The list of 100 Books on Democracy is really 200 Books on Democracy now. A second list on books from 2019 to today is available below for readers looking for more recent selections. Many of the authors of new books were interviewed on the podcast. Please subscribe to the podcast and support the project with a monthly contribution at Patreon below.
100 Books on Democracy
- Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2005) – Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
- Gerard Alexander (2002) – The Sources of Democratic Consolidation
- Michelle Alexander (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
- Gabriel Abraham Almond and Sidney Verba (1963) – The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations.
- David Altman (2010) – Direct Democracy Worldwide.
- Anne Applebaum (2017) Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine.
- Hannah Arendt (1951) – The Origins of Totalitarianism
- Aristotle (BCE) Politics
- Irving Babbitt (1924) – Democracy and Leadership
- James Baldwin (1963) – The Fire Next Time
- Mark R. Beissinger (2002) Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State
- James Bryce (1921) – Modern Democracies, Vol. 1
- Edmond Burke (1790) Reflections on the Revolution in France
- Thomas Carothers (1999) – Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve
- Nic Cheeseman, Paul Chaisty, and Timothy Joseph Power (2018) Coalitional Presidentialism in Comparative Perspective Minority Presidents in Multiparty Systems
- Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas (2018) How to Rig an Election
- Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw (2017) Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia
- Kathy Cramer (2016) The Politics of Resentment- Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker
- Robert Dahl (1989) – Democracy and its Critics
- Robert Dahl (1971) – Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition
- Robert Dahl (1956) – A Preface to Democratic Theory
- Robert Dahl (1998) – On Democracy
- Robert Dahl (1961) – Who Governs? Democracy and Power in the American City
- Patrick Deneen (2018) Why Liberalism Failed.
- Matthew Desmond (2016) Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
- John Dewey (1916) – Democracy and Education
- Larry Diamond (2008) – The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World
- Frederick Douglass (1845) – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
- John Dryzek (2000) – Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations
- James Fishkin (2009) – When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy & Public Consultation
- Francis Fukuyama (1992) – The End of History and the Last Man
- Francis Fukuyama (2011) – Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
- Francis Fukuyama (2014) – Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy
- William Galston (2018) – Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy
- Masha Gessen (2017) The Future Is History How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
- Tom Ginsburg (2003) – Judicial Review in New Democracies: Constitutional Courts in Asian Cases
- Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq (2018) – How to Save a Constitutional Democracy
- Antonio Gramsci (1971) – Selections from the Prison Notebooks.
- Jürgen Habermas (1962) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
- Jürgen Habermas (1992) – Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
- Jürgen Habermas (1996) – The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory
- Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (2010) Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
- Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (1788) The Federalist Papers
- Friedrich Hayek (1944) The Road to Serfdom
- Thomas Hobbes (1651) Leviathan
- Arlie Russell Hochschild (2016) Strangers in Their Own Land Anger and Mourning on the American Right
- Samuel Huntington (1991) – The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century
- Yang Jisheng (2012) Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962
- Michiko Kakutani (2018). The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
- Immanuel Kant (1795) Perpetual Peace.
- Ernesto Laclau (2005). On Populist Reason
- Ryszard Legutko (2016) – The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
- Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (2018) – How Democracies Die
- Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way (2010) Competitive Authoritarianism Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War
- Arend Lijphart (1999, 2012) (2nd Edition) – Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries
- Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (eds.) (4 vols.) (1978) – The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes
- Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996) – Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe.
- John Locke (1689) Second Treatise of Government
- Niccolò Machiavelli (1531) Discourses on Livy
- C. B. Macpherson (1973) – Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval
- Scott Mainwaring (ed.) (2018) Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse
- Seymour Martin Lipset (1960) – Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics
- Seymour Martin Lipset (1989) – Continental Divide The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada
- Michael McFaul (2018) From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia
- Robert Michels (1911) – Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracies
- Branko Milanovic (2016) Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization
- John Stuart Mill (1861) – Considerations on Representative Government
- John Stuart Mill (1859) On Liberty.
- Barrington Moore (1966) – Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World
- Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau (1985) – Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics
- Chantal Mouffe (2000) – The Democratic Paradox
- Yascha Mounk (2018) – The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save it
- Moisés Naím (2013) The End of Power From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be
- Guillermo O’Donnell (1973) – Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics
- Guillermo O’Donnell and Phillippe Schmitter (1986) – Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies.
