Samuel Ely Bagg, "The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
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What is the central problem with the traditional view of democracy?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello and thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talise. I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figder, Malcolm Keating, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Samuel Bagg. Samuel is assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. He specializes in social and political philosophy with an emphasis on democratic theory. He has a new book that's just been published by Oxford University Press. Its title is The Dispersion of Power, a Critical Realist Theory of Democracy. Now, according to a familiar picture, democracy is a social order in which the government is driven or directed by the collective will of the people who are governed.
Now, given the size of the modern state, this picture is commonly adjusted to m s may say that democracy is a system of representative government, where there are elected officials who are tasked with governing in ways that reflect the collective will of their constituents, some subset of the overall populace. Now, even this picture is familiar, but despite its familiarity, this way of depicting democracy invites a range of difficulties. The concept of a collective will is notoriously difficult to nail down, and some people even think it's incoherent. Moreover, the idea that modern elections reveal or express such a will remains dubious. Accordingly, a good deal of democratic theory aims to fill in some of the missing details regarding the collective will and its representation.
However, in the dispersion of power, Samuel Bagg takes a different tack by proposing a vision of democracy where the central aim of democracy is not to represent the popular will, so much as to protect public power from capture. Now as usual, there's a lot to talk about, but luckily uh we have the author with us and we'll begin by asking uh our guest to say something about uh himself. Hi Sam, how are you?
Good. Thanks. Hi Bob. Uh thanks for having me on the show.
Well, thank you uh for for joining me. It's really uh was a pleasure to read the book. Um well as I just mentioned, you know, we we we start off these uh discussions uh with the author saying something about himself. Can you tell us something about yourself?
Sure, yeah. So I mean I I grew up in North Carolina. Um I've been a longtime listener of the show. I think people often talk about how they got interested in philosophy. So I think I you know, I I figured I would say something about that as well. Um For as long as I can remember basically I was I was interested in in questions that would be called philosophical. Uh But my first formal exposure was one of these summer camps, you know, where you go to as a as a middle or high schooler to take intensive classes for a couple of weeks and and you know, the first I basically I took a philosophy class summer after sixth or seventh grade, something like that. Um and was basically hooked hooked from that point.
Um Uh you know, so when I started college I'd listed philosophy and political science as the majors I was interested in and kind of been working working at the intersection of those two things uh ever since. Um Yeah, ended up doing this like PPE type program uh for a major, which which combined them and then spent a couple of years away from academia, came back to grad school uh at Duke, uh back home in North Carolina actually. Um decided to work in in political science uh rather than philosophy, but I I stayed in touch with philosophy, you know, institutionally as much as I could, uh, especially in that kind of, you know, PPE uh space.
Right. For listeners who might not know, PPE is just the the hybrid discipline. I think we're safe to call it a discipline now. Uh philosophy, politics and economics. Yeah.
Yeah. Um so yeah, then after that bounced uh bounced around after grad school for a while, a couple of different postdocs. Um but yeah, ended up up here in South Carolina, not too far from from where I grew up.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central problem with the traditional view of democracy?
0:01–6:34
2
How does Samuel Bagg define democracy as a defence against state capture?
6:34–15:12
3
What is critical realism and how does it differ from other democratic theories?
15:12–24:17
4
Why does Bagg argue that the collective will is incoherent and prone to capture?
24:17–31:14
5
What liberal commitments (constitutionalism, competition, universalism) help resist capture?
31:14–39:34
6
How do anti‑monopoly, counter‑vailing power, and systemic redistribution balance power?
39:34–48:03
7
What practical reforms does Bagg propose for elections and democratic institutions?
48:03–55:24
8
How does organizing and counter‑vailing power provide a realistic path to democratic renewal?
55:24–1:02:39
Speakers
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