Starred review from April 8, 2019
Writer and filmmaker Taylor follows her 2018 documentary What Is Democracy? with this wide-ranging “inquiry into democracy as a balance of paradoxes, an exploration of opposites” to “gain better insight into why the challenge of self-rule is so great.” Each chapter focuses on a binary that influences democracy (freedom/equality, coercion/choice, inclusion/exclusion, expertise/mass opinion), chipping away at what democracy is not and revealing that the binaries themselves are more complicated than they seem. A consensus-based system (unlimited choice) will run into deadlock and fall apart, for example, if there is no provision for decisions to be made swiftly (coercion) when necessary. From ancient Athens to modern-day Greece, from the social democratic Scandinavian countries to the monarchy-turned-democracy of Bhutan, Taylor searches the world (mostly the West) for often unexpected examples (pirates, for instance, had one of the most egalitarian societal frameworks ever seen). However, she always returns to class and the U.S., examining gerrymandering, the founding fathers, and the rise and fall of Occupy Wall Street. Taylor clearly communicates her vision of democracy: always in flux, never certain, more an ideal than a realized system, but always something to strive for. This unusual and challenging work is worth the effort.