This is a list of the best books on democracy and politics since 2019. Many of the authors have appeared on the podcast. Some of the authors even discussed these very books on the podcast. However, the goal is to give a fair assessment of the most interesting or impactful books about democracy or politics. These are the books people will continue to talk about twenty years from now. The list is periodically refreshed to keep up with the latest books available.
100 Recent Books on Democracy and Politics
- Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2019) The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty
- Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson (2023) Power and Progress Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity
- Bethany Allen (2023) Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World
- 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
- Jonathan Blitzer (2024) Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
- Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe (2022) When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm
- 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
- Katlyn Marie Carter (2023) Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions
- Adam Casey (2024) Up in Arms: How Military Aid Stabilizes—and Destabilizes—Foreign Autocrats
- Erica Chenoweth (2021) Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
- Joshua Chin and Liza Lin (2022) Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
- Steve Coll (2024) The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq
- Michael Coppedge, Amanda B. Edgell, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg (2022) Why Democracies Develop and Decline
- 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.
- Grzegorz Ekiert, Elizabeth J. Perry, and Xiaojun Yan (2020) Ruling by Other Means : State-Mobilized Movements
- Patricia Evangelista (2023) Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country
- Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath (2022) The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy.
- Timothy Frye (2021) Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia
- Francis Fukuyama (2022) Liberalism and its Discontents
- Archon Fung, David Moss, and Odd Arne Westad (Eds.) When Democracy Breaks: Studies in Democratic Erosion and Collapse, from Ancient Athens to the Present Day
- Laura Gamboa (2022) Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy
- Samuel A. Greene and Graeme B. Robertson (2019) Putin vs. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia
- Anna Grzymała-Busse (2023) Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State
- Sebnem Gumuscu (2023) Democracy or Authoritarianism: Islamist Governments in Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia
- Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman (2022) Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century
- 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
- Shadi Hamid (2022) The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea
- Nicole Hanna-Jones (2021) The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
- John Ikenberry (2020) – A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order.
- 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
- Robert Kaplan (2023) The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China
- Ezra Klein (2020) Why We’re Polarized
- Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes (2019) – The Light that Failed: Why the West is Losing the Fight for Democracy
- 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
- Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (2023) Tyranny of the Minority
- 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
- Rachel Maddow (2023) Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism
- Scott Mainwaring and Tarek Masoud (eds.) (2022) Democracy in Hard Places.
- 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
- Yascha Mounk (2023) The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time
- Cas Mudde (2019) – Far Right Today.
- Jan-Werner Müller (2021) – Democracy Rules
- 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
- Zeynep Pamuk (2021) Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society
- Takis Pappas (2019) – Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis
- Minxin Pei (2024) The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China
- 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
- Peter Pomerantsev (2024) How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler
- 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
- Matthew Rhodes-Purdy, Rachel Navarre, and Stephen Utych (2023) The Age of Discontent: Populism, Extremism, and Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Democracies
- Heather Cox Richardson (2023) Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America
- 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
- Elizabeth Saunders (2024) The Insiders’ Game: How Elites Make War and Peace
- Rachel Schwartz (2023) Undermining the State from Within: The Institutional Legacies of Civil War in Central America
- Simon Shuster (2024) The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky
- 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
- Joseph Torigian (2022) Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao
- Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley (2020) Votes, Drugs, and Violence The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico
- Yaroslav Trofimov (2024) Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence
- 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
- Kurt Weyland (2024) Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat: Countering Global Alarmism
- Natasha Wheatley (2023) The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty
- Isabel Wilkerson (2020) Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
- Shoshana Zuboff (2019) – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.
