James Kloppenberg, “Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought” (Oxford UP, 2016)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Oct 21, 2016 · 1h 6m

James Kloppenberg is the Charles Warren Professor of American history at Harvard University. Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers a detailed and sweeping intellectual history of the ideas that are at the heart of the democratic process. Kloppenberg traces the features of democracy beginning with ancient Athens and Rome to revolutionary America and Europe to the challenge of the American Civil War. He examines the conflict fraught process of applying the principles of deliberation, pluralism, and reciprocity in…