Book review: The Life and Death of Democracy

Describing itself as the first general history of democracy in over 100 years, this "remarkable" and "monumental" work is "nearly 1,000 pages long and with something to be learnt from almost every one of them", said David Runciman in The Observer.

The Life and Death of Democracy sets out to "democratise the history of democracy": instead of following convention and tracing democracy’s roots to Classical Athens, John Keane points out that popular assemblies were established in Mesopotamia 2,000 years earlier. And rather than relying on the familiar democratic stories of Westminster and Washington, he singles out 12th century Spain as the birthplace of parliamentary democracy, and modern India as the most dynamic and forward-looking democracy on Earth.

Like many modern academics, Keane is desperate to avoid a "privileged", Westernised viewpoint, said Noel Malcolm in The Sunday Telegraph. For instance, he argues, "in rather boisterous prose", that democracy was preserved through the Middle Ages by Islam. But “the evidence he offers (for example, the fact that Islamic society had business partnerships and charitable foundations) does not even come close to proving his argument”.

More convincing is his claim that, after 1945, a new democratic era began: the growth of the media and of power-scrutinising mechanisms such as human rights groups, watchdogs and think-tanks has led to the emergence of what Keane calls "monitory democracy", whereby citizens have a newfound ability to temper the power of their rulers. Keane is right to identify this phenomenon, but he is wrong to celebrate it uncritically. Monitory democracy "may cut through some hierarchies of power", but it is also "busily constructing new hierarchies of its own: an activist elite; human rights judges who act beyond the reach of democratic politics; and so on".

Keane "doesn’t face the problem of whose job it is to monitor the monitors", said David Aaronovitch in The Times – "many of whom face no form of accountability, beyond the presumption that as ‘ordinary’ citizens, they must be right". We need only consider the MMR scare to recognise that a combination of poor research, ruthless lobbying and widespread credulity can cause chaos. But this is still a "magnificent" and genuinely enlightening work. It’s timely, too: anyone struggling to understand the current storm of public fury and celebrity activism raging around Westminster should read The Life and Death of Democracy.

The Life and Death of Democracy, by John Keane, 992pp (Simon & Schuster, £30) The Week Bookshop £27 (incl p&p)

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, by Antony Beevor, 608pp (Viking, £25) The Week Bookshop £22.50 (incl p&p)