- Thomas Paine (1776) Common Sense.
- Thomas Piketty (2013) Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- David Pion-Berlin (2016) – Military Missions in Democratic Latin America
- Plato (BCE) The Republic
- Karl Popper (1945) The Open Society and its Enemies.
- Robert Putnam (1995). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
- Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro (2018) – Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself
- John Rawls (1971) A Theory of Justice
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) The Social Contract
- David Runciman (2018) – How Democracy Ends
- Michael Sandel (1996, 2022) Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy
- Giovanni Sartori (1962) – Democratic Theory
- E. E. Schattschneider (1960) – The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America
- Carl Schmitt (1922) – The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy
- Joseph A. Schumpeter (1943) – Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
- Amartya Sen (1999) Development as Freedom.
- Timothy D. Snyder (2017) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
- Timothy D. Snyder (2018) The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
- Thucydides (BCE) History of the Peloponesian War
- Alexis De Tocqueville(1835, 1840) – Democracy in America
- Alexis De Tocqueville(1856) The Old Regime and the French Revolution
- David Van Reybrouck (2013) – Against Elections: The Case for Democracy
- Michael Walzer (1983) – Spheres of Justice: A Defense Of Pluralism And Equality
- E. B. White (2019) – On Democracy
- Mary Wollstencraft (1792) Vindication of the Rights Women
100 Books on Democracy Since 2019
- Caitlin Andrews-Lee (2021) The Emergence and Revival of Charismatic Movements: Argentine Peronism and Venezuelan Chavismo
- Anne Applebaum (2020) – Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
- Stanislav Aseyev (2022) In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas
- Larry Bartels (2023) Democracy Erodes from the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe
- Mark Beissinger (2022) The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion
- Sheri Berman (2019) – Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day
- Chris Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti (2021) – Technopopulism The New Logic of Democratic Politics
- Derek Black (2020) – Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy
- Daniel M. Brinks, Steven Levitsky, and María Victoria Murillo (2020) The Politics of Institutional Weakness in Latin America
- Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue (2019) – Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization
- Daniel Carpenter (2021) – Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation, 1790–1870
- Erica Chenoweth (2021) Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
- Martin Conway (2020) Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945–1968
- Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon (2020) Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order
- Michael Coppedge, Amanda B. Edgell, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg Why Democracies Develop and Decline
- Agnes Cornell, Jørgen Møller, and Svend-Erik Skaaning (2020) – Democratic Stability in an Age of Crisis: Reassessing the Interwar Period
- Angus Deaton and Anne Case (2020) Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
- Ronald J. Deibert (2020) Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society
- Larry Diamond (2019) – Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency.
- Lisa Jane Disch (2021) Making Constituencies Representation as Mobilization in Mass Democracy.
- Lee Drutman (2020) – Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America
- Kevin Duong (2020) – The Virtues of Violence: Democracy Against Disintegration in Modern France
- Grzegorz Ekiert, Elizabeth J. Perry, and Xiaojun Yan (2020) Ruling by Other Means : State-Mobilized Movements
- Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath (2022) The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy.
- Abel Escribà-Folch, Covadonga Meseguer Yebra, and Joseph Wright (2022) Migration and Democracy: How Remittances Undermine Dictatorships
- Timothy Frye (2021) Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia
- Francis Fukuyama (2022) Liberalism and its Discontents
- Laura Gamboa (2022) Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy
- Julian Gewirtz (2022) Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s
- Tom Ginsburg (2021) Democracies and International Law
- Sara Wallace Goodman (2022) Citizenship in Hard Times How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat
- Karen J. Greenberg (2021) Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump
- Anna Grzymała-Busse (2023) Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State
- Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (2020) Let Them Eat Tweets How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality
- Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman (2021) Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World
- Nicole Hanna-Jones (2021) The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
- Michael Hoffman (2021) – Faith in Numbers: Religion, Sectarianism, and Democracy
- Donald L. Horowitz (2021) Constitutional Processes and Democratic Commitment
- Michael L. Hughes (2021) – Embracing Democracy in Modern Germany: Political Citizenship and Participation, 1871-2000.
- John Ikenberry (2020) – A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order.
