Democracy Disrupted: The Politics of Global Protest.

• Author: Popivanov, Boris
• Position: Book review

Democracy Disrupted: The Politics of Global Protest

By Ivan Krastev

Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014, 88 pages, $12.95, ISBN 9780812223309.

In a 1994 book, "The Twilight of Democracy," American analyst Patrick Kennon examined various negative trends in contemporary politics and concluded: (1) the form of government of most states in the mid-21st century will have very little in common with what we today call democracy, and (2) it will be called democracy. Ivan Krastev's latest book on the global protest wave cites examples of protest upsurges as diverse as Brazil, the US, the UK, Spain, Tunisia, Egypt, Bulgaria, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Thailand, and finds a common feature. People who protest these days, he contends, either wish for democracy if they don't have it, as a form of government, or advocate another type of democracy, more genuine and moral than the one they currently enjoy. So we observe a real "wave," not a chain of isolated events.

For me as a Bulgarian it is satisfying to see "our" protests embedded in a global trend, which is generally praised by progressives all around the world. Surely the same applies to Thai readers. As the author admits, it is a great temptation to the social scientist to make typologies and classify processes even when they seem to resist attempts at classification. But how otherwise would a book on "the protest wave" be possible, especially one following in hot pursuit the actions of the International Protestor in so many spots around the globe? Ivan Krastev is familiar to the public in many ways. His recent research touches on different issues while maintaining a common theme. The metaphor of a "red thread" running through his books should be evoked; he holds a specific interest in problems, which in his interpretation I dare to label the joint pain, or the rheumatics of democracy. This metaphor of mine serves to illustrate Krastev's treatment of corruption, populism, protests today, and probably even other phenomena that challenge the smooth and painless functioning of democratic systems. Such phenomena ceaselessly disturb and disrupt the body public of modern representative democracy and require adjustments, new ideas, decisions, and "political medicines." No pejorative sense is necessarily invested here. It is just the notion that democracy should find means to peacefully coexist with factors gradually questioning its claim to represent people and its presumable commitment...