Democracy in Chains

In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, author Nancy MacLean shows how political economist James McGill Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power.

In response to the widening of America democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.

This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

“[A] riveting, unsettling account of ‘Tennessee country boy’ James McGill Buchanan, key architect of today’s radical right” – O, The Oprah Magazine.

The full title of the book is “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America”. Published by Viking NY (June 2017).

Compiled and reviewed by Clara Rayes.