Entrenchment

Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies

Starr Paul

Much of our politics today, Paul Starr writes, is a struggle over entrenchment – efforts to bring about change in ways that opponents will find difficult to undo. That is why the stakes of contemporary politics are so high.

In this wide-ranging book, Starr examines how changes at the foundations of society become hard to reverse – yet are sometimes overturned. Overcoming aristocratic power was the formative problem for eighteenth-century revolutions. Overcoming slavery was the central problem for American democracy. Controlling the power of concentrated wealth has been an ongoing struggle in the world's capitalist democracies.

The battles continue today in the troubled democracies of our time, with the rise of both oligarchy and populist nationalism and the danger that illiberal forces will entrench themselves in power. Entrenchment raises fundamental questions about the origins of our institutions and urgent questions about the future.

About the Author

Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, cofounder and coeditor of The American Prospect magazine and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize in American History. He has published seven previous books including "Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform".

Back to the list of books