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Rosie White, Comic Democracies: From Ancient Athens to the American Republic. By Angus Fletcher, English: Journal of the English Association, Volume 66, Issue 254, Autumn 2017, Pages 285–287, https://doi.org/10.1093/english/efx013
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Extract
With the Trump presidency and impending Brexit creating shock waves on either side of the Atlantic it would appear that all bets are off for Western democracies. Comic Democracies was published before these events took place; indeed I suspect it was written when such eventualities seemed unthinkable. What? A reality star as president – surely this is science fiction? Yet this has happened in the last few months and the shocks continue to come, with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s new powers following his election in Turkey, shenanigans surrounding the Presidential election in France, and yet another general election in the increasingly un-United Kingdom. Despite emerging before such events could be taken into account this volume offers a timely reflection upon the meaning of a democratic mandate. Most significantly, in light of recent events, this book argues against the notion of democracy as the freedom to do what one likes – the ‘libertarian’ ethos of free market economies – in favour of the necessity for democratic governments to protect their minorities.