Abstract

Samuel Bagg's The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy is an excellent book. It lays out and defends, in detail, an ambitious new account of the significance of democratic institutions and practices, which it sees as centrally concerned with avoiding state capture. That account powerfully illuminates many important topics in democratic theory, responding in persuasive and novel ways to old questions as well as offering new areas to explore. However, its near-exclusive focus on domination by the very wealthy may limit the insights it can provide. The idea of state capture's full power may only be made available though by adopting a more varied account of the common good that it stymies, and of the interests that may mobilize against those shared interests.