Demagogues and Despots : Democracies on the Brink

Author: John Keane

Political science & theory

Published on 21 May 2026 by C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 260 pages
190 x 126 | 0g

Democracy and despotism live closer together than you’d expect—this briskly astute book reveals why that should alarm us all.

We live in troubled times, marked by a sinister trend threatening democracy everywhere: the triumph of despotism not only in countries like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, but also in states run by popularly elected demagogues—Trump, Erdogan and Netanyahu.

Leading political thinker John Keane shows why this new despotism defies the laws of political gravity. Instead of relying exclusively on fear or force, it fosters a strange, pseudo-democratic type of government, led by rulers skilled in winning public loyalty through election-rigging, legal trickery, corruption, weaponised lying and talk of enemies. And alarmingly, the new despots hunt in packs.

But what’s so good about democracy? In bold, energetic prose, Keane explains that it’s much more than popular self-government based on free and fair elections. Democracy is the collective insistence that unaccountable power is always dangerous—and that democratic institutions are our best weapon against demagogues and despots.