The Great Experiment

**One of Barack Obama's Recommended Reads for Summer

[A] brave and necessary book . . . Anyone interested in the future of liberal democracy, in the US or anywhere else, should read this book. Anne Applebaum**

A convincing, humane, and hopeful guide to the present and future by one of our foremost democratic thinkers. George Packer

A rare thing: [an] academic treatise . . . that may actually have influence in the arena of practical politics. . . . Passionate and personal. Joe Klein, New York Times Book Review

From one of our sharpest political thinkers, a brilliant big-picture vision of how to bridge the bitter divides within diverse democracies

Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment of our time. Drawing on history, social psychology, and comparative politics, Mounk explains why we need to create a world in which our ascriptive identities come to matter less not because we ignore global injustices, but because we have succeeded in addressing them.

The Great Experiment is that rare book that offers both a profound understanding of an urgent problem and genuine hope for our human capacity to solve it. As Mounk contends, it is up to us and the institutions we build whether we come to see each other as strangers or compatriots. Giving up on the prospect of diverse democracies is simply not an option and that is why we must strive to realize a more ambitious vision for the future of our societies.

“In this brave and necessary book, Yascha Mounk honestly confronts the challenges to democracy posed by diverse, multiethnic societies, while at the same time refusing to give in to fashionable pessimism. He argues that we can and should find ways to build common ground, using good-faith patriotism to build consensus. Anyone interested in the future of liberal democracy, in the US or anywhere else, should read this book.” —Anne Applebaum, staff writer for the Atlantic and Senior Fellow, SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University

“The Great Experiment confronts the intense challenges faced today by diverse societies in creating norms and institutions that allow their citizens to live peacefully with one another.  It moves from insightful analysis of our current crisis to practical suggestions on how to mitigate conflicts over race and identity—a blueprint for a more optimistic future.” —Dr. Francis Fukuyama, Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy and author of The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment and The End of History and the Last Man

“A convincing, humane, and hopeful guide to the present and future by one of our foremost democratic thinkers.” —George Packer, author of The Unwinding and Last Best Hope

“Liberal democracies beat authoritarianism in the 20th century, but are growing more unstable in the 21st. In The Great Experiment, Yascha Mounk shows us our history, our psychology, our self-inflicted wounds, and our best hope for creating stable democracies that benefit from diversity. This magnificent book increases our odds of success.” —Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind and professor at NYU-Stern School of Business**

“[A] hopeful meditation on a multicultural world . . . Writing with insight, nuance, and sympathy to all sides.” —Publishers Weekly

“Can diverse democracies flourish? The Great Experiment is a bold and necessary counter-argument to nativists, populists and pessimists.” —Helen Lewis, Staff Writer, The Atlantic

Autorentext

Yascha Mounk

Klappentext

From one of our sharpest and most important political thinkers, a brilliant big-picture vision of the greatest challenge of our time-how to bridge the bitter divides within diverse democracies enough for them to remain stable and functional

Looking around the world, it's easy to be pessimistic about the fate of democracy in multiethnic societies. The Right has long been the source of skepticism about the idea of power-sharing and equality between a country's dominant ethnic group and anyone else. And the Left, traditionally the source of universal humanist ideals, has grown more pessimistic of late too about the ability of different groups to truly integrate in harmony, celebrating their differences without essentializing them. The issue is a very hard one, and for good reason, Yascha Mounk argues: the project of multiethnic democracies in which all groups coexist on an equal basis is very new in historical terms. It is a great experiment. The history of humankind is a story of us versus them. Hobbes had it wrong: the state isn't needed to keep individuals from slaughtering each other; it's needed to keep groups from slaughtering each other.

And yet, Mounk argues, group identity is both deeply rooted and quite malleable. He tells the story of two tribes in Southeastern Africa who hate each other in one country, where they compete for political power, while just across the border in a neighboring country they partner closely against a much larger array of more alien rivals. There's actually a lot of this around the world: he offers a brilliant tour across time and space of how groups change footing from conflict to cooperation, making the point that no community is beyond all hope of conciliation and unity. But groups have to come together as equals, on a level playing field, or else true integration is impossible. This remains the challenging task it has always been, and Mounk brings enormous reserves of expertise, wisdom and empathy to the work of showing us the paths to get there. The forces on all sides making cross-cultural contact difficult are seemingly everywhere on the rise; more bridges are being blown up than are being built. It's tempting for some to argue that all we can do is retreat and argue our respective corners. That way lies disaster, he argues passionately. There is a legitimate form of patriotism we can all embrace. Indeed, we must, for the failure of this great experiment in democracy is simply not an option. The Great Experiment is that rare book that offers both a profound understanding of the problem behind all of our other problems of collective action, and genuine hope for our human capacity to solve it.

Zusammenfassung
**One of Barack Obama's Recommended Reads for Summer 

“[A] brave and necessary book . . . Anyone interested in the future of liberal democracy, in the US or anywhere else, should read this book.” —Anne Applebaum**

“A convincing, humane, and hopeful guide to the present and future by one of our foremost democratic thinkers.” —George Packer

“A rare thing: [an] academic treatise . . . that may actually have influence in the arena of practical politics. . . . Passionate and personal.” —Joe Klein, New York Times Book Review

From one of our sharpest political thinkers, a brilliant big-picture vision of how to bridge the bitter divides within diverse democracies

Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment of our time. Drawing on history, social psychology, and comparative politics, Mounk explains why we need to create a world in which our ascriptive identities come to matter less—not because we ignore global injustices, but because we have succeeded in addressing them.…