land of democratic improbabilities, nearly half a billion people – most of them illiterate – voted to install a stable, progressive government. Who would have thought it?’ (full review)

 

Publishers Weekly, June, 22, 2009

[The Life and Death of Democracy’s] broad sweep, wealth of detailed knowledge, shrewd insights and fluent, lively prose make it a must-read for scholars and citizens alike .

 

The First Post, June, 23 2009

Non-fiction: A general history of democracy by John Keane which set out to “democratise the history of democracy”

 

The Times, 27 June 2009

The Life and Death is among the best history books for ‘your holiday reading’,according to the Times. The London paper calls the book ‘the publishing event of the summer’.

 

From Spain

The book has been mentioned in the Spanish press even though a Spanish translation of the Life and Death of Democracy is not yet available:

NFORMACION.ES quotes a newspaper of the Province of Alicante: ‘The Cortes of Leon represented “a qualitative jump”, states John Keane in his book The Life and Death of Democracy, which was written to challenge a series of entrenched ideas about democracy.’

The Diario de León writes “This is a timely recognition, as León is preparing to celebrate next year the 1,100th anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom” (View here)

 

Camden New Journal, 23 July 2009

Explosive impact of a bout of jealousy?

John Keane’s new book tells the story of democracy – from the racy myth of its origins in Ancient Greece to the shifting model of the post-war world order, writes Dan Carrier (read the full review here)

 

Courier Mail, Brisbane, 1 August 2009

AUSTRALIA’S big gift to democracy was the secret ballot – conceived in Victoria after the Eureka uprising of 1854 but first used in the neighbouring colony of South Australia in 1858 when “voters dropped their marked and folded ballot paper into a large, oblong, padlocked box .

 

The Monthly, n. 48, August 2009

Melbourne.

By Tim Soutphommasane

It has been a mixed year so far for democracy. […] For anyone seeking some guidance on how to make sense of all this, John Keane’s The Life and Death of Democracy will seem rather timely (read full review here)

 

The Guardian, 3 August 2009

The Life and Death of Democracy by John Keane is on the Summer reading for radicals of the Guardian. Read review here

 

The Canberra Times, 22 August 2009

If democracies and their defenders, are “sleepwalking their way into deep trouble”, John Keane’s latest tome, The Life and Death of Democracy, delivers the kind of slap that should rouse even the most comatose of them.’ writes Brenton Holmes in the Canberra Times ‘Or more likely, it would concuss them. Coming in at just under a thousand pages, it is not a book for the faint-hearted. Nor is it a book to be shelved until one has a month free to wade through it.’ (View here)

 

BBC Persian Website, Farsi language, August 2009

Mohammad Poor, Daryoush. “John Keane; Strange Origins of Democracy.” BBC Persian, 12 Aug. 2009.

 

Social Europe Journal, August 2009

From Stephen Barber’s review: This is an extraordinary book which tells us almost as much about the future of our democracy as it does about the past and the present. It shows us how fragile is democracy and reminds us that, despite its recent shortcomings, we rather like democracy and rather take it for granted. (read full review here)

Mediate.com and the Consensus Building Approach’s blog, September 2009

Review by Larry Susskind, CBI and Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Vice-Chair for Instruction at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School

I’m trying to make my way through John Keane’s massive book, The Life and Death of Democracy (Norton, 2009). He reviews three “epochs” in the evolution of democracy .

A distinguished political scientist takes a broad view of democracy, speculating on both the lineage and the prospects of a cherished doctrine.

John Keane’s The Life and Death of Democracy (2009) is a thick tome. I did not expect the theorist (here) of ‘civil society’ as the site of social progress to be sympathetic reading. But, in contrast to many of the books I’ve been looking at when writing recently I thought it would be stimulating, interesting, and well-argued (add usual adjectives for someone you don’t really agree with). Besides I’ve a soft spot for anyone who annoys the Iranian theocrats

 

The Age, on 8 august 2009

Th reviewer writes This ambitious study charts the rise of a political system and ponders its future. A product of a decade of research and writing, this is a work of enduring importance. (View here)

 

The National, 15 October 2009

John Keane’s new history shows that democracy is not a uniquely western invention. But this important revision, John Gray argues, does not add up to an argument for its necessity

 

Australian Book Review, November 2009

“How does one review a serious academic study of 950 pages that covers two thousand years of political history? In this case” writes Dennis Altman “I shall be upfront and declare that I am only reviewing part of Keane’s thesis, and will leave it to historians to discuss the remainder of his book. If I concentrate on the last 300 pages, this is because they contain more than enough material for even the keenest reader, let alone a harassed reviewer.” (View here)

 

International Affairs, March 2010

Governance, civil society and cultural politics a review of the Life and Death of Democracy by Christopher Hobson (University of Aberystwyth, UK) and published in International Affairs 86: 2, 2010, pp. 15-16.

 

The National Interest, 23 February 2010

Democracy & Its Discontents

a review of The Life and Death of Democracy published by John Dunn (Cambridge University) in The National Interest (here)