Spectre of Democracy

Levin traces the century and a half between the American and French revolutions and the end of the First World War, a key period for public debate over democratization. Examining the writings and ideology of a variety of anti-democratic thinkers, he illustrates how arguments for franchise extention had to contend with a deeply entrenched antipathy to democratic ideas. Only if we resurrect expressions of this opposition, he argues, and recall the dominant values that democracy challenged, are we able to understand the historical and ideological context from which modern western values and institutions emerged.