How liberal democracy killed politics and brought populism - Unter Beobachtung. Die Bestimmung der liberalen Demokratie und ihrer Freunde by Philip Manow, Suhrkamp, 2024

Abstract

Democracy today means liberal democracy. Exclusively. And ‘the crisis of liberal democracy is not necessarily a crisis of democracy as such’. This is the starting point of Philip Manow’s new book, Unter Beobachtung. Die Bestimmung der liberalen Demokratie und ihrer Freunde (‘Under Surveillance. Defining liberal democracy and its friends’). The German political scientist contends that through the new, exclusive understanding of democracy as liberal democracy, politics has been ‘suffocated’, and this largely contributed to the success of populism. In this review I argue that the populist promise for the rebirth of politics is dishonest, and I point to an underestimated consequence of liberal depoliticisation: rights inflation.