DEMOCRACY'S DISCONTENT
America in Search of a Public Philosophy
Michael J. Sandel
Harvard University Press (1996)

"Times of trouble prompt us to recall the ideals by which we live. But in America today, this is not an easy thing to do. At a time when democratic ideals seem ascendant abroad, there is reason to wonder whether we have lost possession of them at home. Our public life is rife with discontent. Americans do not believe they have much say in how they are governed and do not trust government to do the right thing. Despite the achievements of American life in the last half-century—victory in World War II, unprecedented affluence, great social justice for women and minorities, the end of the Cold War—politics is beset with anxiety and frustration.

The political parties, meanwhile, are unable to make sense of our condition. The main topics of national debate—the proper scope of the welfare state, the extent of rights and entitlements, the proper degree of government regulation—take their shape from the arguments of an earlier day. These are not unimportant topics; but they do not reach the two concerns that lie at the heart of democracy's discontent. One is the fear that, individually and collectively, we are losing control of the forces that govern our lies. The other is the sense that, from family to neighborhood to nation, the moral fabric of community is unraveling around us. These two fears—for the loss of self-government and the erosion of community —together define the anxiety of the age. It is an anxiety that the prevailing political agenda has failed to answer or even address.

Why is American politics ill equipped to allay the discontent that now engulfs it? The answer lies beyond the political arguments of our day, in the public philosophy that animates them. By public philosophy, I mean the political theory implicit in our practice, the assumptions about citizenship and freedom that inform our public life. The inability of contemporary American politics to speak convincingly about self-government and community has something to do with the public philosophy by which we live...." Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent (1996), Part I, The Constitution of the Procedural Republic, Chapter 1, "The Public Philosophy of Contemporary Liberalism," pp. 3–4

BOOK DESCRIPTION
PUBLISHER
What ails democracy in America today, and what can be done about it? Democracy's Discontent traces our political predicament to a defect in the public philosophy by which we live. In a searching account of current controversies over the role of government, the scope of rights and entitlements, and the place of morality in politics, Michael Sandel identifies the dominant public philosophy of our time and finds it flawed.

The defect, Sandel maintains, lies in the impoverished vision of citizenship and community shared by Democrats and Republicans alike. American politics has lost its civic voice, leaving both liberals and conservatives unable to inspire the sense of community and civic engagement that self-government requires.

In search of a public philosophy adequate to our time, Sandel ranges across the American political experience, recalling the arguments of Jefferson and Hamilton, Lincoln and Douglas, Holmes and Brandeis, FDR and Reagan. He relates epic debates over slavery and industrial capitalism to contemporary controversies over the welfare state, religion, abortion, gay rights, and hate speech. Democracy's Discontent provides a new interpretation of the American political and constitutional tradition that offers hope of rejuvenating our civic life.

BOOK REVIEWS
Fouad Ajami–U. S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT
"In times of trouble men and women ransack their past and their traditions. In Democracy's Discontent...Michael Sandel...has raided that great American attic and returned with a bold narrative of the ancestors and the civic tradition they bequeathed ...Sandel gives us one of the most powerful works of public philosophy to appear in recent years...[and] weaves a seamless web between the American present and the American past...[A] brilliant diagnosis."

George F. Will–NEWSWEEK
"American political discourse has become thin gruel because of a deliberate deflation of American ideals. So says Michael Sandel in a wonderful new book, Democracy's Discontent...Sandel's book will help produce what he desires—a quickened sense of the moral consequences of political practices and economic arrangements...Sandel is right to regret the missing moral dimension of public discourse. Or he was until recently. Suddenly politics has reacquired a decidedly Sandelean dimension. Political debate is reconnecting with the concerns Sandel so lucidly examines...Statecraft is again soulcraft, and the citizens who will participate best, and with most zest, will be the fortunate readers of Sandel's splendid expansion of our rich political tradition."

Thomas L. Friedman–NEW YORK TIMES
"A provocative new book...Democracy's Discontent argues that modern democracies will not be able to sustain themselves unless they can find ways of contending with the global economy, while also giving expression to their people's distinctive identities."

John B. Judis–WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
"Michael Sandel...has written an important book about the meaning of liberty. Sandel argues that over the last century, Americans have abandoned an earlier communitarian view of liberty, rooted in participation in self-government, for a narrower, individualistic definition, based on the power of personal choice. That has led to the great paradox of American politics: Just as Americans have become freer in the conduct of their personal lives, they have become more constrained in their public lives. The strength of Sandel's book is his account of how this definition of liberty has changed over the last 200 years. He argues persuasively that the new definition reinforces undesirable trends in court decisions and public policy...Sandel argues brilliantly that the change in this definition of liberty took place after the Civil War and was based primarily on economic change...His analysis is superb...By revealing the shallowness of liberal and conservative views of democracy, [this book] inspires us to reevaluate what American politics is really about."

Eric Foner–THE NATION
"Among liberalism's critics, few have been more influential or insightful than Michael Sandel, a proponent of what has come to be called the 'communitarian' alternative... In Democracy's Discontent, Sandel...offer[s] a full historical account of the evolution of liberalism in the United States...This carefully argued, consistently thought-provoking book is grounded in a sophisticated understanding of past and present political debates. Democracy's Discontent is well worth reading as we near yet another presidential election in which soundbites and poll-generated slogans substitute for reasoned debate about the nation's future."

Mary Ann Glendon–NEW REPUBLIC
"Sandel's latest contribution...is notable for its seriousness, its intelligence and its illuminating excursions into constitutional law...His brand of soulcraft is not about soul-engineering, but about protecting social environments that are conducive to the development of the habits and the virtues upon which all liberal welfare states finally depend."

