Political Ideologies

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Democracy in Chains

The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America

By Nancy MacLean

Democracy in Chains is Nancy MacLean’s history of the ideas, institutions, and donors that she argues transformed the American libertarian right into a campaign to restrict majority rule. Its central figure is James McGill Buchanan, the economist associated with public choice theory and constitutional political economy. MacLean follows his career from Virginia’s battles over school desegregation through the growth of university centers and donor-supported policy organizations, culminating in his relationship with Charles Koch’s political network. Her central contention is that an organized movement sought not merely to win elections but to rewrite governing rules so that taxation, regulation, unions, public education, and social programs would become harder for popular majorities to sustain. The book connects intellectual history to practical politics, asking how private wealth can reshape democratic institutions. It is also a sharply contested interpretation: scholars have disputed M…