Shadi Hamid draws on the experiences of the Middle East to address the vexing question at the heart of the crisis of democracy in the West. Is democracy an absolute good, or is it good only when it produces good outcomes? Hamid goes beyond usual arguments about democratic values to make cogent and incisive observations, forcing the reader to rethink what we commonly expect of democracy. Hamid is an original thinker, and this book is an important and timely contribution.
Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, research professor of Islamic Studies at Fuller Seminary, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He was named one of the world's top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine in 2019. Hamid is the author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize for best book on foreign affairs, and co-editor of Rethinking Political Islam. His first book, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East, was named a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2014.