The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century - Paperback

by Moisés Naím (Author)Named one of the New Yorker's Best Books An urgent, thrilling, and original look at the future of democracy that illuminates one of the most important battles of our time: the future of freedom and how to contain and defeat the autocrats mushrooming around the world "If you want to really understand the current global threat to democracy, you should read The Revenge of Power. Moisés Naím has written a masterpiece." - David Rubenstein, co-executive chairman of The Carlyle Group, chairman of The Kennedy Center and The Council on Foreign Relations "In The Revenge of Power, Moisés Naím, one of the most acute observers of world politics, comprehensively catalogs the threats to democracy on the part of unaccountable dictators, populists, and companies in recent years, drawing insightful parallels across disparate domains. An important and timely work." - Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University professor and author of Identity "The Revenge of Power reminds me of why I consider Moisés Naím one of the world’s most exciting and original political thinkers. This absorbing book explores the often contradictory trends that are reshaping political power, and explains that our future depends on how they get resolved. Essential reading." - Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State In his bestselling book The End of Power, Moisés Naím examined power-diluting forces. In The Revenge of Power, Naím turns to the trends, conditions, technologies and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration of power, and to the clash between those forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it. He concentrates on the three "P"s--populism, polarization, and post-truths. All of which are as old as time, but are combined by today's autocrats to undermine democratic life in new and frightening ways. Power has not changed. But the way people go about gaining it and using it has been transformed. The Revenge of Power is packed with alluring characters, riveting stories about power grabs and losses, and vivid examples of the tricks and tactics used by autocrats to counter the forces that are weakening their power. It connects the dots between global events and political tactics that, when taken together, show a profound and often stealthy transformation in power and politics worldwide. Using the best available data and insights taken from recent research in the social sciences, Naím reveals how, on close examination, the same set of strategies to consolidate power pop up again and again in places with vastly different political, economic, and social circumstances, and offers insights about what can be done to ensure that freedom and democracy prevail. The outcomes of these battles for power will determine if our future will be more autocratic or more democratic. Naím addresses the questions at the heart of the matter: Why is power concentrating in some places while in others it is fragmenting and degrading? And the big question: What is the future of freedom? Author Biography MOISéS NAíM is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an internationally syndicated columnist. He served as editor in chief of Foreign Policy, as Venezuela's trade minister, and as executive director of the World Bank.