Since the financial meltdown of 2008, political protests have spread around the world like chain lightning, from the "Occupy" movements of the United States, Great Britain, and Spain to more destabilizing forms of unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Russia, Thailand, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Ukraine. In Democracy The Politics of Global Protest, commentator and political scientist Ivan Krastev proposes a provocative interpretation of these popular uprisings—one with ominous implications for the future of democratic politics. Challenging theories that trace the protests to the rise of a global middle class, Krastev proposes that the insurrections express a pervasive distrust of democratic institutions. Protesters on the streets of Moscow, Sofia, Istanbul, and São Paulo are openly suspicious of both the market and the state. They reject established political parties, question the motives of the mainstream media, refuse to recognize the legitimacy of any specific leadership, and reject all formal organizations. They have made clear what they don't want—the status quo—but they have no positive vision of an alternative future. Welcome to the worldwide libertarian revolution, in which democracy is endlessly disrupted to no end beyond the disruption itself.
Author
Ivan Krastev (Bulgarian: Иван Кръстев, born 1965 in Lukovit, Bulgaria), is a political scientist, the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, permanent fellow at the IWM (Institute of Human Sciences) in Vienna, and 2013-14-17 Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Robert Bosch Stiftung in Berlin. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group and is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. From 2004 to 2006 Krastev was executive director of the International Commission on the Balkans chaired by the former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Bulgarian Edition of Foreign Policy and was a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London (2005-2011). His books in English include "After Europe" (UPenn Press, 2017), "Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest" (UPenn Press, May 2014), "In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders", (TED Books, 2013); "The Anti-American Century", co-edited with Alan McPherson, (CEU Press, 2007) and "Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anticorruption" (CEU Press, 2004). He is a co-author with Stephen Holmes of a forthcoming book on Russian politics.