Paul A. Rahe–WALL STREET JOURNAL
"A profound contribution to our understanding of the present discontents."

KIRKUS REVIEWS
"A wide-ranging critique of American liberalism that, unlike many other current books on the matter, seeks its restoration as a guiding political ethic...A book rich in ideas."

Alan Brinkley, Columbia University
"A bold and compelling critique of American liberalism that challenges us to reassess some basic assumptions about our public life and its dilemmas. It is a remarkable fusion of philosophical and historical scholarship, and it confirms Sandel's reputation as one of America's most important political theorists."

George Kateb, Princeton University
"An impressive work. It consolidates Sandel's position as the leading American republican-communitarian critic of rights-based liberalism...A major figure in the world of political theory has written a major book."

E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Why Americans Hate Politics and They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era
"A brilliant book and a wise and refreshing antidote to so much of what passes for political speech these days. With passion, reason, and eloquence, Democracy's Discontent offers a powerful alternative to both a conservatism that disdains government and a liberalism that is skeptical of the search for common values. Sandel suggests that we won't heal our fractured body politic unless we revive an American civic tradition that understands freedom not only as liberty from coercion but also as the freedom to govern ourselves together. It will challenge liberals and conservatives, moderates and radicals in ways they have not been challenged before."

Jane Mansbridge, author of Beyond Adversary Democracy and Why We Lost the E.R.A.
"An elegant reading of constitutional controversies and political arguments, this book is bound to change the course of American historiography, political philosophy, and legal scholarship."

Hilliard Aronovitch–CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"Distinctive merits of Sandel's Democracy's Discontent include its admirable combination of conceptual analysis and historical investigation, and the impression throughout of a genuinely thoughtful mind and generous spirit."

George Scialabba–BOSTON GLOBE
"It is the great achievement of Democracy's Discontent to weave around...lofty abstractions a detailed, coherent and marvelously illuminating narrative of American political and legal history. Recounting the debates over ratifying the Constitution, chartering a national bank, abolishing slavery, the spread of wage labor, Progressive Era reforms and the New Deal, Sandel skillfully highlights the presence (and, increasingly, absence) of republican ideology, the shift from a 'political economy of citizenship' to a political economy of growth."

Martin E. Marty–CHRISTIAN CENTURY
"On 'public philosophy' of the most philosophical kind I recommend Michael J. Sandel's Democracy's Discontent...Sandel is delightfully non- or bipartisan in his probes, chastisings and recommendations. Among those asking for a civil civic voice and a re-engagement with the grand themes of citizenship and the common life, he is a leader."

William Connolly–RARITAN
"This thoughtful book offers a mirror which reflects the complex organization of our political souls...Sandel assiduously draws upon the republican vision to recover forgotten dimensions of American history. He shows the importance of that tradition to the founding of America and, at least until very recently, to constitutional law. He focuses on the history of judicial involvement in those institutions such as religion, family, and public speech that set the stage for democratic citizenship; and he records how in these areas the Supreme Court has shifted from a concern to protect the cultural conditions of citizenship toward a voluntarist doctrine of the rights of the unencumbered individual...These pages, full of reflective argument and vivid examples, will repay attention by anyone seeking to come to terms with the contemporary state of American politics."

James F. Louckes III–CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES
"[Through] detailed historical analysis and eloquent prose, Sandel tells the story of the republican tradition in the United States that demonstrates the central importance character formation and civic virtue once had in American government."

Alan Ryan–DISSENT
"Democracy's Discontent...is a good guide to the awkward questions we need to ask as we lurch into the next century, as unsure as ever about how to make the democracy of the twenty-first century a shade less disconnected—or at least less pointlessly disconnected—than today's...Indeed, this may well be one of those particularly valuable books that do more good to their skeptical readers than to their fans. The...former will have to think quite hard."

Richard H. King–POLITICAL STUDIES
"Democracy's Discontent valuably traces the historical origins and development of what Sandel names the 'procedural republic', the political model within which the unencumbered self reigns supreme...The strengths of [the book] lie in Sandel's lucid exposition and analysis; more importantly, he is concerned with illuminating basic issues in political thought by actual historical examples and situations. In making full use of Supreme Court decisions, Sandel is acknowledging that much of the most vital American political thought is to be found in constitutional debates rather than academic treatises."

Michael Fry–GLASGOW HERALD
"I found an absorbing read in Michael Sandel's Democracy's Discontent...The United States produces much of the best thinking about how politics is to relate, in an era of alienation, to the civil society it purports to represent...The debate is as relevant on this as on the other side of the Atlantic."

Andrew Sullivan–NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"Beautifully and mildly argued...Mr. Sandel conveys ideas with patient lucidity...The book's strength is historical...Mr. Sandel's philosophical take on history, however, does more than nudge us out of our contemporaneity. He shows, through close readings of Supreme Court decisions, how philosophical conceptions of the person changed--from a premise that an American will inherit a belief in God, for example, to one in which Americans are viewed as people whose religious faith is chosen like desserts at a restaurant...American history is, in Mr. Sandel's telling, a story of the tragic loss of civic republicanism—the notion that liberty is not about freedom from government, but about the capacity for self-government, which alone makes the practice of freedom possible."

Richard Sennett–TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
"Michael Sandel's Democracy's Discontent is an inspired and deeply disturbing polemic about citizenship...The last two-thirds of [the book]...explore with great historical acumen just how [liberalism and republicanism] have become manifest in the real world of labour, class and capitalist development. Sandel earns his theory by this history."

Michael Rosen–TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
"A rich and beautifully written account of American jurisprudence and political history, one which...is always informative and thought-provoking."