- Jennie C. Ikuta (2020) – Contesting Conformity: Democracy and the Paradox of Political Belonging
- Elisabeth Ivarsflaten and Paul M. Sniderman (2022) The Struggle for Inclusion: Muslim Minorities and the Democratic Ethos
- Christophe Jaffrelot (2021) – Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy
- Robert Kagan (2023) The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941
- Donald F. Kettl (2020) The Divided States of America: Why Federalism Doesn’t Work
- Ezra Klein (2020) Why We’re Polarized
- Aynne Kokas (2022) Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty
- Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes (2019) – The Light that Failed: Why the West is Losing the Fight for Democracy
- Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2020) Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope
- Martin Krygier, Sydney, Adam Czarnota, and Wojciech Sadurski (2022) Anti-Constitutional Populism
- Hélène Landemore (2020) – Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century
- Nathan Law and Evan Fowler (2021) Freedom: How We Lose It and How We Fight Back
- Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way (2022) Revolution and Dictatorship The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism
- Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, and Kenneth M. Roberts (2021) Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization?
- James Loxton (2021) Conservative Party-Building in Latin America: Authoritarian Inheritance and Counterrevolutionary Struggle
- Jie Lu and Yun-han Chu (2021) Understandings of Democracy: Origins and Consequences Beyond Western Democracies
- Noam Lupu, Virginia Oliveros, and Luis Schiumerini (eds.) (2019) Campaigns and Voters in Developing Democracies Argentina in Comparative Perspective
- Gabrielle Lynch, Justin Willis, and Nic Cheeseman (2021) – The Moral Economy of Elections in Africa: Democracy, Voting and Virtue
- Aldo Madariaga (2020) Neoliberal Resilience: Lessons in Democracy and Development from Latin America and Eastern Europe
- Scott Mainwaring and Tarek Masoud (eds.) (2022) Democracy in Hard Places.
- John G. Matsusaka (2020) – Let the People Rule: How Direct Democracy Can Meet the Populist Challenge
- Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman (2020) – Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy
- Michael Miller (2021) – Shock to the System: Coups, Elections, and War on the Road to Democratization
- An Xiao Mina (2019) Memes to Movements: How the World’s Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power
- Yascha Mounk (2022) The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure
- Cas Mudde (2019) – Far Right Today.
- Jan-Werner Müller (2021) – Democracy Rules
- Thant Myint-U (2019) – The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and Democracy in the 21st Century.
- Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (2019) – Europe’s Burden: Promoting Good Governance Across Borders
- Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili and Ilia Murtazashvili (2021) Land, the State, and War: Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan
- Moises Naim (2022) The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century.
- Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart (2019) – Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism
- Elizabeth R. Nugent (2020) – After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition
- Barak Obama (2020) A Promised Land
- Lynette Ong (2022) Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China
- Zeynep Pamuk (2021) Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society
- Zizi Papacharissi (2021) – After Democracy: Imagining Our Political Future
- Takis Pappas (2019) – Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis
- Thomas Piketty (2019). Capital and Ideology
- Thomas Piketty (2022) A Brief History of Equality
- Jessica Pisano (2022) Staging Democracy: Political Performance in Ukraine, Russia, and Beyond
- Serhii Plokhy (2023) The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History
- Peter Pomerantsev (2019) – This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality
- Christopher Prosser, Edward Fieldhouse, and Geoff Evans (2019) Electoral Shocks: The Volatile Voter in a Turbulent World
- Adam Przeworski (2019) – Crises of Democracy
- Robert Putnam (2020) The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again
- Scott Radnitz (2021) Revealing Schemes The Politics of Conspiracy in Russia and the Post-Soviet Region
- Jonathan Rodden (2019) Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide
- Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead (2019) A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy
- Bryn Rosenfeld (2020) – Autocratic Middle Class: How State Dependency Reduces the Demand for Democracy.
- Michael Sandel (2020) The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good
- Dan Slater and Joseph Wong (2022) – From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia
- Amy Erica Smith (2019) – Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God
- David Stasavage (2020) – The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today
- Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley (2020) Votes, Drugs, and Violence The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico
- Michael Walzer (2023) The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On Liberal as an Adjective
- Kurt Weyland (2021) – Assault on Democracy: Communism, Fascism, and Authoritarianism During the Interwar Years
- Isabel Wilkerson (2020) Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
- Joshua Yaffa (2020) Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia
- Shoshana Zuboff (2019) – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.
